Lost and Found's David Lomas. Photo / Jason Oxenham
Each week Megan Nicol Reed asks a public figure to choose three of the seven deadly sins to confess to. This week David Lomas enters the box.
Lomas, a 66-year-old veteran journalist produces and presents Lost and Found, a local show reuniting families.
WRATH
How do you deal with the
ire of people who don't want to know about their long-lost family member?
We often get mothers who have maybe adopted out a child and fathers who have run away - the biggest groups who outright reject their children - and I just get very angry. Those people have made a decision that suited them and the child has got an absolute right, in my opinion, to make the decision later. For parents to cut dead their child's birth right, knowing their parents, I find that appalling. I've had mothers who have adopted out children say, "No, they mean nothing to me. No, I don't want to know them, I'm not interested." I can understand how they may not want to get into a deep relationship. But their choice created that child, now it's their obligation to at least answer questions for that child.
Do you take them on?
No, I bite my tongue, which is very hard sometimes. If people don't want to do it as part of a television programme, that's fair enough but when they say, "I don't want my child to know who I am," that's where I find it very hard. I have a policy we've created on the programme, which is we will always pass on to the child the details, what the parent has said. So if the mother says," I don't want to know, she means nothing to me," I'll tell the child but I'll also tell her where the mother is. Then it's the child's decision to take it on.
