World Of Secrets - Searching for Soldier Dad: 6. Update

Episode Date: August 6, 2026

What’s been happening in our investigation since the last episode? Tristan Redman talks to season host Ivana Davidovic and lawyer James Netto for the latest on Cathy, Peter and Yvonne, the Kenyans who are seeking relationships with their army dads. We also hear about the response from listeners to the series. Searching for Soldier Dad follows DNA detectives as they track down the British soldiers who fathered children in Kenya then disappeared. With access to every stage of this cutting-edge process, we followed a team of lawyers and a leading geneticist as they travelled to Kenya to help locate the British soldiers who fathered children then vanished, witnessing the groundbreaking legal and scientific detective work used to find the missing dads.    Please note, the image being used is for illustrative purposes only and the child depicted is a model.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Your sales order says one thing. Your inventory says another. Your spreadsheet says, good luck. Odu brings your business together on a single platform, from sales and accounting to inventory and marketing. Visit Odo.com to book a demo. It's ODbolo.com. Welcome to this special bonus episode of World of Secrets Searching for Sold to Dad. Before we kick off, I want to let you know we've got a brand new World of Secrets investigation on its way, scheduled to start in September. Follow or subscribe to World of Secrets so you get all the episodes automatically. Earlier this year, World of Secrets brought you searching for Soldier Dad.

If you haven't heard the series yet, go and do so fast and then come back to hear the updates to the story. We don't want to give you any spoilers here. And if you listened back when it launched, here's a brief recap. This is the remarkable story of a groundbreaking legal and genetic process to find the missing fathers of children living near a British Army training base in Kenya. These children, many of them now adults, say that their fathers were soldiers stationed at the base before they disappeared. The curiosity of who is my father.

It's part of you, isn't it? You can't escape it. I can't. It's in DNA, literally. I can't escape it because something in me is like get to know him. You know, know your roots, know everything. And then there's some part of me which is like he doesn't care. He was never here for you. For about a year and a half, the BBC journalist Ivana Davidovich

followed the lawyers as they attempted to identify the missing men. We will try as hard as we can. We will use every tool we can. We will go to court as much as we can. but there is no guarantee we will ever find the father or the father is involved in these cases. It's a powerful series that follows three main stories, Kathy and her mum Maggie, Yvonne, who grew up thinking she was an orphan,

and Peter, who yearns for his father and desperately wants to be the father to his own son that he never had growing up. I found my dad. I feel like I have someone. I forgive him for everything. all the pain that I've been carrying all this 30 years, that pain has come out as joy.

We spoke to Kathy's dad, Phil, now living in the UK. What do you want now, Phil? Do you want to be a dad? Do you want a chance to be a dad? Yeah. Yeah, well, I've had this conversation with Kathy, and I told her, so it doesn't matter what I do. I never make up for the amount of time that I've lost with her,

but all I can do is to do the best that I can. But the story hasn't stopped since the final concluding episode. It's kept developing. So today we're bringing you this special bonus episode of searching for Soldier Dad, revisiting some of the key characters from the story and sharing some bigger updates too. I'm Tristan Redmond. By day, I'm one of the hosts of the BBC World Services Daily Deep Dive News Podcast, The Global Story.

Each episode we present a single story where the world and America meet. And when I listened to searching for Soldier Dad, I was incredibly touched by the whole story, particularly the moments when the three main characters, Kathy, Peter and Yvonne find out that they have dads. But I was also really struck by the tragedy of the wish, come true nature of the whole story. When you spend so long yearning for something,

it can be very hard sometimes to deal with it when it actually happens. So today, I'm pleased to be speaking with the BBC journalist, behind the story, presenter of the podcast, Ivana Davidovich. Hello. Nice to see you, Ivana. Nice to see you too. And by James Netto, the lawyer from the podcast whose legal action in the British family courts we followed through the show.

Hi, it's good to be back. We're excited about all the questions. We can't wait. This is World of Secrets Searching for Soldier Dad, a BBC World Service investigation. Episode six, updates. Ivana, let me start with you. At the heart of this series are our three main characters, Cathy, Yvonne and Peter. Ivana, can you give us a quick reminder about their stories?

