Stolen for 53 years: Girl taken to NZ finally reunited with family

Susan Gervaise was taken from her home in West Yorkshire in 1969. Photo / Glen Minikin

A woman who was taken from her family in the UK at just 4 years old and raised by travellers in Canada and New Zealand has finally been reunited with her biological family.

Susan Gervaise, now 57, was invited on a holiday to a Disney theme park by travellers in 1969. The couple from Scotland asked her mother if she could go with them and promised to bring her back to West Yorkshire, England afterwards, reports the Daily Mail.

The couple, who were given a copy of her birth certificate, instead took her to Canada, Australia and later New Zealand, raising her as their own.

Gervaise believed her own family had disowned her and that her adoptive "parents" "spoiled her rotten".

It wasn't until she was 16 that she realised she had been taken. And now after 53 years, she's been reunited with four of her six siblings back in West Yorkshire after tracking them down on Facebook.

"As a child I lived with my six siblings in an old vicarage on a traveller's site. We weren't travellers," she explained.

"My mum was on her own and we were all in and out of foster care.

"I was befriended by a couple on the site who were from Scotland, the woman, who I call my mum, had MS and they had two sons.

"I think they wanted a girl. They asked my mum if they could take me to Disney and she gave them my birth certificate so I could be put on their passport."

Gervaise was just 4 when she was taken by travellers. Photo / Supplied

In those days, a child could travel between countries with parental permission and a birth certificate.

"They took me to Canada then Australia and later New Zealand. This was always their plan.

"I lived with the travelling community and lived a cherished life where I was spoiled rotten.

"My mum died from MS when I was 10, but even then, being raised in the hub of a travelling community I was very loved.

"I have always been happy growing up. I travelled the world."

When she needed a passport to return to Australia from New Zealand, age 16, she realised what had happened.

"We went to New Zealand and I didn't need a passport to get into the country, but when it came to returning to Australia, I did," she told The Wakefield Express.

Now in her 50s, Gervaise has been reunited with her family. Photo / Glen Minikin

"I applied, but I needed a signature from my mother or father – that's when dad told me they didn't adopt me, I had been stolen."

Gervaise had to wait until she was 18 to apply for an adult passport and went back to Australia at 19, where she met and married her husband and had three children and four grandchildren. Her adoptive "father" died when she was 21.

"The enormity of what happened to me didn't hit me, I just carried on with my life," she said.

"It was only when somebody who was adopted asked me what my family back in the UK would be feeling and that was a lightbulb moment for me."

Her husband instigated the search, sending out a Facebook appeal on a West Yorkshire local community page in June this year. Her family were located within 30 minutes.

All of her siblings are still alive and all but one still live where they grew up.

Gervaise said: "It gives a message to anybody who has lost somebody that miracles do happen. There is hope."