Reunion ends decades of anguish

Sandra Perry was just 20 and living in Rhodesia. Ex-husband David did not return one day with their one-year-old daughter, Tara.

"It was horrific," says Sandra, who now lives in Millichip Road, Willenhall. "I had been out to church and David, who was a policeman, was looking after Tara and when he didn't return I was frantic."

Sandra was heavily pregnant with David's third child, Cindy, and they also had another daughter, Rosalie, who is now 31. "I can't believe how I coped, but at the time I had to focus on giving birth to Cindy and caring for Rosalie," Sandra said.

The young mother went to the police station where David worked, and was told he had resigned.

"I went to the authorities and when I told them my situation they said 'so what?' At that time Rhodesia was changing to Zimbabwe and nobody cared," she says.

"I felt totally powerless. The Red Cross tried to help me, but it was no use. Because of the civil war there were a lot of children being raised by people that were not their parents, and I was just one of many parents who had lost their children.

"I contacted David's mother and she said he had emigrated to Australia. Little did I know that Tara and David were still in Rhodesia."

David had taken Tara to the home of his sister, Christine, who agreed to adopt her.

Tara, aged 30, who now lives in Perth, Australia, says: "I just knew my father as I grew up as an uncle.

"I knew I had been adopted, but I can't believe that my dad had been in my life the whole time and never told me. When I was five the whole family moved to Australia. It was when I was 15 that my grandmother finally told me that David was my father.

"At the time it didn't make any sense, but over the years I became angry with him."

Tara, who now has three daughters of her own, says it wasn't long before she was asking who her mother was, but it was all kept a secret from her. She thought she would find out information from records in Zimbabwe, but they had all been burned during civil war rioting, and she didn't even have a birth certificate.

Sandra had left for South Africa in 1981 and when she was 32 came to England with new husband Graham to be nearer her father in Willenhall.

When she bought a computer in 2001 she decided to start tracing Tara, speaking to people in Australia via chatrooms, until one contact said he knew David's sister, Christine.

"I was very nervous, but I found out where Christine was living and when I made contact with Tara it was amazing," says Sandra, now a clerk for a bedroom furniture firm. "It took a month for me to get the courage to write to her. She phoned me back a few days later – we were both quite nervous but soon built up a great relationship. It has been a real rollercoaster of emotions since then and Tara has brought out two of her children to see me – it is great to see my beautiful grandchildren. This is the beginning of our relationship as mother and daughter."

Tara will be in England for three months and says her father is angry that she is meeting up with her mother.

"I have found out that I have two other sisters – Cindy and Rosalie – that my father hasn't seen. But also I have two half-sisters – Storme and Tania," Tara says.