Dominic Smithers
A mum who was forced to give up her child has been reunited with him almost 60 years later.
Diane Kerridge, from Norwich, was just 16-years-old when she gave birth to her son, Paul. At the time, being just a teenager and unmarried, her mother was ashamed and she was forced to give him up for adoption.
In ITV's long-running series Long Lost Family, Diane opened up about that traumatic experience.
She explained that she met a man called Steve when she was 14 at a local youth club, and after two years of dating, she fell pregnant.
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“I was really, really shocked," Diane, now 74, said. "My mum was angry, and she made all the decisions.
"She decided I would have the baby adopted when it was born. There was no question about that. My mother was obviously very ashamed of me. She didn’t want anybody to know about it.”
Diane gave birth to her son at West Norwich Hospital, where she was with him for just over a week before he was taken away.
She went on: “When I gave birth to my son, I was 16. I was a child really. There was a stigma attached to being an unmarried mother at that time.
"It wasn’t my choice that he wad adopted. I wanted to keep my baby.”
Adding: “I was with him in hospital for nine days. I couldn’t stop looking at him. He was such a beautiful baby. I named the baby Paul.
“On the last day a social worker came, and I knew she was coming to take him. I asked her ‘please don’t take him’ but she did. I was so traumatised at losing him.”
In the years that passed, Diane, who now lives in Dorset, went on to get married and have more children. And while she was never able to contact Paul again, she never forgot about him.
“I think about him all the time," she says in the show. "I think about him on his birthday and Christmas, and wonder how he’s getting on. I feel desperately that I need to find him.”
But incredibly, six decades on from that fateful day, Diane was finally able to track him down.
With the help of a team of researchers, she discovered that Paul had been adopted by a couple in Twickenham, London.
However, it turned out that Paul ended up moving to Los Angeles in the 90s, where he started working as a sound engineer for global stars like Stevie Wonder and Madonna.
Paul had actually attempted to get in touch with his birth mum but thought she had died.
After being brought back together all these years later, Diane said: “I’ve got my boy back. It’s a wonderful feeling.”