Hussin & Red Cross/Sarah & Iwan Family Finders

Families can be driven apart for all manner of reasons.

I had no information at all about where my mum went.

And when you do lose touch with your loved ones...

You don't know who you are, where you've come from.

..finding them can take a lifetime...

I might have a brother that's still living here.

..especially when they could be anywhere - at home or abroad.

And that's where the family finders come in,

from international organisations...

Hi, it's the Salvation Army Family Tracing Service.

..to genealogy detective agencies...

For someone to say that it's changed their life,

it makes coming to work really, really special.

..and dedicated one-man bands.

It's a matter of how much effort you really want to put into it,

how badly you want to solve the problem.

They hunt through history to bring families back together again.

Finding new family is wonderful.

In this series, we follow the work of the family finders...

Suddenly, you get one spark of breakthrough and there they are.

..learning the tricks they use

to track missing relatives through time...

I didn't think I'd ever find sisters but I have.

..and meeting the people whose lives they change along the way.

I've been waiting to meet John my whole life.

Since we've met, I feel part of a family again.

You've just completed my life for me.

Families can lose touch for all sorts of reasons.

A relative may have moved abroad,

sometimes people just drift apart,

but in the most extreme circumstances,

families must make the ultimate sacrifice and split up

because it may be the only route to a better and more secure future.

Today, we follow two such cases.

Euan's search is for the birth mother who gave him up

as a three-day-old baby, in order to give him

the opportunities in life she felt she couldn't provide.

"You may decide to tell Ewan all this yourselves one day

"or you may give him this letter to read.

"But, in either case, he can be assured

"that his mother was very concerned for his future welfare."

I couldn't just...turn away and not look at him

and not at least have one cuddle.

So, I did, and I fell in love with him.

I'm going to cry now.

And we meet Hussin who,

after the trauma of fleeing a home being torn apart by civil war,

left his family behind and put his own life on the line

in search of a safer future for them all.

I'm started crying, she started crying, my mum.

Everybody started crying because I know this journey is very bad.

Maybe you die, maybe you lose your life, it's not very safe,

but I have to.

36-year-old Euan Williams grew up in Lincoln.

From a young age, his parents were open

about the fact they had adopted him.

They told us the story about how a baby comes from Mummy's tummy

and all that sort of thing and they said, "Well, you didn't,

"but we still love you

"and your natural parents couldn't keep you for whatever reason."

I, at least, have the memory of being very confused.

There's a huge sense of, "Well, who am I?"

that sort of lingers over you.

It wasn't until Euan was in his late teens

that he learned some details about his birth family.

His adoptive father gave him a letter

he had been keeping for him since his adoption.

It says, "Dear Mr and Mrs Clark,

"Sarah, Daniel's mother, is a 15-year-old grammar school girl.

"Sarah's family were very supportive and offered to help her care for her baby,

"but she felt she was too young to give him the security

"and upbringing that she should wish him to have.

"He can be assured that his mother was very concerned "for his future welfare."

I think I was dumbfounded when I first got it.

Another couple of years passed before Euan resolved to act

on the information he had been given about his adoption.

I decided I wanted to find out a bit more about her

I came across something called the Adoption Contact Register.

They tell you whether your natural parent or parents have put their names

on this register so, in effect,

giving you the permission to contact them.

And she HAD put it on there.

Euan now knew his birth mother's married name, Sarah Wroot,

and an address.

He had everything he needed to make contact but then, he hesitated.

I just kept that information for years. I didn't do anything with it.

I think it takes a lot of courage to do it.

And I think, I think I had to grow up a bit more.

After going to university, Euan eventually ended up in London

and began a career in recruitment.

After a few years of working in the city,

he decided to take a break from the rat race.

It was then, just over two years ago,

that his thoughts turned again to his birth mother.

It became apparent that actually finding out who I was

was more important, at that particular time, than anything else.

The beginning of the search was going back to the letter

from the Adoption Contact Register,

getting her address from there and trying that out.

So, after 34 years of having no contact with...

either of my natural parents, I'd written this card.

And I think it was maybe three weeks, a month later,

I thought if there was going to be anything,

it would have been by now and then I had the thought,

"Hold on, that address was really, really old.

"How do I go about finding out more about this?"

Realising the address he got from the Adoption Register

could now be years out of date,

Euan's next step was to ask his local council for help.

They gave me this, which is an adoption case sheet,

and has all sorts of details about who she was

and how old she was and where she lived.

And I think, when I had this, that was when it solidified in my mind, without any doubt then,

"I'm definitely going to find her."

With every new piece of information,

Euan was building up a better picture of his birth mother

but he was still no closer to finding her.

It wasn't until he met an amateur genealogist online

that it looked like his search might finally come to fruition.

