17 July 2023 , 23:01
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A woman says she finally found “someone like me” after meeting a half-sister she never knew she had.
Rachel Burch, 50, grew up in a white family with no memory of her birth father, who was from Jamaica.
She turns to ITV’s Long Lost Family for help to find him and yearns to trace a relative with a similar life experience after sticking out as a girl in her village.
Rachel tells the programme, hosted by Davina McCall, she is delighted to discover she has a half-sister.
She adds: “I’ve done a lot of searching for my identity, but I have found somebody that is the same as me. That’s fantastic.”
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Rachel was born in the early ’70s in Wolverhampton to an English mum.
Rachel (left) was delighted after finding out she had a sisterHer dad was around for 18 months of her life but Rachel has no memory of him and did not know his name. When Rachel was four, her mum met a man called John and they all moved to a small village in West Sussex.
Rachel’s mother would not divulge her father’s name until 10 years ago when Rachel and her husband were exploring the possibility of adopting or fostering. Her mum then gave her the name of her dad to put on a form, Errol Dawson.
Rachel, an NHS practitioner, says: “I want to know if I have got family. I’ve always asked where’s my dad? Where did he go? Did he still want to see me? Did he still think about me? Because I’ve always thought about him.
“He’s always been in the background.”
Rachel was just 18 months when her dad left
Rachel was given her dad, Errol Dawson's name ten years agoThe Long Lost Family researchers looked for a man of Jamaican descent in the UK called Errol Dawson, and discovered he had died 20 years ago in Liverpool at the age of 52.
Using Rachel’s DNA, the specialist researchers began searching for other family members and found a potential match to a 28-year-old woman in Liverpool called Sian Evans.
When the intermediaries contacted Sian, she revealed she had never met her father but said his name was Errol Dawson.
Despite the devastating news her dad had died, Rachel found her sister and her in-laws and nephewSian is Rachel’s half-sister as they have different mothers but the same father, from two relationships decades apart. The ITV programme tells Rachel off camera her father has died but then she has better news about her new family. When the sisters meet, they hug and burst into tears.
Sian is tearful when Rachel shows her a photograph of their father. Rachel says: “It’s nice to know I’m not an only child because I’ve always wanted a sister. I can’t stop looking at you.”
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Sian tells how Rachel is a nice person, adding they have a lot in common.
Rachel introduces her husband Clive to Sian, who both meet her fiancé Danny Armstrong and their youngest son Koby. The boy even boasts his own hair is bigger than Rachel’s. She adds: “I just hope that families can join together and we can be there for each other.”
Long Lost Family featuring Rachel and Sian is on ITV at 9pm next Monday.