'They told me he was dead': Children born near army base learn truth about UK soldier dads
BBC"Edward", a nine-year old Kenyan boy, has always been aware his father worked for the British military. The boy's skin colour, lighter than his peers, has provoked years of bullying. His father disappeared before Edward [not his real name] was born, leaving his mum living in extreme poverty, ostracised by some of her family.
Now this man, who worked as a contractor at a British army base in Kenya, and 19 others who served as soldiers there, have been identified through a ground-breaking DNA and legal process as fathers of children born near the base.
Paternity has so far been legally confirmed in 12 of the cases by the UK's highest Family Court judge, a BBC World Service investigation can reveal.
The process provides answers for children who did not know where, or even in some cases who their fathers were - or who had been led to believe they had died. All have been seeking answers about their heritage, and have faced financial hardship. Most of the 12 confirmed cases are now eligible to register for British citizenship. Those under 18 or in further education will be eligible for child support.
UK solicitor James Netto, and Kelvin Kubai, a lawyer finding clients on the ground in Kenya, say there are nearly 100 documented cases of children born near the British Army Training Unit in Kenya (Batuk) to British soldiers. Netto believes there could be many more.
Batuk, which was set up in 1964 and sees more than 5,000 British personnel pass through every year, has attracted significant controversy over the decades it has been located in Nanyuki, a market town 185km (115 miles) north of Nairobi.
A two-year Kenyan parliamentary inquiry published last December accused British soldiers of operating within "a culture of impunity" at the base, resulting in sexual abuse, two allegations of murder, rights violations, environmental destruction and the abandonment and neglect of local children.
The UK Ministry of Defence responded that it "deeply regrets those issues and challenges which have arisen in relation to the UK's defence presence in Kenya… We continue to take action wherever possible to address them".
James Netto was first alerted to the issue of children seeking their fathers in Nanyuki in 2024. He teamed up with leading genetics professor Denise Syndercombe Court and they arrived in Kenya "armed with a suitcase full of DNA kits".
They then cross-referenced the DNA samples they gathered with the genetic profiles available to view on commercial genealogy databases to find the absent British military fathers of clients aged from three years to 70.
"Nothing like this has ever been done before, where you're engaging DNA testing on such a scale" in the UK courts, Netto says. And he and his team have a huge pool of genetic information to compare their samples with. By last year, there were almost 30 million profiles available on Ancestry.com, the largest of the commercial DNA websites which Syndercombe Court joined and used as their main source.
Netto says they had no idea how many leads they would get and were astounded by the good results. "We had completely distant family members, we had relatively close family members, all the way up to the bullseye hit of fathers being named and identified."
The breakthrough is potentially life-changing for Edward and his mother Nasibo, as he will now be entitled to financial support from his father.
"I used to think they were gentlemen," Nasibo says of the British military. She believed Edward's father truly loved and cared for her. We have seen a letter the soldier's mother wrote to Nasibo, before she fell pregnant, thanking her for making her son so happy. And when Nasibo told him she was expecting, she says he seemed delighted. He urged her to name the child after his brother if he was a boy, she says, and returned from a trip back to the UK with an engagement ring.
But when Nasibo was four months pregnant, she says he told her he had to return to the UK for an emergency and cut all contact.
Nasibo was forced by some of her relatives to leave the family home, she says, and her son was bullied at school for his lighter skin.
"They nickname him 'the British coloniser'," she told us. The UK governed Kenya from 1895 to 1963.
Netto was able to locate Edward's father after the court directed the Ministry of Defence, Department for Work and Pensions and HM Revenue and Customs to share the man's name and address. The man has asked Netto not to share his contact details with Nasibo or their son, but the lawyer is now in the process of starting the court proceedings to force him to pay child maintenance.
Another Kenyan, 18-year-old Yvonne, knew even less about her father than Edward did. She had been told he served in the British military but she did not have a name for him, and grew up believing he was dead. Her mother died when she was a baby, and soldiers at Batuk allegedly told her grandparents that her father had died.
The legal project has revealed - through a match with the man's mother's cousin, whose DNA had been uploaded to Ancestry.com - that in fact her father is alive and living in the UK.
After breaching five court orders, he eventually attended on the day his case was being heard. He requested a DNA test to confirm that he was Yvonne's father, the result of which, a week later, showed this was the case.
He does not want contact with Yvonne at the moment. But his mother's cousin says she is eager to meet Yvonne.
Not all the identified fathers have been reluctant to engage.
Phill, a former British soldier who was stationed in Nanyuki in 2004, says he is enjoying getting to know his daughter Cathy, 20. He had previously proposed to Cathy's mother, Maggie, and spent extended time with his daughter over the first few months of their baby's life. But when he moved to another deployment, he says his phone was stolen and he lost their contact details.
Maggie felt it was easier to tell Cathy her father was dead. But as she got older, Cathy discovered he was alive and tried messaging him on Facebook, but he says he blocked her accounts, not recognising them.
At that point, he says, he had left the Army and for some of the time was homeless and struggling with his mental health. "Transitioning into civilian life wasn't easy," he says.
Cathy was also struggling at the time, culminating in an attempt to take her own life.
"Growing up, I felt like I really needed a father figure because there's some things that my mom couldn't understand because of race and all that. It made me feel really lonely.
"There's a part of you that you don't know about. Like it's completely a mystery to you."
With his paternity recently confirmed in the UK courts, Phill says he is glad to have been found, describing it as a "very happy surprise".
He says he is in touch with Cathy, and is already giving her and Maggie some financial support.
"I told Cathy… it doesn't matter what I do, I can 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."
Cathy is now hoping to visit the UK.
Netto says that, to his knowledge, Phill is the only one of his clients' fathers so far to be sending their children money.
We asked local Kenyan lawyer Kelvin Kubai, who has set up a charity called Connecting Roots Kenya to help financially support British soldiers' children, if he believed there should be a blanket ban on such relationships, given the number of babies born out of wedlock. He firmly disagreed.
"This [would] be very racist in nature because you are asking predominantly white soldiers to avoid black women [just] because they may bring them trouble. The only… feasible solution… [is] just to ensure that these men are held accountable when they father children during their training duration in Kenya."
Netto and Kubai's work is continuing they say, with more cases due to be brought before the High Court in the next few months.
The Ministry of Defence told us: "Where a criminal accusation of unlawful activity against UK Service Personnel does not exist, and no specific concerns have been raised by local police, then the UK MoD would not investigate. Some of the paternity claims may relate to consensual relationships, which are not against UK MoD policy."
Brig Simon Ridgway, commanding officer of the Collective Training Group which delivers British Army training, added that those affected by paternity issues should engage with the Kenyan national children's service. "They then engage with the UK and we then provide whatever support in terms of answering questions and dealing with those allegations as they come in."
December's Kenyan parliamentary inquiry called on the Nairobi government to put in place new mechanisms "to hold Batuk soldiers accountable for child support to children born out of consensual relations, including DNA-testing and psychosocial support for children fathered by Batuk soldiers".
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