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Unlocked Family Secrets Season 1 Episode 2
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FunTranscript
00:00I had an idyllic childhood, a loving family,
00:06and beautiful memories.
00:08But for most of my life, I've been focused
00:12on finding out where I came from.
00:14I had no idea my search would uncover a horrific family
00:19secret.
00:21I remember my mother said to me, just be careful
00:25and make sure that you're ready for what you might find.
00:30It felt like a world collapsing.
00:32That day would change my life forever.
00:36Your past sometimes will catch up with you.
00:39That storm is coming.
00:41It was just overwhelming.
00:43Then I just blacked out.
00:55I'm a firm believer in things happen when they're supposed
01:01to happen, how they're supposed to happen,
01:03whether you understand it or not.
01:07I definitely was raised by a mother who was strong and resilient.
01:11But we didn't really know that she was sick.
01:15Between March and May of 2017, it just went really fast.
01:21And then she passed away.
01:25With my grandmother passing, I know my mom felt a void,
01:31like something was missing at that time.
01:35There was a secret of her origin.
01:40For me, the goal became finding out where I came from.
01:45But I remember my mother said to me, be careful
01:50and make sure that you're ready for what you might find.
01:55All right, guys, let's hurry, hurry, hurry.
02:08Let's go.
02:08While we're standing there, we got a backpack.
02:10Let's get it in a locker.
02:12I am an assistant principal at a public high school
02:17in the south suburbs of Chicago.
02:19I started teaching 34 years ago.
02:23I was one of the first African-American teachers
02:27certified in the building.
02:29All right, here come my crew.
02:31Good morning.
02:32Can you hurry up?
02:33The bell already rang.
02:34As a teacher, I've always kind of gravitated toward what we call
02:39the at-risk students because I understand very clearly
02:43struggling with challenges.
02:48My trauma stems from the hidden history within my family,
02:53secrets from before I was ever born.
02:59I was born in August of 1966.
03:01I came home with my parents December 6th.
03:08There were pictures of me when my dad's holding me
03:11at Christmas time.
03:15I was raised in a good home.
03:18I remember my grandfather had a farm.
03:20We had a pony that my grandfather had for us
03:24when we would come visit in the summer.
03:26And then I have this memory from around kindergarten,
03:32five years old.
03:34It was just, I don't know, like a little doctor's office.
03:38I was sitting someplace that I overheard a conversation
03:42where my mother said I was adopted.
03:49I knew what the word meant.
03:51But I didn't understand maybe fully how that, you know, was me.
03:59I remember asking my mom.
04:01So she explained it.
04:04Yes, you're adopted.
04:09And so I remember going to school and telling kids,
04:13I'm adopted.
04:14I'm adopted.
04:16One of my schoolgirls on the playground,
04:19she said to me, well, that means your brother
04:22is not really your brother.
04:25And it was hurtful.
04:28You always want to know.
04:30You're always curious about who your parents are,
04:32where you come from.
04:36Much of my life has been centered around one question.
04:41Who is my birth mother?
04:44I was in junior high, maybe 10, 11 years old.
04:47I would snoop.
04:48My mother would have drawers that she'd keep things in.
04:52I found my birth certificate.
04:55And at that time, you could not access your original birth
04:59certificate that was issued at birth.
05:02So the only name that's on that birth certificate would be
05:05your adoptive parent's name.
05:07Even the hospital was not there.
05:11So I thought, maybe I could find out what
05:14hospital I was born in.
05:18I began dialing into hospitals and asking them if they could
05:22tell me how many baby girls were born on my birth date.
05:28And there were so many people born the same day as me.
05:33Like, I think I just realized how futile that was.
05:40I remember thinking, if my birth mother gave me up for adoption,
05:44then maybe there was a reason why.
05:47And maybe this isn't going to be this fairytale ending.
05:51And it was like, pump the brakes.
05:53Over the next 25 years, life happened.
05:59I got married, had my kids, Cameron and Colin.
06:03Still, I never gave up on my mission,
06:06to uncover the truth about my birth mother.
06:14Nobody's eating my vegetable, my salad.