And I said to him, "Do you want to call me Mum?"

And he did, straightaway.

Not every quest to reunite a family

starts with a search through the records.

Hussin Zahra knew exactly where his loved ones were,

but had to overcome barriers separating them

which were both physical and political.

Just five years ago, Hussin and his family

lived comfortably in Syria.

I married my wife 19 years ago

and I bring the children

and I have six children - four girls and two boys.

But after civil war broke out in 2011,

Hussin made the difficult decision

to leave Syria to seek safety and security for his family.

Too much guns and too much bombs and stuff.

Very dangerous and I cannot leave and they starve, my children,

so I take the decision

everybody have to go from my country straightaway.

I leave everything.

Just one day, I tell them, "You have to be ready tomorrow.

"We'll start to go because, you know,

"there's no guarantee in the next day what happens."

It's very hard for me to leave everything but I have to

because I need to save our lives, I have to save my children's lives.

It's not very easy.

Together, Hussin and his family made it

as far as the relative safety of Egypt

but they decided there wasn't a future for them there either.

So, I tell my wife I have to go from this country

to look for another country.

Hussin made the heart-wrenching decision to leave his wife, Sana,

his four daughters and a baby son alone in Egypt.

Hussin planned to make the dangerous 2,000-mile journey

to the UK, in the hope of finding asylum

and safety for the whole family.

But he wasn't going alone.

He was taking his nine-year-old son, Mohammed,

and his ten-year-old nephew, Ali, with him.

Everybody started crying,

because it's no guarantee to see us again.

Maybe I lose my life in the sea.

Maybe I lose it for another way, I don't know. So, it's...

When you start to go, the decision is very, very difficult, you know.

Hussin paid to make the perilous passage

across the Mediterranean Sea,

a journey that had already claimed the lives

of hundreds of other refugees.

I know this journey is very bad. Maybe die, maybe you lose your life.

It's not very safe, but I have to, so I go in the ship.

I stay in the sea around 12 days, but in these 12 days,

I cannot forget ever in my life, because it's very, very, very hard.

Eventually, the boat made it to the coast of Italy safely.

From there, Hussin, his son and his nephew

made the arduous trek across Europe

before finally reaching England, hidden in the back of a lorry.

When I reach the UK, there is some traffic,

and some people in the car, they hear the voice when I talk to the lorry, so they call the police

and the police, later on, he stop the lorry.

When the police open the door and they tell us,

"Come out", I'm happy, you know,

they saw I have two children and me, you know, straight away,

you know, take us in the car

and take us in safe place, you know.

Hussin and the boys were allowed to stay in the UK

while their applications for asylum were processed.

They settled in Birmingham, but although Hussin and the boys were safe for now,

the rest of their family were still stuck in Egypt.

When I arrive in England, I feel very, you know,

afraid about my family,

because I leave them there.

And they don't have anything there,

they don't have enough money to eat.

36-year-old Euan was looking for the birth mother

who had given him up as a baby so he could have a better future.

But Euan's search had hit a dead end.

He turned to the internet for help.

And came across a group, run by some amateur genealogists,

and one of the people in the group told me

that because my mother's first married name was so unusual -

Sarah J Wroot, which has that unusual spelling

with the W on the front of it -

that it was very easy for her to be found.

In fact, it took just a few hours

for the internet genealogist to find a match,

but with another chance to meet his birth mother, Euan hesitated again.

He asked the genealogist for advice.

I think, in the message box, I wrote, "Argh, I don't know!

"What SHOULD I do?" And she said, "Well, you could write a letter."

I said, "No, YOU write it!"

The amateur genealogist wrote to Euan's mother, Sarah,

and awaited a response. The wait wasn't a long one.

A couple of days later,

Euan and Sarah were speaking on the phone for the very first time.

My world just exploded.

I was shaking from head to toe, I was in tears, I was happy,

I was...shocked, scared.

I was all over the place!

We spoke and we spoke for something like...

Oh, it was a ridiculous amount of time. It was hours.

It was like finding your best friend, in a really gentle way.

It was exceedingly significant.

34 years after he had been given up for adoption,

Euan had finally found his birth mother, Sarah.

And now they had made contact,

Euan learned the full story of why he had been put up for adoption.

It began when, as a teenager, Sarah discovered she was expecting a baby.

I was really scared. I was 14, you know.

I was so confused.

My mum and dad said it was totally my choice.

He was a little boy that needed security

and I wanted him to have more than I could give him.

I'd made the decision, before I went in to give birth,

that I would have him

and I wouldn't look at him and I wouldn't cuddle him,

cos I thought, "I'll get too attached and it will be too hard."

And I gave birth to him and I just had to hold him.

I couldn't just turn away and not look at him

and not at least have one cuddle, so I did, and...

