“My mother was 16 when I was born, my father just 14. More shockingly, they were BROTHER AND SISTER!”

Adopted as a toddler and raised in a loving family, Theresa grew up happy and secure. It wasn’t until her early twenties, when she began searching for answers about her background, that she uncovered information she never expected to find. Faced with a discovery that felt overwhelming and isolating, she made life-changing decisions in silence, believing it was something she could never share.

“I felt that no one would want to know me. I felt sick. I felt revulsion. The office contacted me to see if I still wanted to go ahead and meet my mother, which I did. I wanted to very much find out what had happened, why had she been assaulted, was it consensual? I made a very big decision that changed the whole course of my life.

Hi, I’m Theresa Wiler and in my early 20ies I discovered that my biological parents were brother and sister. When I was born um in West London, my mom left very quickly and I was taken into the care of what was then called London County Council and moved to a children’s home, not like they are today, a very big one, which had its own school, nursery, hospital, everything.

My children’s worker decided she would try and place me for adoption. And at 2 and 1/2 she placed an advertisement in the tablet which is a Catholic weekly newspaper asking for a home for a 2 and 1/ halfyear-old girl. She said of above average intelligence and very bright. My parents were looking at the time and answered the advertisement and I started to visit with them in West London and eventually at the age of two and a half I was adopted by them.

They already had two boys who were 2 and four years older than me um that were their children and they subsequently adopted another little girl behind me making us a family of four growing up. So I had a very happy childhood um some might say privileged. My dad was very senior civil servant.

In fact he was the man that orchestrated the senator remembrance service for 20 years. So I had a nice childhood growing up. played lots of sport, played lots of music, and went to a very nice school. As we all grew up, um, and my brother’s slightly older than me, they were beginning to settle down, get married, and children started to arrive.

So, grandchildren from my parents. And up until then, I hadn’t really taken much notice of babies or of, you know, the fact that nobody knew anything about me as a baby. But when the first child was born, my nephew, um I felt this overwhelming urge that yes, actually I wanted to do exactly the same. I wanted to get married, settle down and very much have children.

So that got me thinking about my genetics and what, you know, what was my background because basically I didn’t really exist until I was 2 and a half when the first photos and that sort of thing were taken. So without telling anybody because I didn’t want to upset my parents or appear to look as though there was anything wrong with my upbringing, I contacted the local social services to find out how I went about finding out more.

They discovered that my records were held in Islington in North London and they arranged for me to go along and view them. So again in secret, I didn’t tell anybody for fear of upsetting people. I went to the Islington office in North London and the receptionist showed me to a little room and said they would bring in my records.

I wasn’t allowed to photocopy anything or take anything away, but I could write notes if I wanted to. Shortly afterward, she brought me a file and she just popped it on the table and and left me to it. I opened it up and the first thing I saw that my mom was unmarried and 16 and had been unable to care for me alone and that was why she had left me and and um put me in the care of social services.

And as I carried on reading down, I saw the details of her father. And to my shock, I discovered that my father was actually her brother and he was only 14 at the time. So basically, my parents were brother and sister. You can imagine I’ve grown up in a nice Catholic family where sex before marriage is even frowned upon.

This was something off the scale and I really did not know what to do with that information. I felt sick. I felt revulsion. I felt it answered a lot of questions why nobody had wanted me and that that would be why I went into a children’s home. But most of all, I felt shame because this was a taboo in not just in the Catholic community, but in any community that would be something that people would be appalled by as I was.

So the lady came back, she took the p the paperwork off me. She didn’t say anything. I didn’t say anything. I have no idea to this day if they knew what was inside. I’m sure nowadays you would have counseling before such a discovery, but nothing like that. So, I left the office and for quite a long time just walked about trying to process what I had just read and feeling incredibly full of shame.

I felt that no one would want to know me. They would look at me with the same revulsion that I’d just looked at what I’d read. And I decided there and then that I could never tell anybody. This was something I would have to keep secret and no one could ever know because if they did, they wouldn’t want to keep me.

And as I carried on walking and over the next few days, I made a very big decision that changed the whole course of my life in blind ignorance because nobody knew anything in those days. As I say, it was very taboo. So I’d never heard of anybody in that situation. I thought that if I married and had children, there was a very high possibility I could pass on some developmental delay either physically or mentally.

And that wasn’t something I could wish upon my own child. And so I decided there and then that I would not have children. I would not follow the path that I thought my life would take. settle down, get married, have children just like my siblings. But indeed, I would have to think that through again. And so, my life did not pan out how I thought it would.

