Finding the truth hidden in our DNA can be life changing, but is it always worth knowing? Insight speaks with those who’ve made discoveries hidden in their genes, examines what DNA testing has meant for adoptees, and explores how some families are choosing between preventative genetic screening and life insurance. Watch DNA Doesn’t Lie on SBS On Demand.
The woman initially mistook me for a package, but soon realized I was an infant when she heard my soft cries, my umbilical cord still attached and uncut.
The authorities were notified, and an investigation was launched, yet despite their efforts, they never located my biological mother.
At the age of 52, I’m still trying to find my mother, and to understand why she abandoned me at just a few hours old.
I was born two months premature and left — by someone — on the steps of a baby health clinic in Deniliquin, a regional town in south-west NSW.
About 9am on Monday 5 March 1973, a kind nurse found me.
Caron was placed in foster care at just five months old, remaining there until she reached adulthood and could leave at 18.
My ankle was dislocated and my legs bruised, suggesting I may have been born breech.
I was also cold, covered in leaves and wrapped in a cheap blue crepe paper towel, like those found in petrol stations’ bathrooms. Perhaps I’d been born in nearby bushland.
When I think about that baby, I feel heartbroken.
The nurse scooped me up and drove me two blocks to the local hospital, where I spent my first five months of life in an incubator.
The police were called, and they conducted a search — but never found my mother.
Caron was in foster care from the age of five months until she was legally allowed to leave home at 18. Source: Supplied
Once I was healthy, I was made a ward of the state and transferred to an orphanage in Sydney.
Within a fortnight, I was placed in emergency foster care with a military family. I didn’t have a happy time with my foster carers, but I would stay there until I was an adult and legally allowed to leave home.
‘Alone and unloved’
My foster parents already had other adopted children and then had their own biological child after I joined the family, so I always felt like an intruder.
“You’re not one of us; you’re a foster kid”, my adopted brother would tell me.
I wasn’t close to my foster parents. My foster dad died of cancer, leaving my mother alone and overwhelmed.
She was cold to me. I remember her yelling and screaming at us kids, and she was never happy with anything I did.
Caron didn’t have a happy childhood and had a troubled relationship with her foster mother. Source: Supplied
Twice, when she thought I was misbehaving, she complained to the NSW Department of Community Services (DOCS), which was later absorbed into the Department of Family and Community Services. My district officer then arranged to send me to a children’s home.
I found myself there at the age of 10 and then at 12. In the 80s, they were horrible places to be. They gave us drugs to settle us down.
At 13, I started asking her who my real parents were, and she told me I was found on the doorstep.
I thought she was joking; I didn’t believe that’s what happened, or could happen.
A DOCS officer was in regular contact with my school, so everyone in the community knew I was fostered. Parents told their kids not to play with me.
I felt like a second-class citizen wherever I went. Alone and unloved, a child that no one wanted or cared about.
When I turned 18, and my mother no longer received payments from DOCS to foster me, I asked her if she was going to adopt me. She reluctantly agreed.
Now, she too has died and I have mostly cut ties with my foster family.
Over time, I became more focused on finding my real family, my true identity and my own sense of self.
A breakthrough
I found a place called the Post Adoption Resource Centre (PARC), part of The Benevolent Society, and applied for my ward file, but it told me nothing about my family.
Then I turned to DNA testing, which linked me to 28 distant family members.
Eight years later, I was matched with a second cousin that would change everything.
Through the help of a genealogist, I found my half-sister. She took a DNA test that confirmed our link and revealed I had another half-sister and two half-brothers.
A DNA test “changed everything” for Caron in the search for her biological family. Source: Getty / Bloomberg/George Frey
Meeting my two half-sisters a few years ago was the happiest day of my life. We had the same height, features and laugh, plus a wicked sense of humour.
But we didn’t share any history, traditions or stories like most siblings do.
Our only tie was our dad, who had died five months before, so I never got to meet him.
I learned that my father was a love child who took the name of his stepfather when his mother married. This explained the names in my DNA matches not matching his surname.
I also learned something mind-blowing: my dad had told my half-sisters and brothers that he had had a daughter with another woman before them, and that I’d been born and buried in the back yard.
I wonder if my mum had buried me and he had dug me up, before taking me to the baby health centre. That would explain the leaves all over me when the nurse found me.
I also learned that he had a name tattooed on his arm, which my half-sisters believe was my mother’s.
A TV show approached me a few years ago to help me find her. They tracked down a woman who happened to have the name of my father’s tattoo.
That woman was contacted but denied ever having or abandoning a baby.
I think this woman is my mother, but that she doesn’t want to be found.
I think she probably tried to hide her pregnancy before I was born eight weeks early.
And when I arrived, she made the decision to give herself a better life and leave me behind forever.
A desperate search for identity
This woman went on to have children with another man.
I imagine she finds it hard to admit to herself that she once abandoned a baby, and that she’s kept me a secret all these years.
It’s probably one she intends to take to the grave.
I get it, and I feel sad for this woman in her 70s carrying such a shameful truth like that.
Through the show, she probably knows I exist, and that I’m looking for her.
But it’s possible she wants nothing to do with me.
Or perhaps to know that I survived is enough.
Caron is desperate to find her mother so she can gain an understanding about who she is. Source: Supplied
It’s hard for me to prove this woman is my mother without her doing a DNA test.
Meeting her face-to-face has become an obsessive need in understanding who I am and the way I look, and to know who in the family I share the most traits with.
To finally find someone I belong to would be a dream come true.
But now I feel snookered, with no idea what my next move should be.
There is no evidence that the police have pursued the case since 1973. I could ask them to reopen it to find my mother because, after all, abandoning a baby is a crime.
Or I could approach her, but I know that could be very confronting for her.
I’d be happy to meet her in secret. I don’t want any money or inheritance, but simply to know why she made the decision she did all those years ago, and how it made her feel.
Shame is so harmful — to me and most likely to her.
Perhaps, deep down, I’m still searching for my mother’s love. Perhaps, I want her to read this article and think: ‘look at my daughter, she looks and sounds nice — and I’d like to meet her’.
But even if she reaches out and says she wants nothing to do with me and I have to walk away, at least I’ll have the truth.
The secret would die, setting us both free.
But until then, I’ll keep searching.