Yeah, so Kathy, she was, you know, just turned basically 18 when I first met her in 2024. And she was a really eloquent young woman, very thoughtful and incredibly close with her mom, Maggie. So Maggie had known from the start who the father of her child was because they were in a serious relationship and they were even engaged. But then when Kathy was only seven months old, he just disappeared. He vanished and she just couldn't not find him and despite trying for many, many years. So when we met, it was an interesting one. They kind of knew who he was, name, surname, you know, age, but couldn't reach him, couldn't do anything with it. So, you know, there were high hopes that they could be sort of located,

but they didn't know what would ever come out of it, right? And it was a fascinating journey to see her sort of keep her usual cool, you know, not get too excited, not get too emotional about all these steps, you know, when James told her, you're definitely British. Oh, we wrote to your father for the first time, the first phone call. you know, she's kind of keeping her cool. She's keeping her kind of cards close to her chest, I think. Probably doesn't want to get hurt again, right?

Yeah, she does come across that way as a very cool customer. What about Peter? What remind us of his situation. So Peter, oh my God, Peter is a completely different character to Kathy. So he's older. I mean, when I met him, he was 33, he's 35 now. So he lived on his grandparents' farm. Avocado farm.

Yeah. Avocados in other things. It's quite a big farm. Some of the best avocados are all the hands in. Yeah, amazing. Amazing produce, right? And you could tell how much he yearned for the love of his father, for the acceptance. For him, this process seemed like he was everything to him.

You know, he was not like holding back at all. He was the complete opposite. How about Yvonne? Yvonne, I mean, all of these stories are incredibly touching, but Yvonne was the one that really knocked me over. remind us what her situation is. So Yvonne was 17 when I first met her, raised as an orphan because she didn't have a mum. Her mum died when she was about a year and a half, thereabouts.

And she was raised by her grandparents. And so the news came that the soldier, the father, is dead. And that's what Yvonne grew up believing that her father was. was a soldier who died and her mum also died before Yvonne was able to meet her properly. And that was that, you know. And she always, she really, she was such a sweet, intelligent kind of shy girl, but always kept saying she wanted to be a journalist, which I thought was really cute. Well, I mean, if you tell a journalist you want to be a journalist,

you're always going to get some of their heart, aren't you? Instant favourite. I don't think it was calculated though. Yvonne is not like that. But yeah, it was very sweet how she wanted to sort of investigate and help other people. considering that, you know, her situation was so tough. Update us on where our three main characters are now. How are they?

How are they? They're still in a state of flux, I would say, all of them. Some better than others. So with Kathy, for people who've heard the podcast, Phil, her father, was the only one who actually embraced this whole process of all the fathers and decided immediately to not only say, yes, I'm the father of this young woman, but I also want to have a relationship with her. And they are still in contact all the time.

That's my understanding. They speak regularly. She's got like a new job, a slightly better job. And I think her dad has helped her a little bit financially in terms of just the housing situation recently. But she's still kind of in a relatively similar position that she was when I saw her last about six, seven months ago, in person.

Kathy and Phil have not yet met in person, is that right? That is correct. But on video call? Yes. Yeah, okay. And they say they share the same sense of humour. Yes. They're both actually confirmed that.

I can kind of see it now. Well, you've met both of them. Do they have mannerisms which are similar? They definitely do, 100%. Yeah. Okay. And how is Peter doing? Peter is sadly not doing that well.

Like I said, he was so keen to have a relationship with his dad. And although, like we hear on the podcast, the relationship started and the dad really wanted to speak with him. I think my understanding is that their last spoke, like actually spoke was last year, and that now Peter's father has decided that their relationship is going to be just messages at Christmases and birthdays and that's it. And I think for Peter that is very hard to deal with because he really wanted the love and acceptance of his dad. And how is Yvonne?

because at the end of the series, she is the character who has the most still hanging and waiting, most questions still to be answered. Yeah. So, I mean, her father, who we called Kieran in the show, he obviously had to accept parentage. I mean, that was the declaration issue, but he has refused to have any contact with Yvonne since.

Good news for Yvonne is, as we know, her great aunt was found. I mean, it's actually, she was the link. She was the one found on ancestry, who we called Anthea. And Anthea has really worked on her relationship with Yvonne. They've been in contact, video contact, audio contact. Anthea is helping financially to sort out some of Yvonne's documents that she needs. So she can, in the first instance, come and hopefully visit either in December or January for the first time to the UK and meet Anthea and her. children and her grandchildren. And, you know, Anthea says that even if, you know, Yvonne's father

doesn't want to have anything to do with her, you know, she really wants to give her the family that she can, that family life. And she wants to see, we don't know, it's too early, but to see in which way she could possibly support her in further education as well. Because Yvonne is actually graduating high school in November. So let's see what happens. I mean, the plan is I should hopefully be around when they meet and it will be fantastic. It would just brilliant. I hope that works out for Yvonne. I really do. And I hope that works out for you and selfishly for myself