So, as they were all having their children, I decided that the best thing I could do was to be the best auntie ever. I built a very strong relationship with all my nieces and nephews, and they brought me enormous joy and still to this day do. While I was making inquiries at the social services office, I discovered that there was a register and this register was for parents who were looking for their children or children who were looking for their parents.

And you were able to put your name on it and then wait and see if a match came up. It was some months later, but a match did come up and the office contacted me to see if I still wanted to go ahead and meet my mother, which I did. I wanted to very much find out what had happened. Why had she been assaulted? Was it consensual? You know, what had happened, what had led to that? And why had she then left me? And so the arrangement was that I was given an address to go to.

And again, as always, in secret, I went to that address and knocked on the door. A lady answered it. um which wasn’t that welcoming and I hadn’t realized until that point quite how everything was burning up inside me with all the questions I’d got. But what most struck me and people who are not adopted would probably never consider this was that for the first time in my life I saw somebody that looked like me and that I looked like.

And that’s a really big thing if you’ve never had it all your life. So she showed me into the into the flat and there was a gentleman sitting in the corner who she introduced as a friend. But again this absolute likeness and resemblance struck me about him. So we were all in a room together and I looked like everybody.

So I am very very certain to this day that that was my father. In some ways, it has given me some reassurance because the fact that they were still talking and still obviously at ease in each other’s company would suggest there wasn’t an assault. But I never got out and got to find out what had happened because I started firing off questions.

She seemed quite distant and I found that difficult. I thought she would be much warmer to me that she if she had put her name down surely she wanted to see me as much as I wanted to see her. I hadn’t expected to see my dad as well. So I started firing lots of questions and not really waiting for her to answer which wasn’t particularly fair and it sort of became just a bit of a rant and she stopped me eventually and said,

“Look you’re obviously upset you’re obviously distressed. Why don’t we rearrange this? You go away and write down all the things you want to ask me and then we can come back much calmer and we can I can try and answer your questions.”

I felt a bit embarrassed really that it had come to that but I hadn’t realized just how angry I felt inside. Um and so I thought it was a good idea actually because I wasn’t really getting anywhere as I was.

So, I took the phone number she gave me and we agreed I would phone her in a couple of weeks time and that we would rearrange the meeting. So, off I went with some very mixed feelings because I felt like I hadn’t got any answers. I felt like that was probably my own fault. I felt that for the first time ever I fitted somewhere because mainly because of the physical resemblance. So, I did what she asked.

I went away and I wrote down all my questions about what had happened, why had it happened, why did she not want to keep me, why did they not want to keep me, and why did she just walk away like she did and not even try and find out until here I was now in my 20ies and suddenly she was interested again. So I rang the number to rearrange to go back and the number was dead.

Just didn’t connect. This is very oldfashioned, but in those days you went through the operator and I rang the operator and she said,

“No that that line had been disconnected.”

So I thought maybe there was something wrong with the phone. I’ll go. So I went back to the flat and there was nobody there. No answer. I tried knocking on some neighbors doors to see if anybody knew where they’d gone or if they’d left any forwarding address or anything. No, nobody knew them.

It was very much come and go type rental of property and they didn’t know who they were, where they’d come from or where they’d gone to. That totally crushed me because it’s bad enough to be rejected once, but to be rejected twice is almost too much to bear. And it poses far more questions because why did they come back? Why didn’t they wait to answer my questions? What was their motivation for putting their name on the register? And I sort of came to the conclusion that maybe just that they wanted to see that I was okay, that maybe they’d made a good decision in the end, but it felt very unfair. It felt like they had both completely rejected me. And here I was again with this secret that I still couldn’t tell anyone cuz now I didn’t know what I was what I could even tell. I locked the whole thing away in my brain in little boxes and decided that I would just have to get on with life.

It impacted my social life quite a lot because I was of the age where everybody around me was settling down, getting married, having children, and because most normal men want to do that. They want to start a family. I didn’t feel that I could get into any serious relationship because that would inevitably come up. How could I say I didn’t want children when people knew how much I love children? and I couldn’t explain why.

And so whenever I met somebody and we started to go out, the minute it began to be more serious, I would always just pull away and end the relationship. People didn’t know why. I couldn’t explain why. And to be honest, after a while, I tried to avoid relationships. It made a very big difference to me in my young adulthood. As I say, I continued to have a great relationship with my nieces and nephews.

people used to ask, you know,

“Oh, do you not want to get married? You do you not want children?”

And I would just bat away, you know,

“Well, I haven’t met the right one yet or something like that.”

