Annie: Out of the Ashes (Extraordinary Person Documentary) | Real Stories

[Music] thank you for calling the london fire and emergency planning authority if your call is for an emergency please hang up and redial 999. i was just wondering if you have any information from a fire in january 1986 i do appreciate it quite a long time ago so i was in a caravan fighter i was a baby i was only a few weeks old i was born into a gypsy family my mum was white so as a husband and i came out black the story i was told was that my mum put me in a caravan and set light to it so i guess she didn't want me around after the fire annie was taken into care and later adopted by a white non-gypsy family it's exciting guys yeah little road trip fascinated by her story and extraordinary resilience i'm going to spend the next four months helping annie learn more about where she came from i want to look into my past will it impact my identity my core values because i've had so many other things to take on board adoption being banned and being a mixed race i just feel like a bit of a blur i don't feel like i'm part of any one group i'm very interested in any information you may have about the original residence someone rescued me i don't know who i've been led to believe that someone saw the fire i saw what happened took me out of the caravan and then put me in hospital we want to see if it's possible to find out who rescued annie if i was to meet the person that saved me i would be very overwhelmed because what do you say you gave me life [Music] keep going keep going he goes 30 year old annie is a personal trainer and runs a gym with her fiance sam fitness for me has always been about adding value to my life can i find out where my limit is i like feeling strong i'm looking forward to having this as a nice fireplace sounds good to me annie and sam are in the process of setting up home together and are planning to get married next year i like the lamb we just need to get a lamp head this is definitely a start a new chapter i hope we can have a family in the near future so that's why i'm interested in finding out more about my my own history how are you feeling about the whole thing over the next few weeks so i haven't really let myself think of it sounds ridiculous now after what what we're about to do at the moment i'm just hoping i don't upset anyone i'm i'm i'm a bit nervous but appropriately nervous i think because you don't know what to expect and i hope that it all yeah i don't know you don't almost don't let yourself hope for something really good just in case it's you know i think you'd probably never be in a better position as well in terms of the amount of people that actually care for you and around you to actually put yourself in a position where you're going to be a bit of uncertainty so completely agree with that either way you can fall and you can fall a million ways and know that you're going to be fine it's true isn't it it's a lovely thing today so practicing that for a week oh hey we could have a glass of wine at some point i said you can't drive in but we can in life i have so many questions for you yes we should actually i'd love that okay one question i do need to ask which is a difficult one how does it feel when you were growing up to know that the woman who gave birth to you wanted to kill you i don't think any person with a happy normal childhood would think that's an option to do that to their child so i kind of just felt bad for her and i don't know what kind of life she must have had i was a baby she didn't know who i was she wasn't trying to kill me as a human being as i am as a person she didn't want me for whatever reason you can't condone those things annie's made it clear to me that this isn't about finding long lost family it's about understanding the culture characters and events that led to a fire which nearly killed her and trying to find out who saved her yeah the one person who holds some clues about annie's past is her adoptive mum what i've brought with me are official documents i've never found the right time to introduce them she might and he might be quite cross with me because i've kept them hidden for so many years i don't know how she's going to react maggie already had two children of her own before adopting annie this is going to sound really soppy but i found with both of my other other two there was an actual physical bonding process with as in i felt this thing i cannot describe it but it was physical that this is my child and i'll do everything i can to do what i have to do and look after this child and annie was probably she was about 18 months i thought this child needs me with her when she wakes up in the night when she's waking up with all these bandages on her and everything [Music] and that was i just i want to keep her so that's when we started the process hiya hello how are you i'm fine how are you i'm really good thank you all right are you gonna make me one of these nice coffees then annie i will indeed my relationship with my adoptive mum is very good i would say i'm very lucky to have a lady like her bring me up so you're gonna have to show me the gym did you bring your kit that'd be silly when did i last had gym kits in the living room i grew up in a very happy house and a very strong house in a way that you always be proud of who you are and i definitely owe that to to her keep your drink well away please because they're originals before the days of computers and all the rest of it we should have probably got these documents out years ago we did mum we did i don't want to see them so it's not your fault describes herself as an irish gypsy she's approximately five foot six tall is well built has dark hair and striking blue eyes she's taller than me then biddy has been described as seeming to be quite intelligent and articulate though illiterate these attributes makes her more human her behavior prior to annie's birth would indicate that she finds it difficult to place the needs of a child before her own though this may have been related to her mental instability what the hell does that mean only i don't know i always tried to give you the truth