In short
A BBC World Service investigation, “Searching for Soldier Dad,” about Cathy’s nine-year quest to find her absentee father, and a wider scandal involving missing military fathers. Cathy grows up in Kenya barely knowing her dad; she’s bullied for being mixed race. Her mother Maggie says her father was a soldier deployed to Afghanistan and “I think he’s dead,” but Cathy later finds a living man with the same name on Facebook, sparking the search.
Key claims
the project fuses DNA science with law to identify relatives and expose a decades-long pattern.
Notable examples
lawyers and DNA detectives using mouth swabs to test whether a man “could be your father.”
Guests
Ivana Davidovich, BBC journalist (host/investigator); lawyers and scientists involved in the DNA-law project (unnamed in the transcript).
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOCathy's Quest for Identity
1:09 to 2:08
Cathy shares her journey of discovering her father's identity.
“I've never really had like a dad, so to know what that feeling is to actually miss.”
The Bigger Picture of Absentee Fathers
2:08 to 2:50
Explore how Cathy's story reflects a larger issue of military absenteeism.
“a quest that will unite her with lawyers and DNA detectives across the world and will reveal to her that she's far from alone in her search.”
Revolutionizing Fatherhood Search
3:15 to 3:58
Discover the innovative approach combining DNA and law for finding fathers.
“If we find a father, we can give the child a sense of identity of who mummy is and who daddy is, so they can live their life knowing who they are.”
Transcript
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1:09Cathy grows up barely knowing anything about her father. I've never really had like a dad, so to know what that feeling is to actually miss. You can't miss something that you've never had. Sometimes she's bullied at school in Kenya. Being mixed race, her skin is lighter, her hair is a different texture. Her mum, Maggie, tells Cathy her dad was a soldier and had been deployed to Afghanistan. You know, she's young to understand what could I have told her. I just told her, I think he's dead. But after searching Facebook late into the night, Cathy learns the truth, well, part of it, and discovers her father is alive.
1:51So I start scrolling and scrolling and then all of a sudden I see someone with the same name as me. and he was a soldier in the British Army. Cathy doesn't know it yet, but this marks the beginning of a nine-year quest to find her father, a quest that will unite her with lawyers and DNA detectives across the world and will reveal to her that she's far from alone in her search. I even had a dream one time that he came here. I had a dream with my dad. and in that dream he told me he loves me. So growing up from this village, we were in school with some of these kids of mixed-dress heritage and of course they were pretty much ridiculed.
2:39She'll discover that her story is part of a bigger pattern, one whose implications go to the very highest levels of power. I'm Ivana Davidovich, a BBC journalist. For the past two years, I've had exclusive access to a cutting-edge project to find absentee military fathers. We expose a scandal that has hidden in plain sight for decades. This is World of Secrets, Season 12. Searching for Soldier Dad, a BBC World Service investigation. If we find a father, we can give the child a sense of identity of who mummy is and who daddy is, so they can live their life knowing who they are. We're following lawyers and scientists who are launching a revolutionary project that fuses DNA science with law.
3:32You see this little stick? It's going to put your swab on the end. I'm going to put it inside your mouth. That's fine. OK. It could, could be that this man is related to you. And specifically, there is a chance, we do not know 100 % yet, but there is a chance that this guy could be your father. Searching for Soldier Dad is available now. Search for World of Secrets wherever you get your BBC podcasts.
From the publisher
DNA detectives track down the British soldiers who fathered children in Kenya then disappeared, leaving the children and their mothers without support. In the latest season of World of Secrets, we access every stage of this cutting-edge process, we follow as a team of lawyers and a leading geneticist travel to Kenya to help locate the British soldiers who fathered children then vanished. We witness the groundbreaking legal and scientific detective work used to find the missing dads.
To hear more, search World of Secrets wherever you get your BBC podcasts.
Searching for Soldier Dad is a BBC Long Form Audio production for the BBC World Service. Please note, the image being used is for illustrative purposes only and the child depicted is a model.