06:16This is a beautiful salad.
06:17Look at my salad.
06:18Today is our cheat day.
06:21Um, I think it is interesting to reflect on where we started
06:29and then where we are now.
06:32My dad said, Jen, she's adopted too.
06:37And having this cousin, who was also adopted,
06:41there was a sameness there.
06:43I appreciated that.
06:45And that set the seeds for what was to come.
06:48Like, you were a tutor.
06:49Jennifer.
06:50Like, you prepared me for the inevitable,
06:54and you set it off.
06:57Well, you know, I feel honored that you trusted me.
07:00So in 2011, adoptees in Illinois could request
07:04their original birth certificate.
07:06So I got my original birth certificate in 2012.
07:09So I think I got mine January, February 2012.
07:13From there, it was just, we were, we were in it.
07:20After 30 years, I finally got it.
07:24My original unredacted birth certificate.
07:27It had where my birth mother was living at the time.
07:32And it had her name, like, oh, we have it.
07:37Oh, my God.
07:38Like, that's her name.
07:40Deborah.
07:41Deborah.
07:42And the name that I was born with was Kellyanne.
07:46My mother's age was there.
07:49She was young.
07:50She was 15.
07:52The father was not listed.
07:55Once I was able to see my birth mother's name,
07:59then it was like, OK, now I have some place to go with this.
08:06I remember being in the room, like, in her room.
08:09When she had opened it, there was excitement.
08:12Like, this is the first step to kind of getting,
08:14you know, some more information.
08:18So the very first thing was if my birth mother was born in Harvey,
08:24what high school would she have gone to in 1966?
08:31There were two.
08:33One of the high schools at the time was predominantly white.
08:36So I'm like, nope, that's not going to be it.
08:39Then another high school, that's where I hit.
08:46I remember touching the yearbook and just thinking,
08:50this person is real.
08:54This name, now I can put a face to it.
09:03I got her transcript.
09:06That was the golden ticket.
09:08It had Debra's address at the time, her parents' names,
09:13what both parents did for a living.
09:17I was excited to have the information and excited to share it with my mother.
09:24But I held off picking up the phone and calling her,
09:27because by now, we found out that my mother had cancer.
09:32In May of 2017, my grandma passed away.
09:44We were all very sad, devastated.
09:49Having lost my mother, now to go look for another mother,
09:54I felt guilty about that.
09:57And so I stopped.
10:06When you're grieving, you want to be surrounded by family.
10:10So when talking to my mom, I told her,
10:13into the new year, we should probably start looking again for your birth mother.
10:17I found the service that would do background searches on people.
10:29So I put in my birth mother's name, and it populates people who are associated with her.
10:36I would cross-reference to Facebook.
10:45Ben Chambers.
10:47Was he my sibling?
10:49Was he the person who could connect me to my birth mother?
10:59I can see all of the people that Ben follows on social media.
11:04People that also came up in the background search.
11:08These could be my siblings.
11:14We figure out that Ben goes to a church that's really nearby.
11:20I made a decision to go to the church.
11:24When I drove into the parking lot, I was like,
11:27my God, what do I do? I'm not sure I want to do it.
11:28I was like, okay, this is really happening. Get it together.
11:39It was a big moment for Lisa.
11:42Now or never, really.
11:45What, was I coming back the next weekend?
11:48No, we're going to do this today.
11:49The woman walks up to me, and she says, are you Reverend Ben?
12:03Can we talk for a minute?
12:05And I say, hey, we can talk right here.
12:09The woman says, do you have a place that's a little more private?
12:13So this is like all the flags, but I feel like this nudge.
12:19And you should sit down and talk with this lady.
12:23That's when I started thinking to myself, well, what if this is not what you think it is?
12:32What if this might get real?
12:34Are you ready for that?
12:35So I sit down, the lady sits down, and she moves her chair closer.
12:41So I'm like, oh crap, like, what's about to happen?
12:45I was nervous.
12:49And so she starts talking, and she says, I think that you and I are related.
12:58I've got cousins I've never met before.
13:01So that didn't alarm me.
13:03What alarmed me was what she said next.
