Imagine what they thought, imagine the turmoil they endured. They are the
twins who, it emerged on Friday, were separated at birth and given up for
adoption only to meet by chance years later - and marry.
The man and woman, unaware that they were brother and sister, had grown up
separately, perhaps far apart, in different families. Yet when fate brought
them together again, they experienced an uncanny bond and a sexual
attraction.
As Lord Alton, who revealed the case, said: “They were never told they were
twins. They met later in life and felt an inevitable attraction.”
Did they sense some blood relationship? It certainly must have seemed odd:
both had been born on the same day in the same year. Did they just take that
as an incredible, happy coincidence? Did they not know they were adopted? Or
did they suspect they were related, only for the power of their attraction
to prove overwhelming?
According to Alton, who was told about the case by a judge, the couple married
and only later discovered that they were twins. “The judge had to deal with
the consequences of their marriage, and all the issues of their separation,”
he said.
“For them it was a terrible tragedy. It was an incredibly heartrending
experience.”
The marriage was annulled at a special hearing in the High Court last year
with the judge ruling it had never been valid. Under the 1986 Marriage Act,
it is illegal to marry your sibling, parent, grandparent, grandchild and
various other blood relatives.
The identity of the twins has not been revealed, nor their ages or where they
are from. Nor is it known how they met or how they found out that they are
twins. Experts, however, suspect they must be at least 30 because the law on
adoption changed in 1976, making it much easier for adopted children to
discover their biological parents. Since then, too, every effort has been
made to keep together siblings put up for adoption.
Alton raised the case in the House of Lords not for its own sake but to draw
attention to a wider issue. He believes that the risk of siblings
unwittingly marrying each other is rising fast because of the prevalence of
IVF treatment.
Since 1991 more than 27,000 babies have been born from donated sperm, eggs and
embryos. As a result there may be thousands of people who unwittingly share
one parent - and who may one day meet and fall in love.
What are the risks? Do such unwitting siblings have a special attraction to
each other? And does the law need to be changed so that birth certificates
always make it clear who a child’s biological parents are?
THE extraordinary case of the twins who married is not the first time a
brother and sister have been lovers without knowing their blood
relationship. In one case in the US, a Polish couple had 13 children and
gave up nine for adoption.
They were all placed with families in a fairly small geographical area. Some
of the children were later told they had been adopted, others were not.
Gary Klahr grew up not knowing he was adopted and in 1979 he met and dated
Micka Zeman. They had a relationship for six months - and only later found
out they were brother and sister.
“My relationship with my sister is the kind of thing that could have you
jumping out of the window,” he said later. “But we didn’t know. Thank God we
didn’t get married.”
Klahr also learnt that his best friend, a man he had met by chance in a bar,
was in fact one of his brothers.
In Britain, William and Annette Watch had their marriage annulled in 1971
after it turned out that they were half-brother and half-sister. Soon after
William was born, his parents separated and William was put into care. Later
he went to boarding school and joined the army.
He fell in love with Annette, whom he believed to be the daughter of Leslie
Ingham, a married man who had also begun a relationship with William’s
mother. In fact, Annette was the daughter of Ingham and William’s mother -
making her William’s half-sister.
When a court declared their marriage incestuous, Annette said: “I dream of
having children. But it’s Bill I want first. We’ve been so happy together
and just can’t bear it.”
Yesterday a media scrum descended on the house of Bill and Anne Watch in
Andover, believing them to be the couple. Neighbours said that they had
lived there for decades and had brought up two boys. Whether they were
adopted or not is unclear.
Alton also says he has been told by a law professor of another incident in
Britain where a teenage couple, at least one of whom was adopted, planned to
marry, but because of their ages detailed checks were made on their
parentage. It turned out that they were brother and sister, and the marriage
did not go ahead.
With identical twins, there are powerful reasons for a special relationship -
even if they have been separated. Having come from a single egg and sperm,
they have the same genetic make-up, which exerts a profound influence on
their lives even if they have been brought up in different circumstances.
However, with fraternal twins - who come from two eggs - and ordinary
siblings, fewer genes are shared and there is no obvious reason why there
should be an innate powerful attraction. Yet researchers believe that a
peculiar syndrome does exist in cases where close relatives meet after being
separated in childhood.
Glenn Wilson, a reader in personality at the Institute of Psychiatry, said:
“It’s now a widely recognised phenomenon that if you meet someone you have
been separated from as a child you may find you are extremely attracted to
them. It’s known as Genetic Sexual Attraction, but it’s genetic only in that
you are closely related to that person - it is not necessarily caused by
strictly genetic factors. It could be caused by a very early experience of
close family, which sets up your blueprint of what would be a good mate
later on.
“People who meet family members later in life have described how they feel a
‘bolt of lightning’. ”
Ivor Lytton was one of those who experienced the thunderbolt. In 1998 Lytton,
from Edinburgh, met Rita Meadows, who had grown up in South Africa, at a
dinner party in Scotland. Lytton had organised the event after tracing
Meadows, who had been adopted as a baby. She was his sister - but he had no
idea how powerful the effect of meeting her would be.
“From the moment we met, I was smitten,” he said later. “She put a smile in my
heart and a spring in my step.”