because I'd be really fascinated to hear how that goes. And if you're able to meet with Yvonne and record any of it, it would be wonderful for listeners who followed the series. Well, obviously this story is bigger than these three characters who you've followed in the series. We hear about in the series legal action that includes 17 children. But since then, the number has. continue to grow. James, you're one of the main characters in the series. You're a lawyer,

and as we hear, you are a dogged lawyer. Remind us what... I take that as a compliment. To be a pain in the backside, that's what all lawyers aspire to be. That's what you're supposed to be. Explain how this has been such a landmark case. I don't know of any other, well, there are no other cases in which genetic testing has been done put on a publicly available DNA database. That evidence being used court in support of applications for declarations of parentage. And do you see this usage actually expanding and becoming much more prevalent? Absolutely. I have no, there is no other way that I know of or that Denise our geneticist knows of,

where you can have zero idea about who your father is. And there may be, and this may is the word I stress in this, there may be a way of you finding out who your father is, what your identity is made up of. Does it boil down to the court recognizes that the law recognizes that everybody has a right to know who their parents are and the law is prepared to back that right? I think that is a large portion of it. I think the judges we've had have been extraordinarily sympathetic and they're human about this because alongside the sort of overarching principles of who's your identity, what's your heritage. Do you have a right to know this?

there's also this massive power imbalance and financial imbalance that's occurring between the UK and Kenya. And this is rural Kenya. This is rural Kenya where people do struggle on a day-to-day basis. Yvonne's family live in an extraordinarily humble circumstances. Their homestead is a powerful image to go and see their homestead. What's happened since the show went out? Have you been back in court? Give us a brief.

Well, the cases are still ongoing. We're in court tomorrow as it happens. So tomorrow morning we're back in front of the president of the family division. And he is dealing with six cases that remain ongoing. These are becoming even more challenging. In several of those cases, we know the men to have passed away. We know that the men have passed away. We have others where we're still trying to locate them and they're going to ground.

and we have arrest warrants out for them and we're still trying to track them down. They're not making it easy for themselves or indeed for the court. That's what's going on at the moment. And Kelvin, every few weeks, gives me a call saying, James, got another one for you.

So from a Kenyan perspective, it's still trundling on. We're still fighting hard for them. But there's also another dimension, which is that we've also been given permission to start financial claims against the men involved. Now, financial claims are being made against men where the children involved are under 18

or just over 18 and in full-time education. It's child maintenance. Yes, child maintenance. Child support, anything you want to call it like that. In the United States, it would be called alimony. Yeah, alimony, something like that. Exactly that. So, alimony, because these, I mean, they're the fathers, right?

You need to pay for your kids. It doesn't matter whether they live in Nanyuki or whether they live in Newcastle. You still have to pay for your kid, right? But just to be clear, there is no retrospective child maintenance or alimony to be paid. if your child is 20, say, and is not in full-time education, but you never paid any at the time. Can that be claimed retrospectively? We are considering that point.

I think it might be a bit of a tall order to claim it retrospectively. What we're focusing on is anything, just any pound to get a single penny, a single Kenyan chilling needs to land in the pockets of these children because they are struggling here. I have invited every single man who is eligible in this pool, where they've got children under 18, to provide their suggestions about financial support for their children, for their own children,

and not a single response has come back, not a single one. So we have to take them to court. I'm hoping once the court process starts, they will be far more amenable to reaching an agreement, but so far they aren't. Do you know how many children in Kenya might fit this description of fathered by a British service member while on deployment to Kenya and with an absent father.

Good question. We firmly believe that this cohort of cases we have is just the tip of the iceberg. It's a drop in the ocean. And since the cases came out in the media, we've had an enormous amount of inquiries from all over the world. And it's not always, but the common theme for most of the cases

is my father was a soldier, my father was in the RAF, my father was in the Navy, a charity worker. My father was a British national, I think. And name a country, and it's happened. I've had inquiries from Honduras, from Belize, from Nigeria, from Ghana, from Uganda, from Zimbabwe.

I've had everything from, we've had inquiries from people who say, oh, my dad was in a construction company. My dad was in a mining company. It is a bit of a sad story, isn't it, overall? It's positive in terms of, you know, maybe future possibilities. But in terms of relationships, what does it tell us? All fathers but one, Phil, have decided not to really have any contact with their children.