13:07She says, I believe that we are brother and sister.
13:13The search took 37 years.
13:16And the fact that I was going to be introducing myself as a family member, I had to bring it.
13:24So I had the birth certificate, I had the yearbook photos, I had the transcripts.
13:32She's laying out all of this evidence.
13:35As we're talking and I'm giving him this information, I literally had it spread out on the table.
13:40And he was like, okay, okay, okay.
13:44In that moment, this woman started to look like my mom.
13:53I'm starting to recognize this woman's eyes and her cheekbones.
13:57And so I felt like this nudge, like, yes, she's telling the truth.
14:05So I don't know how long the pause was.
14:07It felt like a lifetime.
14:09And I'm sitting there like, okay, like, what is happening?
14:11I wanted him to understand very clearly, I don't want anything from you.
14:18But I do want my birth mother to know that I'm fine.
14:23And then to me, it was just like this rush of emotion.
14:27Ben told me that in 2004, our birth mother had died of cancer.
14:39So I was never going to meet her.
14:41So we both were emotional.
14:47It was the rush of emotion of, at that time, not knowing the details about how Lisa came into existence.
14:57He says something like, well, let's exchange information.
15:02And I was like, okay.
15:08So I called my sister, Camille.
15:11I had no idea that the phone call that I received from Ben that day would change my life forever.
15:20The tone in his voice kind of startled me.
15:23I said, do you think it's possible that mom would have gave birth to a daughter in the 60s?
15:34And Camille was basically like, yes.
15:40I always knew that there was something that happened to my mom.
15:47Growing up, I was always with my mother and my grandmother.
15:53They would be in the living room talking, and I would be upstairs.
15:59They would be talking in kind of cold.
16:03You know, they would say, well, you know, he, you know, did this, or he would say this.
16:09And they would always say he or him.
16:12I remember the frustration that I felt from my mother and kind of like a dismissiveness from my grandmother.
16:22And then as a child, I really didn't put it together.
16:25But it seemed like that day, everything just started coming back.
16:33Finding out what really happened to my mom, it scared me.
16:39This is a lot, like this is going to take a lot to unpack, a lot to figure out.
16:45So Camille, she starts immediately like Sherlock Holmes.
16:49I immediately called our uncle, my mother's brother.
16:57Said, does my, did my mother have a child at 15?
17:01And I felt like he was pushing me off.
17:06You know, why are you asking me this?
17:09He kind of paused.
17:11And he said, you know, you should talk to your dad.
17:13I was on my way to church, and my son called me.
17:21And he said, do you know a lady named Laysa?
17:24I said, no, I do not.
17:26And he said, well, this lady cornered me in church.
17:30She might be my sister, and mom is her mother.
17:34The other day, a minister of the church, he was talking about your past will sometimes catch up with you.
17:51And then it dined on me, it came back just like daylight.
17:56That storm is coming.
17:59It was an awakening of what is to come.
18:04So the search is complete.
18:11Who has my birth story?
18:14That's what I was looking forward to at that point.
18:17You know, the things that my siblings could tell me about my birth mother.
18:23Ben said he was going to call me.
18:25So I think it was just this nervous anticipation, hoping that I would get the call.
18:32She felt a good vibe at first.
18:35But then it was kind of like, okay, now what? Now what's next?
18:38So then day number two, now I'm beginning to feel like, hmm, we might have a problem here.
18:46She's telling me I haven't heard anything from them, like, oh, they hate me, there is rejection, they're rejecting me.
18:53You know how your mind is going a thousand miles.
19:01So now, why all of a sudden did this woman show up because she finally found this?
19:08My dad is basically like, yes, this is true, your mom did have a daughter, gave the child up for adoption, yes.
19:17It made me angry, it made me feel like, you know, why didn't anyone tell me?
19:25I had to come to grips with the fact that mom took this family secret to the grave.
19:33So that week, talking to my dad, talking to my siblings, at the time, I was still the only point of contact for Lisa.
19:45So my call to Lisa was to say, hey, let's get together. And it just kind of snowballed from there.
19:54Every piece of information I learned about my birth mother, Deborah, was priceless.