but as much as i thought was appropriate it was widely suspected by both the gypsy community and the social worker that annie's birth mum left her alone in a caravan and set fire to it social services always said if we thought we could had grounds for prosecution we would be trying to prosecute but we have no witnesses no no proof of anything yeah but they didn't ever really believe that it was a totally total accident [Music] annie's birth mum kept the identity of the biological father a secret from everyone even before the fire she'd already expressed her concerns about keeping annie biddy has on two occasions requested that annie would place for adoption on the grounds that a mixed-race child of uncertain parentage would not be accepted by the family and that both mother and child would be ostracized she recognises that her infidelity is of a most serious nature when annie was 13 years old she was shown a news report stating that her birth mother had died that year a 32 year old caused a fire by dropping a cigarette after falling asleep managed to dial 999 for help it's a very strange coincidence that she died through third degree burns the the percentage that i've got myself after giving her a dress she had said i can't stop the fire my skin is burned save me i can't stop i didn't feel huge loss in that way that i guess most people would but i did feel like it was quite final in the way that if i ever wanted answer obviously i'm never going to get it i glued my hair today and i got glue all over the other hair so if you see big clumps of glue in my hair it won't be blue color it'll be like just stuck together here just tell me and i'll have to cut my [ __ ] hair have you got your own hair i've got a tiny bit but i basically shaved it off so it's pretty much annie's had a lifetime of surgery on her burns and is currently considering another operation on her nose how are you getting on yeah really good it feels tons better and that's gone pretty well possible scarring it looks yeah over the years my burns haven't really affected me terribly but i do think i've engineered that [Music] you've got i remember a couple of times a couple of kids at school said something but at the time it didn't really bother me that much i was very lucky a lot of good friends around i think i might have kicked a boy in the shin after he said something rude the keloid like the lumps here have you seen other people with it and does it go down it does tend to go down yeah does it really the time yeah does it yeah it does social services were originally holding out for an afro-caribbean family for annie until they finally agreed to maggie adopting her she was still officially in care there was a lot of time that the doctors wanted me to have lots of operations when i was younger so the child of the state and not actually belong to any one person to sort of stick in my corner they were kind of like score because you don't really often get someone that's that badly burned and alive so they got to try out lots of operations they wanted me to have my hairline move forward i wasn't convinced and it would have taken me out of time to see my friends being at school training i was trampolining at the time um so a lot of operations i i could have had i didn't i think what we've discussed before is to try and lengthen uh the nose and bring the tip of the nose down my mum made the right decision i think to decide to get me to keep living with how i looked going to school making friends you know i had to more importantly deal with looking how i do than trying to spend my whole life especially the early years trying to make it better see you soon okay bye-bye getting on with things makes you just focus on a the things you want to do out in life and how you can cope in situations if problems arise could i have grown up with a lot more anger of course that's the easy option i think to be quick to hate but why waste your life what wastes of life to be sad and angry should be ridiculous be no point in being saved at all it's clear that the effort it's taken annie to come this far in life has been huge i can see why it's only now she's ready to delve deeper into the story behind her scars and learn more about the culture she was born into going back to your birth mum and what you were told happened what do you think would have been the thing that brought the most shame onto the family was it your colour do you think or the fact that she'd have an affair my adoptive mum did mention that it would have been very difficult growing up being mixed race um in a gypsy community i know that that was part of it but i don't know i don't know annie has never mixed with gypsies and hasn't been on a caravan site since she was a baby my adoptive mum made a huge effort to make sure we spoke about travellers gypsies a lot in the way that the books i read it was included in my upbringing i don't want to pretend that i know huge amounts about gypsy culture mainly because i haven't lived it i'm meeting a guy called joe jones who i was put in touch with through the gypsy council so i'm looking forward to actually getting to chat to someone face to face and ask all my questions hi hello joseph yeah i'm joe oh i love you my name is joseph how are you how are you good how are you i'm fine thank you the gypsy council act as spokespeople for romanies and travellers across the uk the portrayal of gypsies in the media seems very one-sided and very very shocking they definitely seem to have picked out all the harsher scarier stories of travellers brilliant this is great i've always liked that they've got a very strong culture and look after one another and like a big group you could say that we lived a sheltered life but then we lived a life the media and politicians counsellors they all still believe in a 500 year old myth they don't realize that we're human beings like anyone else the only difference between us is that we like living in close family units and we like to live in caravans i want to pay my council tax i want to pay income tax i want to be a part of the community but i also want to be a gypsy that's the bit they can't get so what made you want