Siblings Reunited After 50 Years

Irish siblings Helen Ward and David McBride didn’t know they were siblings—even though they had the same parents.

In 1962, David was found in a tartan bag in a car on the outskirts of Belfast city. In 1968 Helen was abandoned and found, also in a tartan bag, on the other side of the Irish border, in Dundalk.

David and Helen have spent their lives searching for biological family, and that’s where DNA testing came in. They both took DNA tests and uploaded them to the database, hoping to find blood relatives. They were reunited on the television show Long Lost Family: Born without a Trace and learned their parents’ story.

Their father was a married Protestant with 14 other children. He had an affair with their mother—a Catholic woman 17 years his junior—that lasted over 40 years. The sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland would have denounced their relationship as a scandal, and it is for this reason David and Helen believe their mother gave them up as infants.

Their father passed away in Dublin in 1993, and their passed away in 2017.

Despite never meeting their parents, David and Helen have a positive outlook on their new family. “We started one journey,” said David. “Now we are on another, getting to know each other and our family.”

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