A 46-year-old man who was adopted as a baby and had only ever seen his siblings in a newspaper cutting has been reunited with them after more than four decades. Leon Parton, from Bebington, Wirral, had kept an old newspaper article from the Shropshire Star describing his birth family being evicted from their home and living in a squat.
Leon was adopted as a baby and had a difficult childhood. At age 11, his adoptive mother showed him the clipping, which featured a picture of his brother and sisters. He said he was 'automatically drawn to the faces of siblings that look completely like me when I was younger'. The article detailed his birth mother, Ute Daniels, and her fears of having her three children put into care.
Leon turned to ITV's Long Lost Family to find his birth family. The programme's search team discovered that his birth mother died in 2012 but traced his three siblings from the article—Kirk, Kelly, and Kim—as well as a younger sister, Karen. Leon had been called Karl before his adoption, so all siblings' names begin with K.
Leon travelled to Telford to meet his siblings for the first time. He said: 'I feel absolutely great. It’s the first time I’ve cuddled anybody that’s a blood relative.' His sister Kim added: 'He feels like a part of the family already.' Since the meeting, the family have met up five or six times and have a WhatsApp group called 'family'.
