Since Li-Da grew up she’s had a burning desire to understand her past
Travelling to Cambodia to help her adopted daughter find her biological mum was a quest that left a normally stoic Prue Leith deeply emotional.
She was faced with the realities of genocide, plagued by insecurities about her parenting style and spent much of the time in tears – especially when she saw children so similar to her daughter.
Prue, who formed an exceptionally close bond with Li-Da from the moment she saw her at 16 months old, says: “The babies reminded me of Li-Da and I can’t bear to think I missed the first year of her life. Since she grew up, she’s had a burning desire to understand her past.
“As I get older, I wonder if I did everything right as a mother. I’m quite tactless and I hardly ever go delving into psychological this and that.
“But I think there’s stuff about Li-Da’s background that I’ve just never asked her. It’s time for both of us to lay these ghosts to rest.”
Li-Da, 46, organised the journey to try to fill in the blanks of her life. And she admits it took an emotional toll on Prue.
“It’s not because I want another parent, I have Prue,” Li-Da says. “But as a child who escaped the Cambodian genocide, I am desperate to find my biological family and make sense of my past. I’ve barely ever seen Mum cry, but she was sobbing a lot.”
Prue, 80, believes Li-Da was on one of the last flights to leave Phnom Penh. Three days later, communist dictator Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge militia marched into the capital. They wiped out almost two million Cambodians between 1975 and 1979 – a story broken by John Pilger in a special edition of the Mirror.
The genocide destroyed 25% of the population and for that reason Prue never wanted to visit.
She says: “I feel quite angry with Cambodia. My negative feelings are man’s inhumanity to man, I can’t bear the thought of all those people being killed. But the odd thing is I benefited.”
The pair returned for C4 documentary, Prue Leith: Journey With My Daughter.
Both believe Li-Da’s mother was killed in a rocket attack and her injured father, a soldier fighting for the government, carried his undernourished child as far as he could.
She ended up in the care of French humanitarian Yvette Pierpaoli who saved hundreds of sick orphans and babies. To help them escape death, Yvette was not beyond inventing stories, so could Li-Da’s mother be alive?
When Prue and Li-Da arrived in Cambodia, they discovered Ta Khmao psychiatric hospital, 10 miles outside of Phnom Penh where Li-Da’s mother was a patient. A rocket had exploded outside, but no one had died.
In an incredible coincidence, head record keeper
Chorn Chum
PRUE LEITH ON ASKING HERSELF QUESTIONS AROUND HER PARENTING
thought his mother might be part of Li-Da’s story. His mother’s cousin Soth had given birth to a daughter around the time Li-Da was born, and they were taken to the hospital. Soth had severe postnatal depression and the baby was very ill. To ensure the baby was safe, his mother agreed to adoption on Soth’s behalf. Soth was told the baby was dead, but 10 years ago, as her cousin was dying, she told Soth her baby had survived. Li-Da, who met Soth, said: “It didn’t sink in immediately this could be
There’s stuff I’ve never asked her. It’s time for both of us to lay these ghosts to rest
my mother because I never thought she could be alive, but once I connected with it, I wanted it desperately.”
But a DNA test showed they weren’t even distant relatives. “When I told her, I was sobbing so hard I could barely get the words out,” she says. “Without DNA she’d have been my mum. We wouldn’t have known for sure, but her story is the closest I’ve got to how I was adopted.”
There are databases in the West where adoptees upload their details and Li-Da found Thary in the US, a third cousin she connected with through Ancestery.com. “We share a great-great-grandparent,” said Li-Da, who’d never met a Cambodian until she was 19. “She’s the first blood relative I’ve spoken to.”
Although most of her father’s family were killed, Thary’s dad knew they were from Svey Tamek village in Kandal Province, where Prue and Li-Da visit.
Before the trip, John Pilger gave Li-Da advice. “He said find something tangible. You might not find the things you’re looking for, but if you find a building or a village, anything you know was part of your life, it will be a bonus.”
Li-Da was first adopted by a couple from the US diplomatic corps, Mavis and Meyer Burstein, and taken to their home in Suffolk, but 10 days later, Mavis died of a pneumonia-like illness. Meyer took Li-Da to France where friends of Prue and husband Rayne Kruger, who died in 2002, told the couple of her story. Prue says: “Adoption was so easy in the seventies. We just cavalierly said we wanted to adopt.”
She remembers the day Li-Da arrived at their Oxfordshire home. She said: “She was adorable. Her little cheeks had sausages inside, like a hamster. I hooked out the lumps. She went to sleep but wouldn’t let go of the sausage and a fish finger, so I put her to bed with them.”
Li-Da formed a bond with Prue’s biological son Danny, 45, and a Tory MP.
Because her childhood was so happy, Li-Da and her film-maker husband Matthew Hope, 44, knew they would adopt. And treatment for breast cancer in 2012 left her unable to conceive. But the adoption process rattled old ghosts.
“I had to fill in a paper that said, ‘Give all the addresses of where you’ve lived. Don’t leave gaps’. I’ve huge gaps, full of death and war. I burst into tears. That was the first time I was able to connect with that child who left Cambodia.”
Li-Da has vowed to keep looking, saying: “My birth mother gave me up for a better life and it feels really important to tell her she did the right thing. Prue knows our love is deep, but she’s realised how much it matters to me. If we find her, she’d absolutely embrace her.”
■ Prue Leith: Journey With My Daughter, Channel 4, tonight at 9pm.
LI-DA KRUGER ON WHY SEARCH MATTERS TO HER
My birth mother gave me up for a better life