It nearly ruined his marriage and his life. “I didn’t choose to fall in love
with her, or expect to feel sexual desire. It just happened,” he said. “Even
in front of my wife, I made no attempt to hide my adoration.”
The danger is that siblings, unaware of their relationship, may marry and have
children. The similarity in their DNA poses significant health risks.
“Siblings share half their genes just like a parent and offspring,” said Steve
Jones, professor of genetics at University College London.
“So the problems which could arise from having a child with your brother and
sister and having one with a parent are the same. There is little data for
the implications of sibling marriage, but we know that whatever the
childhood death rate is in a country, it is doubled if a child is born from
two cousins.
“If a child is born from two siblings, the risks are likely to increase
further. Many of us have recessive genes for genetic disorders like cystic
fibrosis. Ifa person who has one of these genes has a child with a cousin or
a sibling the chance of disability or death increases.”
UNDER current law, couples who conceive children using donor eggs or sperm do
not have to tell the child or register the fact on the birth certificate.
People conceived since April 2005 from donated sperm or eggs have a right to
know their biological parents’ identity once they reach 18 - but there is no
requirement to tell them. They may not suspect that whoever brought them up
is not their biological originator.
Alton and others are challenging the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill
now going through parliament. They argue that in the age of IVF it is more
important than ever for children to know their biological past.
“There needs to be more clarity in public records,” said Alton. “This is to
prevent incestuous relationships, but also for reasons of genetics and
disease prevention.”
Such is the scale of IVF now that in America one donor recently calculated
that he could theoretically have fathered 4,960 children after 15 years of
donating sperm. “That’s the top mathematical possibility,” he said. After
taking into account failure rates and other variables, he put a more
realistic estimate at 432.
In Britain, donors are restricted to 10 offspring. Nevertheless, it still
means the risks of half-brothers and half-sisters meeting are rising fast.
However, some experts argue that forcing parents to record the full biological
origins of children on birth certificates could sow even more confusion and
family disruption. They point out that in an estimated 3%-10% of ordinary
births, the husband or partner of the mother is not the true father of the
child.
Stephen Hopwood, of Stowe Family Law in Harrogate, believes the current system
gives sufficient protection. “You have to appreciate that [the case of the
twins] is almost ludicrously farfetched, and a kneejerk reaction to
difficult cases always makes bad law.”
He believes the laws on adoption have made such cases highly unlikely. “Prior
to 1976, if you gave a child up for adoption, that was it, you never saw the
child again. Since the 1976 Adoption Act, records are kept in a stricter way
and it is easier for children to trace their biological parents.”
Mo O’Reilly, director of child placement for the British Association for
Adoption & Fostering, said: “This situation is traumatic for the people
involved, but incredibly rare. Today adopted children grow up with a greater
knowledge of their birth families - and organisations try to place brothers
and sisters together.”
But for anyone adopted before 1976, finding their biological parents is much
more convoluted. And that may be why the twins who married did not discover
their relationship until it was too late.
Additional reporting: Abul Taher
Interview
with Paula Bernstein and Elyse Schein
I discovered that I was dating my brother, four years ago. I'd met him at University, incidentally studying the same course but in a different year and did not know at the time he was my brother. It was instant attraction, I find it difficult to describe, it was a feeling of euphoria, that I'd found eternal happiness when I met him. He understood me so well, and showed great consideration for me, and was very caring and gentle. We dated for 18 months, and for the last 9 months, we were living together.
It was when I'd finished my degree and wanted to trace my father, that I discovered that he was my brother.
We still love each other very much, but we've gradually adopted a "conventional" brother sister relationship, and we're like best friends - we're inseparable. He now has a girlfriend, and I have a boyfriend and in our separate love lives, we're happy. We had support from friends, family and counsellors, enabling us to adopt normal lives now.
Ciara, Godalming, Surrey,
Is this a real case that Lord Alton has cited? It has all the hallmarks of a good urban legend, as recounted by a FOAF
Mike Tanner, Auckland, NZ
i feel very sorry for Bill and Anne Watch, through no fault of their own they and their family have been outed to the world, GSA is a very powerful force.
andrew, Leeds, UK
This may be a good opportunity to encourage safer sex practices. It is recommended that before you start a serious sexual relationship with someone (it really should be before all sexual relationships, condoms don't protect against all STIs), you both attend a health clinic to be tested for various sexually transmitted illnesses.
Surely it wouldn't be that hard to chuck in another test to check for DNA similarities.
Rebecca, Melbourne & London,
The nonsense about this alleged case ignores completely the fact that "close" marriages and relationships are actually far more likely to occur as a result of that age old, world wide, phenomenon, human infidelity! It is suggested that around 1 in 10 birth certificates don't bear the name of the "real" biological father.
Given that infidelity is far, far more common than IVF there can be little doubt that unwitting "half sibling" marriages and relationships swamp the vanishingly small number of cases of the type that Lord Alton refers to, and have no doubt been occurring since time immemorial. Somehow the human world has still managed to survive!
Rod Hagen, Melbourne, Australia
There are ethical issues regarding "incestuous marriage" and physical health risks to offspring. Frankly, I can live with the ethical issues: the love between two people trumps the distaste others might view them with.
The potential risk to offspring can easily be avoided through a special form of marriage where offspring are legally forbidden.
Steve, Cambridge, UK