- Luke Davies took a DNA test and the result didn't seem consistent with having white English parents.
- His mother revealed his biological dad was a man she had slept with on vacation.
A man who grew up identifying as white did an at-home DNA test that ultimately led him to discover his biological father was multiracial, setting him on a journey to find him.
Luke Davies, 30, from the town of Rochdale, England, did the DNA test in 2019, and its results suggested he wasn't related to the man he'd grown up calling "dad." He shared the story of his search for his birth father in the BBC documentary "A Stranger in My Family."
He told Business Insider he had felt "out of place" in his "own body and life" before doing the test, and he said in the documentary that he thought it was because he is gay. But he still felt different after he came out to his parents, so he decided to take a DNA test to learn about his heritage.
Such tests work by comparing variants in the subject's DNA to the frequencies of different variants in populations from around the world. Davies' ancestors on both his parents' side were from near Manchester, as far as he knew, and he grew up identifying as white British. The test, however, produced a result of 22.5% West African, 32.5% Iberian, 23.4% English, 9.4% Scandinavian, with the remaining 12.2% labelled as "three more ethnicities."
Davies' mother had an affair with a Portuguese man while on vacation
When Davies asked his mother, Liz Davies, about his results, she revealed that she had had a fling with a bartender while on vacation in Albufeira, Portugal, 30 years earlier, during the early days of her relationship with the man Davies had thought was his biological father. No one questioned the paternity of her obviously darker-skinned son after he was born, so she didn't bring it up, she said.
Luke Davies was determined to find the man, but his mother knew nothing more about him other than his name — Carlos — and the fact that he had worked at the bar.
Davies did have one other lead, though. In addition to estimating ancestry, commercial DNA tests can be compared with others in a given company's database to match family members. Davies' result suggested he had a relative, Renato Pereira, who lived in Portugal.
But Pereira didn't know anyone in his family named Carlos who was the right age to be Davies' father. So, Davies enlisted the help of a genealogist, Laura House, who figured out that Pereira was specifically Davies' half cousin. This meant that Pereira and Davies shared a grandfather — who must have been Carlos' father.
Pereira told Davies that neither of his grandfathers had mentioned having a child named Carlos. But one of them, João Oliveira, had been part of the Portuguese Navy and had gone to fight against the independence movement in Guinea-Bissau, in West Africa, when he was about 17. They assumed that that was when Davies' father was conceived.
Davies visited the place he was conceived and tracked down his father
Finding himself at a dead end in investigating his DNA test matches, Davies went to visit Albufeira. He went with a friend of his mother's who had been on vacation with her when Davies was conceived, hoping she could identify the bar where Carlos had worked.
She did, and House tracked Carlos down using the bar's old employee records. He agreed to a paternity test to see whether he was in fact Davies' father. It came back positive, and the two agreed to meet.
The two had an emotional reunion in London. Carlos immediately accepted Davies when he came out to him and later introduced him to his other two sons.
Carlos also told Davies that he hadn't known Oliveira, who had left Guinea-Bissau after the war. He said his mother had never told him about the nature of her relationship with his father, or his own identity.
Davies gained another family and got closer to the one he already had
Davies has come to terms with his multiracial identity, and has incorporated his birth grandfather's surname, Oliveira, into his surname to honor his heritage. Davies said that his relationship with his birth father and brothers "has gone from strength to strength."
However, the test results "caused quite a lot of pain for the first year or so" in his immediate family, because he had to tell the father who raised him about his mom's infidelity. But the documentary forced them to confront the situation, and now he would consider them to be the closest they've ever been.
"Now that I've been able to piece together the past that I belong to, and build connections with family I've never known in the process, I feel healed and changed in ways that are hard to explain," he said. "I'm most excited to share the rest of my life with my blended family, and to step into the next chapter of my life feeling secure in who I am."
BI has previously reported on others who have learned they have different racial identities than they expected thanks to DNA tests. But these tests can expose many other secrets, as was the case for a couple who discovered they were cousins, and two men who were switched at birth. One man even learned that his father had been a wanted murderer who had killed his own parents before escaping prison and fleeing the US for Australia.