Podcast: Clare's story    • Video  
Like over a million of us in the UK, 38yearold Clare has never met her father. She was told he might have been a British soldier stationed in Northern Ireland, during the troubles. Now she's determined to find out if this is the truth.

So, tell me what it is that you're desperate to find out?

I just want to know who my dad is. I have no idea. I don't look like my sister or my brother. Obviously, we have different dads but they both look like my mum, but I was very dark when I was born.

So, they were all fair?

Yeah, they were all fair, all really fair.

So, was your mother a white woman?
Yes, oh yeah, from North Belfast, yeah, born and bred, yeah, her whole family.
Is she's still around?

No, my mum passed away in 2012 and she always told me my dad was a British soldier, and that she'd met in the early 80s. She called him Jim, and she thought he maybe had a bit of a northern accent. so that's what I've always believed.

So why, because I get the impression that you feel slightly less certain now?

I'm not 100 certain it is the British soldier, there is another option. My sister was at a party and a friend basically said that she believes her father, is my father.

And so, it just threw in this whole other option, of this local man being a possibility, that he could be my dad as well.

What ethnicity was this man?

He was half Indian.

Okay, is this man still alive?

No, this man was a married man, so something did happen between him and my mum, maybe that's the reason she didn't tell me.

Do you believe you're mixed race?

I don't know, I honestly don't know. I've thought about it so much. Just want to know who I am, where I'm from, my heritage, anything, just to have a little bit of knowledge about me. What am I made of?

Since they last met, Turi and the team, have been analysing Clare's DNA, hoping to discover the identity of her father.

Clare's husband, Johnny, is joining her today as she receives her results.

Hello.

Hi.

So nice to see you again.

And you.

Right.

Yes.

Okay so when we met the first time, your main question was about the identity of your biological father?

Yeah.

You were told by your mum that he was a British soldier, but I know that, you know, because of your skin tone.

Yeah.

And, you know, stories from family friends, that you started to, sort of, doubt that story, didn't you? And to the point that you thought you might be mixed race, of Indian heritage. What we did was we took your DNA, and what we're doing with that, is we're comparing it with people who are in databases, and they contain about 30 million people, you know, from all over the world. We're looking for where you're getting matches in particular parts of the world, but also, in the hopes of being able to say something about who your biological father was, we're looking for matches that suggest that you might be related to them.

Okay.

And your results came back really clear.

Right.

You are pretty much a 100% British and Irish.

That is crazy.

So, your biological father is not mixed race. So that would rule out the theory of the other man, the family friend.

Yeah.
S
o, the fact that you had this question, well the first thing that we're looking for is, are you getting DNA matches in other parts of the world and you just weren't. You are getting English, Northern Ireland, and Scotland. And when you look at the 45% of English, you are getting concentrations around Yorkshire.

Wow, oh my gosh. That's just confirmed like my whole identity really.

I think it's a really beautiful case, for just showing, just the complexity of the genetics of skin pigmentation.

Yes.

You know, with any region you're going to have a huge range of skin tones, and it means that you really cannot say where somebody is from, by looking at their skin tone. The next thing we did was, we're wanting to look at the matches that you are getting, to confirm the identity of your father. And because we know who your mother is, we can discount any matches on her side and focus on what's left. You actually had over 500, sort of, DNA matches, these are fourth cousin and closer, so most of them are going to be relatively distant.

Yeah.

And we found that you actually had a couple of quite close matches, and by looking at birth, marriage, and death records, that allows us to start building family trees. Your paternal grandparents are Dennis and Lillian.

How do you find this, this is amazing.

They had three children, two sons and a daughter, but we could see from the records that one of their sons had a lifelong military career.

Right.

His name was Jim, he was a British soldier, so the story that your mum told you…

Was right.

It's true.

Thank you, thank you so much.

You're welcome.

I’m so happy.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000...

Representation: https://www.josarsby.com/turiking