20:00It was crazy to learn that she had grown up in Markham, Illinois, not far from where I had settled down and raised my own family.
20:09So, from what I understand of the family history, Deborah's mother met her stepfather and they got married when Deborah was about three years old.
20:22Then Deborah's stepfather and her mother went on to have two more children.
20:28So Deborah and I, we were high school sweethearts.
20:33We attended Thornton Township High School, which is located in Harvey, Illinois.
20:39She was a great person to me. Very exciting to be around and cheer for most of the time.
20:45A friend of mine introduced us.
20:48I know that my mom initially was not that interested in him.
20:55But my dad writes a letter to my mom's mom, like, hey, please tell Deborah to reconsider.
21:01Like, I'm a really nice guy, like all these things. And obviously it worked.
21:08The summer of 1966, I went by there to her house one day.
21:17And her mother told me she was visiting her grandmother.
21:20I thought maybe she'd be gone about a couple of weeks.
21:23It was really the entire summer that she was gone.
21:30She didn't come back until school started again.
21:32She wanted me to accompany her to Christ Temple Church.
21:46She wanted to go to talk to the minister there. So I stood outside until she finished.
21:54And then walking home, and she didn't talk about anything.
22:03After that, we both attended Thornton Community College.
22:13We were still dating, having fun. One day, I had went on and proposed to her.
22:21I said, what do you think about getting married?
22:25And she said, let me think about it.
22:27Some months pass, and Deborah asked me, have you ever wondered, really, was I at my grandmother's house
22:40during the summer that she wasn't there?
22:43I said, no, I just believe that you was at your grandmother's house.
22:47She said, after I tell you something, you may not want to marry me. She was very blunt. I am not a virgin.
23:00And she didn't get into who the person was. She just said that she had a child.
23:09But I had to give her up for adoption.
23:14I got quiet for a few minutes.
23:17And then I said, so, I said, I'm marrying you as you are.
23:30A lot went on in that house.
23:35I was willing to keep my mouth shut.
23:40But after Lisa found this, the kids kept asking me and stuff.
23:45So, finally, I told him exactly what happened to her.
23:52So, my dad kind of filled in the blanks of what we were missing.
23:59Enough for the full weight of the story to kind of come down like,
24:03like, okay, this is, this is pretty nasty. Like, this is pretty ugly.
24:07There is this euphoria when you are looking for something and you find it.
24:20But when you get an answer, you have more questions. Now the time had come to meet the rest of the Chambers family, my family, and find out why I had been given up for adoption.
24:35I arrived to the church. Camille and Ben were already there.
24:41And as soon as she walked through the door, I was like, oh my God. Like, that is my mother walking through the door.
24:48Just like with Ben, I brought all of the artifacts that I had.
24:56When I saw that birth certificate and I said, this is for real, it was a goosebuck moment seeing that.
25:03I was super nervous. My face was hot. I felt like I was shaking.
25:09There was just this anxiety in the air immediately.
25:14And then transitioning to questions about what they knew and what they didn't know.
25:22I asked, well, do you know who my father is?
25:25I remember Camille did a lot of the talking. She's in this place where it's raw.
25:35You can't, like, just throw the truth on other people. But this secret needs to come out.
25:43And so I'm listening to Camille say, our mother's stepfather is your father.
25:56And she said, you know, the sexual assault, it happened as early as, you know, like seven or eight years old.
26:06And it was, you know, over the course of several years.
26:13Your biological father raped your biological mom and this is how you were brought into this world.
26:18It was just like, it was, it was information overload.
26:30It was just so overwhelming. Then I just, I blacked out. It was just too much.
26:38I remember saying that I want to stop. I need to take a break.
26:41And then I started weeping.
26:48The weight of the circumstances surrounding Lisa's birth, it felt like a world collapsing.
26:56I felt pain projecting what she must have gone through.
27:02You know, thinking about the sexual abuse, thinking about carrying a child that you,
27:08you know, maybe you didn't wish. At 15, you don't have a choice. She wasn't given a choice.
27:16I called our uncle because he was in the house. He's her sibling. He would know directly.