Yeah, I fell in love with him.

I'm going to cry now.

I did, I fell in love with him.

SHE SNIFFS

And I haven't stopped loving him since.

I've got a photo of me holding him in the hospital in the bed,

on my shoulder, and I can still feel.

You never lose that. Yeah...

Sarah named her baby boy Daniel

and cared for him for three days in hospital.

Eventually, the time came to leave Daniel.

The ward sister had come into the, um, the room...

and wanted to take Daniel away

before my dad came and picked me up, and I wouldn't let her.

I said, "No, he's staying with me

"until my dad gets here and takes me home."

And Dad came in.

And that was the worst bit, was walking out of the hospital,

cos I felt like I was abandoning him.

You never stop feeling guilty, ever.

Sarah moved on with her life

but the baby boy she had to give up was never far from her thoughts.

I got married at 19 and then, two years later,

I had my son, Jonathan, and we were in Peterborough then

and I remember coming home.

I panicked cos I thought, "Oh, I'm responsible for this one."

And I can remember saying to my mum,

with tears down my face, "I can keep this one. This one's mine."

Yeah, that was hugely emotional. It helped heal the hurt that...

Because I had Daniel and I had nothing to love at the end of it.

34 years later, Sarah was finally about to be reunited with the son she had to give away.

Daniel, now Euan, and Sarah herself,

wasted no time in meeting up.

We met at London Bridge station.

Bless her, Mum was a bit of a wreck, but she was fine.

And there was lots of hugs and lots of tears and it was amazing.

It was the most amazing day of my life.

I was a bag of nerves.

I was stuttering and spluttering and we laughed about it in the end

and I kept calling him "Daniel" and he said, "It's fine.

"I don't care what you call me."

And we just...hugged.

I wasn't letting go of him.

The first time I met her, I fell in love with her completely,

um, which sounds weird, but, you know, it's not.

It's perfectly natural and she's absolutely amazing.

It was only a few days after meeting Euan and I said to him...

"Do you want to call me 'Mum'?" And he did, straightaway.

Euan and Sarah are still in the process of catching up

on over 30 years of life,

so today, they're meeting up to share some more memories.

We're off to a cafe to meet Mum

and then we're going to have a look at the house where she grew up.

It will be nice to see Boston and, hopefully,

the weather will clear up, but I don't hold my breath for that.

-Hello.

-Hello.

-How are you?

-I'm good, thanks. How are you?

-I'm all right.

To help fill in the years spent apart,

they've both brought some photos,

including one of a teenage Sarah

just a few months before she gave birth to Euan.

-That was doing an operatic...

-Oh, yeah.

-I was actually pregnant with you then.

-Wow! I'm in there.

-Yes.

But no-one knew.

-And these are ones from later.

-Oh, look!

-You're so cute!

-Mmm.

-You're very much like that now.

-What?

-Like making a mess?

-Loud and lairy!

-Yeah.

THEY LAUGH

The next stop for mother and son is the house where Sarah grew up,

where she discovered she was pregnant with Euan

and where she made the decision to give him up

so he could have a better life than the one she could have provided.

Crikey, this brings back memories!

I bet it does.

-There it is.

-This one here?

-Yeah. It hasn't changed much.

That's where you lived. It looks like a lovely house.

-It was a happy house.

-Yeah.

-Yeah, although we went through some emotional times.

-Sure.

Does it bring back a lot of memories for you, coming back here?

Yeah, and it's not as hard as I thought it was going to be.

-That's nice.

-I think, now, cos I've got you...

-Yeah.

-That's...

That's the main thing.

..put all that into perspective.

Now I feel like I certainly have a mum

who I can talk to about anything, which is amazing.

I've never had that before.

Euan coming back, it has made me think, "What if, if I'd kept him?"

And both of us have said what happened happened,

the past is the past, what we've got now is the future

and that's the important thing.

Since meeting my mum, I'm a lot more settled in myself

and I definitely have a sense of identity.

It's really nice having someone in your life

who you look like and that you ARE like.

I think you grow up with discussions about nature versus nurture

and you might have these ideas about it

but you really don't have any clue

about what that really means, practically...

..or emotionally, and then, finally, for all of that to sink into place,

-is amazing.

-Now I've got him, Euan's here for ever.

SARAH LAUGHS

Yeah, we've always said we'll never lose each other again. Yeah.

He's family.

In Birmingham, Hussin Zahra, along with his nine-year-old son, Mohammed,

and his nephew Ali, had left their family in Egypt,

after fleeing their war-torn home in Syria, in search of a better future.

Fearing for the family he had left behind, Hussin had one glimmer of hope.

I reach this city and I contact the Red Cross.

Er...

And they start help me about to join my family here.

The British Red Cross is one of the world's best-known

international humanitarian organisations.