So, threw myself into work. I played a lot of sport until I got injured and just carried on life.

I worked very hard in social care and addiction and became a business manager for a very successful residential unit. And that pretty much took up my time along with family and my nieces and nephews, my siblings. I never thought I would tell anybody. I thought it was something I would carry forever.

And I don’t really know why I did when I did. I hadn’t intended to. But I’d had a one of many operations. I have quite a lot of health conditions, some of which are genetic, some of which aren’t. But I’d had a big operation on my arm and so I wasn’t able to drive. And a very very good friend of mine who was also the director of the addiction clinic we ran was driving me home from work.

We were talking about adoption generally and children. And I have no idea why but out tumbled my secret. And once I started to talk I couldn’t stop. I got very very distressed. I just was waiting for an, you know, a reaction that was going to be everything I thought. And instead of which he was incredibly supportive and just said,

“How could you think that people wouldn’t like you because of your background? That has nothing to do with you. You are not defined by that. You are who you are. very capable, very personable, a very well-liked um lady. Why have you harbored this for so long?”

You know, by now I was in my early 40s. So, I’d carried this for 20 years. And the relief, at first I didn’t believe it. At first, I thought he’s just saying that and it’s just to make me feel better.

And then we carried on talking and it became clear that that was exactly what he thought. That he didn’t see anything reflecting on me from what my parents had chosen to do in the past. It was nothing to do with me. And why was I letting that dictate my life? And of course by then people knew a bit more. or there wasn’t the scaremongering about incest and um handicaps and and all those sorts of things.

In fact, I probably wouldn’t have had I would have had a child that didn’t have anything wrong with them. There was no reason why I shouldn’t. I wasn’t the person who was committing incest. And even if my parents did, that wouldn’t necessarily translate down a generation. So, it completely turned everything on its head. And for the first time, I began to feel like a valued person, like I was liked, I was valued, people weren’t going to be judging me like I was judging myself.

And that the secret, as horrible as it was for me, was not of any big consideration to them. In many ways, um, my friend said to me at the time,

“It’s probably made you into the strong and very resilient lady that you are, but that’s as much as it should affect you, and you should take the positive from that.”

And the rest of it is just that’s in your head.

So for a long time I took to get used to that and that actually everything was okay and people did like me, did value me and that the person I thought inside I was is not what people saw from the outside. Before long I decided that I would go and tell my parents. I was living up in Cambridge by then.

They were down in London. I went down to see them and told them that I had something very big that I wanted to share with them. And when I finished talking, they were absolutely distraught. Not because they thought there was anything wrong with me or that they judged me in any way, but that I had felt it necessary to keep that as a secret inside me for so many years and not come and talk to them.

They could have reassured me a long time ago. They adopted me. For me, where I came from or how I came about was not a consideration. They liked me immediately. I slotted in with the family very well. Um, and then became a big sister when my sister arrived. And as far as they were concerned, I was just their lovely daughter, Theresa, the same person they’d always thought.

And they really were quite upset that I should have had to carry that for so long on my own and that also that it had impacted my decisions um about family um for myself because they knew what a good auntie I was. They saw that all the time. um they saw a lot of their grandchildren and I often um shared some of that time with them because I lived quite close by and they were just really upset that I should feel that I was a lesser person because of it.

So slowly I started to tell other people, my siblings obviously first and then other friends and again same reaction.

“What on earth are you worried about? Why would you think we would think anything differently of you? You’re true sir. that’s, you know, that’s who we know and like and love.”

And as time went on, I was talking to somebody who was in the media, who was a journalist, and said to me,

“Have you any idea if you were to share that story, how many other people you might help?”

Because although everybody in my life had reacted like that, she said,

“There will be countless other people who have got a similar or the same situation and who like you are scared to tell anyone who are harboring a secret that may be affecting their mental health as well. Why don’t you tell your story?”

And so I did and that came out in print in a national newspaper and the reaction was just incredible. She was exactly right.

There were hundreds and hundreds of people who contacted me or messaged me or commented or sent things through the paper because they were in exactly that situation and like me thought they were the only one that you know because nobody talks about it. Nobody thinks anybody else is in the same situation.

I wouldn’t wish anybody to make a decision that’s so life-changing and wrong and ill informed and then like me live to regret that decision. And so I’ve continued to share my story where I can because I know that it helps other people from the very first time. For me, it is incredibly cathartic because you actually now I’m not keeping it a secret.

I’m shouting it from the rooftops. So that makes me happy if it helps other people as well.”