27:22I felt like he was squirming as I, as he was talking to me. Like, why are you asking me this?
27:28He, he just kept rejecting it.
27:36You know, and to have him just loft it off. And it's like, you're protecting your father,
27:44who's not only a pedophile, a rapist, but you're protecting this. And I, and I couldn't understand that.
27:51At one point, he did tell me my mother was not the first woman that his father stepped out on his
28:03mother with. I was just like, woman? You know, mom was a child. This was not like, you know, she was
28:13dating an older guy and she got pregnant as a teenager. This was her stepfather that had children
28:23with her mother.
28:26You know, we're talking about a, you know, a 50 plus year old secret. The reality is there, there are
28:35people who were very content with taking this to their grave. And that does not help the victim at
28:43all. It gives power to the victimizer. I just remember like, just really sitting at home and
28:53having a difficult time, just realizing the age my, my daughters were at at that time,
28:58that my mother at that age was being sexually abused, raped by, by an adult.
29:08I absolutely felt betrayed by my uncle. I would travel out to visit my uncle, stay in the house,
29:16and we would go to church and we reminisce about mom and about granny. This never came up.
29:22And you know, and then when it does, he's being this, you know, protector of his father. And it was just
29:29like, who are you? And what is really going on?
29:40Woke up that Sunday. And now I know that I am a product of this sexual assault.
29:47And with that truth came this enormous pain to my siblings who didn't even know I existed.
29:57The reality of it hit me in such a way that I remember feeling like maybe I should not have tried
30:06to find them. Because now they are carrying the weight of this truth about a sexual assault
30:14that happened to our mother. And I, and I remember, I was weeping about that.
30:20It was like, so what do I symbolize? Am I the sister? Or am I now you are this horrific thing
30:28that happened to our mother?
30:34It was a very, a very heavy and dark, um, couple of weeks to, to navigate and kind of deal with.
30:41But you start to think about how, like, how could this happen? How could this persist?
30:50After all this time, I'd been given this gift of discovering my birth mother,
30:55only to learn about the trauma she went through to bring me into this world.
31:00So, to be this 15-year-old, you're pregnant with your stepfather's child, how is this possible?
31:10When we were dating, I remember Debra didn't want to go home at certain times, and she didn't want to be there.
31:18So, you know, we would go out driving until almost the time when her mother would get home.
31:25Because her mother, Mildred, worked nights.
31:29This when all this took place, because she wasn't there.
31:33She was working nights, and he had just total control over her.
31:39She was at age 15 years old or so. What could she do?
31:47When Debra told me that she had a child, one thing just led up to that it was her stepfather.
32:00And then it dined on me, okay. That's why he had a smirk on his face.
32:08Every time I was over there, you know, like, it was a laughter smirk.
32:19She went to her mother, but she said, I don't think my mother believed me at first.
32:24It was her word against his word. He, you know, he denied it.
32:35And then there's the pastor. Debra stopped going to the pastor for counseling,
32:40because he said she must be enjoying doing it, being with her stepfather.
32:48And she must, because she came to him and not the police.
32:55In my mom's situation, I feel like there are multiple settings in which she was failed.
33:04From the home front to the church setting,
33:09the two places where my mom should have got hope, help, she got none of that.
33:16I can't imagine my mom being 15, navigating this.
33:24So at some point, I did speak to Debra's half-brother, who would be my uncle.
33:37He asked me, was I interested in meeting my birth father?
33:42And I said no.
33:51When you kind of realize who your father is, how that came about,
33:54it was definitely a hard pill for all of us to swallow.
33:59And being a woman, you know, you kind of are heartbroken about just what Debra had to go through.
34:06It was even harder to deal with the fact that while my birth mother had suffered so much,
34:14my birth father, her abuser, was still alive.
34:18She died without ever seeing him brought to justice.
34:22We wanted to fight back for our mother because, you know, we're doing what she couldn't do.
34:28There's no statute of limitations.
34:30Why aren't we trying to press charges, get this guy arrested?
34:35Ben and I went on this journey.
34:45We went downtown and we searched records for if there was any court case, anything in the files.
