Overview
- David Stevenson was found abandoned as a newborn in a locked London apartment block in December 1960 and was later fostered and adopted by the Stevenson family.
- ITV’s Long Lost Family achieved a breakthrough using DNA and genealogy when two Dutch relatives agreed to tests, which led the team to identify his birth mother as Petra.
- The programme informed Stevenson off camera that Petra had died in 2010, and he then travelled to Rotterdam to meet his aunt Marianne and cousins and has reported regular contact with them.
- DNA analysis showed Dutch and French ancestry but French restrictions on testing and database access have prevented confirmation of a likely French birth father.
- Stevenson’s search combined a decade of private appeals, an old police report obtained by his wife Julie, and modern commercial DNA tools, illustrating how genealogy can reconnect foundlings while national privacy rules limit cross‑border tracing.