Relying on a huge global network of volunteers,

they provide help to people in crisis, both in the UK and overseas.

There are about 17 million volunteers globally.

In British Red Cross, there are about 30,000 volunteers,

all in local areas, doing different services,

like independent living, emergency response,

first aid and, of course, international family tracing.

The Red Cross tracing service handle over 1,000 cases a year,

finding and reuniting families.

And it was to the Red Cross, that Hussin now turned for help.

But he had no idea

if they would be able to reunite him with his family.

Hussin had claimed asylum on arriving in the UK

and that's a very complex process in itself,

because you have to prove to the Home Office

that you fled persecution and you're interviewed

and everything you say is being cross-checked.

So, once you are granted protection in the UK,

when you have refugee status, then you become eligible

to apply for family reunion, but the criteria is very narrow,

so it's another complex process that starts.

Every day it took for Hussin's application for refugee status

to be considered, was another day apart for the family.

Finally, it was confirmed.

But that was just the beginning of a complex process

to bring the rest of his family to the UK

that had no guarantee of success.

Red Cross support worker Fabio took on the case.

When Hussin approached us

in the first place, he was absolutely lost

in a sense that he said,

"I don't know what to do."

But immediately, it did emerge that his worry was about his family

and I think what he told us, at that stage,

was an incredibly worrying situation.

Trying to get families back together

means getting approval from a string of government departments,

such as immigration, visa and border control.

Applying for family reunion

when you are a refugee is a very complex process.

Gathering the relevant documents

to be able to prove that you are who you say you are,

that you are related to your family members,

as you say you are related,

that you're married to your wife or your husband,

because the Home Office asks for original documents

and that can be very tricky for families who have been on the move,

who have had to flee, if these documents existed, actually,

because in some of the countries,

there are no birth certificates or marriage certificates.

The final stage of the process involved, first of all,

making sure that there were no other obstacles.

100 telephone calls, maybe,

and numerous e-mails with our head office

and communicating that back to the family here,

back to the family in Egypt,

so all of those things were behind the scenes

before we actually met the family.

It's been seven months since Hussin left his wife and children in Egypt

and started his epic journey to the UK.

Today, his family is finally making the same trip,

except they are making their journey by plane.

With the help of the Red Cross,

they have been granted permission to join Hussin, Mohammed and Ali.

It's long time, you know, I don't see them

and it's more than, now, seven months. I very miss them, you know.

It's too much I miss them, so I wait,

but at least now they come here now together

and we'll be same, we'll meet again all the family.

THEY SPEAK IN NATIVE TONGUE

HE SPEAKS IN NATIVE TONGUE

THEY SPEAK IN NATIVE TONGUE

To see my family, to hug them, I'm very happy, you know, very happy.

Really amazing, I think,

and privileged to be a witness of that, really -

seeing that sense of coming together again after such a long time

and, more than anything else,

the idea that we are safe, a sense of safety.

The Red Cross will be very, very fantastic,

because I saw from them a lot of help,

so I'm very appreciate to them to help me.

When we find people and when you hear about the first contact,

that feeling is just incredible,

because I think we can all relate to it.

I think most people have someone in their lives that they cherish

and so, when you see people actually being put back together

or speaking to someone for the very first time, it's incredible.

It's been seven months since Hussin and his family were reunited

and they're now building a future for themselves in the UK.

The horror of their time apart is fading and the joy of their reunion

has already become a treasured family memory.

Very stressed there when they wait, so when will be coming together,

so it's amazing, you know.

It makes me feel...happy.

Today, Red Cross case worker Fabio has come to visit Hussin,

his wife, Sana, and their children,

to see how they're settling into life in Britain.

I know it's been quite a journey to come to a new place.

It's a new city.

I just wanted to check that everyone in your family are OK.

Yeah, actually, everybody now they go to school

and they start now to be in English.

Have you made any friends in here now, Mohammed?

-Do you have any friends here?

-Yes.

-Yes?

There seems to be a smile on your face which is nice to see.

-Do you like the school?

-Yeah.

Very clever, you know, and he do very good in the school

-and everybody happy there with...

-Mmm, the teacher?

-Yeah.

I'm just curious to know how can you see your future?

What would you like to see to happen?

To work very hard here, to build us again, you know.

To do some business here, to do something for the family.

It's incredible to see that whatever Hussin and his wife

and, indeed, the others in the family do is for their children,

to make sure that they will have a better chance.

Thank you very much for you.

-I appreciate that.

-No...

-You work very hard for my family.

For us, seeing families back together means a lot,

because it's really what gives sense to people's lives,

being supported by your family.

Hopefully, it will allow you to also build a better future.

We are happy when we see families back together.

You help us too much, you know. Thank you very much.

TODDLER CHUCKLES