34:55The only thing that we could find was our grandmother's divorce proceedings.
34:59It looked like it was brought up that the 15-year-old stepdaughter was pregnant.
35:06And, you know, can we press charges? What can we do about this?
35:11And the court actually said no, nothing.
35:16Because he was a family member, charges couldn't be pressed during the divorce proceedings.
35:23If we couldn't do it in court, I suggested that we make signs and go down to his house and get a bullhorn
35:32and say a pedophile lives here, a rapist lives here.
35:37I don't care how old he is, he's a pedophile. You were a pedophile then, you still are a pedophile.
35:43You are a rapist. And I just, you know, just had these thoughts of, you know, him looking and say,
35:50who is this? And, you know, us being here and saying, we're Deborah's children.
35:56But I couldn't get anybody to do that with me.
36:00I came to this conclusion that, like, we're fighting for her and maybe that's not really what she wanted.
36:11Maybe what she wanted was us embracing Lisa and bringing Lisa in.
36:16And I feel like that would have been something that mom would have done.
36:24It's painful to know that my birth mother, Deborah, died without ever seeing her children in reunion.
36:32But we are all committed to keeping our new family bond strong in her honor.
36:38She wanted to adopt her when she found her, bring her into the family. So I was committed to that.
36:55That picture of all of us.
37:02Oh, yeah.
37:03No, it's not in there.
37:04This is pre-Civil Rights era.
37:06All five of us.
37:07Yeah.
37:08You know what they say, things that are done in the dark always come to life.
37:12The truth always surfaces.
37:13Yeah.
37:14I'm glad we can look at pictures and resemblances because, you know, Sunday after I talked to you guys,
37:26like, I felt guilty about, you know, bringing you this information that I was a sister that you didn't know about.
37:35Did you all ever have any regrets about, you know, the secret, so to speak, coming out?
37:43I'm glad that it was out. The secret was out.
37:47Yeah.
37:48You know.
37:49You are glad it's out?
37:50Yes.
37:50Right.
37:51Because I, you know, after she had passed away, I was wondering, will we ever really meet you?
37:57Mm-hmm.
37:59And I'm glad that we was able to meet you.
38:02Mm-hmm.
38:05We talked about that a lot, like, as we were navigating the space.
38:08Being able to verbalize that the, it's not, the issue is not with you.
38:13Mm-hmm.
38:13The issue is with everything else surrounding that.
38:17Good situation.
38:18Yeah.
38:18The beauty that came out of meeting you, who you are and who Cameron is and Colin is,
38:25I just think that that was able to cover a lot of what mom went through.
38:29But it's like, oh my gosh, we have another sister and two more and other niece and another nephew.
38:34I feel like this is awesome.
38:36I'm glad that I had a desire to find my family.
38:40I'm glad that someone desired to find me.
38:44You know, it could have gone a lot of different ways.
38:46Easter 2018 was tough because it was a year to the date almost of when my mother was diagnosed with cancer.
39:01I remember sitting on the couch at Ben's house thinking that I'd lost everything.
39:07But if we think about what Easter represents with, you know, rebirth and renewal, I think it was a good
39:15first holiday or celebration or family gathering to have because it symbolized a new family.
39:28The connection that I wanted, that I hoped for had Deborah still been alive, I don't think I'll ever be able
39:35to capture that because she's just not here.
39:40But as I find out things about my birth mother, things like she was also in education,
39:49things like Camila said our hands look alike, and my kids even saw a picture where they said,
39:55it gave them chills, we look so much alike. I think maybe that is a level of connectedness.
40:04If my birth mother was here, the message that I gave to Ben when we met that Sunday would pretty
40:12much be the same. We supposed to do that other one. You know, I would just basically want her to
40:18know that I've had a good life. I've had a happy life. That, you know, I feel like the strength that I
40:27have is in my DNA. I definitely was raised by a mother who was strong and resilient. But then to find out
40:35that I was birthed by a mother who also had this resiliency and just incredible strength. I just take
40:44hard, you know, that I can be a part of that legacy and keep it going.
40:55Why does he not want me to be around his...
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