And even those there are supposed to at least pay some child maintenance. And if their child was living in the UK, they would have had to anyway. They would have no choice. Well, they would have their ownish. Yeah. All of them chose at the moment not to cooperate. I mean, it is kind of a sad story about humanity really in a way and parenthood. You know, it is, it is depressing.

I agree. But there are good examples as well. It's not necessarily the father. who've embraced these Kenyan children or Kenyan family members, but it's the half-brothers, the cousins, the aunts, the uncles. James, when you started out on this project,

did you have any conception that it could take on such scale? Absolutely not. We had no idea what we were getting. I mean, we were sending DNA kits out. I went to Kenya. I remember my suitcase, this double suitcase,

had my suit, my shirt, my tie, and then I realized when I got to Kenya and how humid it was, I was like, there's no way that suit is coming out of the suitcase. And then on the other hand, was I think I had 15 or 20 DNA kits. I remember thinking, if I get stopped by Kenyan customs,

I've got a bit of explaining to do. But now there is change, and it's not just declarations of parentage. It's not just child maintenance. It's not just the British citizenship. It's, this is my dad, this is who I am. I mean, it's an incredibly personal story, but it's also a military and strategic one.

Ivana, you spoke in the series with a British Army Brigadier at a British Army training base in the south of England and you interviewed this Brigadier about the duty of care that the Ministry of Defence has to Kenyans who live near the base. Tell us about that. Yeah, it was an interesting interview. So the brigadier was very keen to emphasise the policies that the British Army has about use of sex workers, child exploitation, sexual exploitation. but we circled a lot around the issues of soldiers fathering children. And when I tried to find out if they had any policies or any plans to address this issue,

there were no concrete steps that he ever talked about in the interview. Interestingly, on the last day, on the day when we actually broadcast, we were doing a lot of promotion, I was doing lots of live interviews and radio TV appearances, packages. and they issued a statement then on that day a stronger statement which said that soldiers, if they do father a child, they have certain responsibility. So that statement was much stronger, but it came sort of after our interview. I mean, it's an interesting political moment in Kenya, in the relations between the UK and Kenya at the moment.

Because Batuk has been around for decades and there is an overdue defence and cooperation agreement that Kenya and the UK need to sign for the British Army to continue training regularly there. So we've had a little issue with one of the training exercises just in the last week, for example, which just shows what the problems are with these negotiations. What's happened? So the British Army said about a week ago, they decided they wouldn't, or they didn't decide, but they wouldn't be able to train and run their usual training exercise, which was due to start in September, because they didn't get the usual permissions to do so.

Because if you don't have an agreement signed, you need to get a permission for every single training exercise, which is complicated. And basically what the issue was with that training exercise was that the Kenyans put their foot down and apparently said, when we are negotiating this new defence and cooperation agreement, what's really important to us is jurisdiction.

If a British soldier does something wrong in the country, in Kenya, we want to have jurisdiction over them. And my understanding is that that is something that the British authorities are not happy with and that is the main contentious point in this negotiation. When the Brits realized that the Kenyans were not going to agree to that, they said, well, we're not going to run our next training exercise in September.

So what I heard last week was that there was a lot of pressure from various groups, business groups, local authorities in the province where Nanyuki is, they were very concerned financially about the implications if thousands of troops don't come, as they usually come for their training exercises. And the Kenyan authorities decided to give them the permission for this particular training exercise. So now it will go ahead. And I think there is this push-pull between this is an important relationship for Kenya.

This is a financially and politically important relationship for Kenya. but they just definitely feel like there has to be more respect. There has to be different kind of levers in place. Jurisdiction has to change. That's what they think. So let's see what happens, right? Well, James, Ivana, it's been wonderful to talk all this through with you. I hope you'll come and update us later down the line

when you have more news from Kathy, from Peter and from Yvonne, maybe after Christmas. Yeah. Thanks so much for being so. excited about the series. I'm excited that you're excited. It's an incredibly touching series and yeah, I enjoyed listening to it is not the word to use, but I was really captured by it. So thank you for the fantastic work. Thank you. And to all of our listeners, thank you for listening to the BBC's Investigations podcast, World of Secrets. If you haven't discovered them yet, there are 11 other investigations already available to listen to on the stream. And not only that, there are three

new World of Secrets investigations currently underway. In September, we're planning to launch Season 13, a five-part World Service investigation from Southeast Asia. In a story about friendship, love and who you can really trust, we'll follow a group of young people as they dare to challenge the powerful speaking up and taking on a deeply respected national institution. And in the meantime, we'll share more updates from previous seasons. So follow or subscribe to get all the automatic updates. Until then, bye for now.