to embark on this thing i was um burnt in a fire when i was a baby in a caravan fire i i nearly lost two children in a caravan fire really yeah my job boy and kelly oh my god so it was quite common caravan fires in them days were open fires right okay yeah yeah right you would have your doors open and you're in the trailer you only have one form of heating and that was that then they went over the paraffin which was quite explosive how often would you say a caravan is set like on purpose what would you say that well the only time the caravan is deliberately set alive is after the funeral the community itself to burn a caravan deliberately no i can't see that that would be there wouldn't be any reason for it so my mother i was told put me in a caravan and set light to it there and why would she do that because her husband was um also gypsy and he was white and i came out black there's no gypsy mother or irish traveler mother i know they would rather run off with that chaffee didn't do such a thing listen to me i know a traveling women that have gone off with an afro caribbean yeah and had children by them and stuck by them i've been dogmatised and vilified by our own community there's no way in the world i won't i wouldn't believe that did you did you understand do you understand i don't know it's fine i don't really i'm not blaming anyone for it no there's no there's nothing i wouldn't believe that that's something i wouldn't believe it i've known one thing for ages yeah and now i almost feel bad that i've saw i've never blamed anyone but imagine like you hear one thing and then just i feel like an idiot i feel like why would i not you know circle dance around this story who would i normally question everything why would i not question that it's all here to say you don't know the facts if there was any evidence whatsoever right she would have been prosecuted she would be in all the way she would have done a long time [Music] in the 1980s there were an average of 2000 caravan fires every year across the uk many of which were fatal [Music] just think of her now i think like horrible when i first realized i thought that it might not be deliberate it sort of knocked me for six a little bit it made me feel very i was very shocked i felt my first feeling was that i felt bad i felt really guilty so realizing that i just felt this overwhelming feeling of oh you know annie like why wouldn't you give her a chance i resumed everything i'd heard was gospel and i kept it in a little box and just thought that was it and left it there instead of logically thinking about it you know who would really want to harm someone in that manner it's unlikely i should have felt like i should have made more of an effort and dug deeper into what happened [Music] although joe jones believes it was an accident he has seen mothers in similar situations being vilified by the gypsy community we want to know what kind of life annie and her birth mum might have had if annie hadn't been taken into care so i found out about this guy joe peng so he's part roman gypsy i'm part black um grew up between two homes a home in a house and a caravan site so i'm really interested to meet him and see how his life has been different [Music] hi joe hey hello lovely to you yes you too do you have a lot of caribbean food not a great deal right so this is going to be good thank you i don't actually identify with being mixed race but not any more than anything jeremy it's the same as being a girl or a it's just part of me but i'm not going to be like oh i'm mixed race i better have some more recipes so you are also a gypsy your parent from which side is it your mum my mum's my mum's full romani yeah my mom was one of 13. so she got pregnant she didn't tell any of the gypsy side of our families what kind of the baby was going to be they'd probably never even seen a black person oh 1968. so there was none nine and uh when i popped out the first thing my man said was don't bring that thing home oh no that was my introduction to gypsy gypsy life and then racism and everything else kind of i think kind of gets a hold of got hold of my mum i was accepted by my side of the family i was accepted after a period of time but it was constant struggle for my mum and definitely for me having to kind of fight everywhere i went and just being called names like we all know the names the kind of names that you get called so my mom was married to another gypsy they're both wife right they came out black so obviously she showed him the thing she had an affair yes they would deal with cheating different to how we would deal with things out here we've moved on a bit but we're talking 30 odd years ago how do you three it's a man's world so back then it was even more of a man's world where is it okay for a cert it's okay for men to kind of do certain things but it's not for women so the fact that your mom's had an affair bang that's one and the fact that your mother an affair with a black person now bringing him a black baby i can only imagine i can't even imagine really no how hard that must have been for her she knows how tight whipped and how tight-knit the gypsy site is i think your mum would have probably been the worst person ever on that site the fact that she's had an affair and with a black person joe's perspective has shown annie the hostility her birth mother might have faced from the community someone under that much pressure might well have resorted to extreme behavior [Music] maybe it was her idea of getting out of a troubled situation that she thought she was in and that was the option that she thought was the only one that she could take which is horrible i feel terrible for her i'm just calling just because i'm interested in getting hold of some files there's a caravan fire in january opinions on what might have happened on that night 30 years ago have given annie a greater understanding of the community now we want to see what facts might be out there about the fire itself this is as close to pure fact i'm going to get these archives hold historical records for the london fire brigade hi annie i'm david nice to meet you nice to meet you that covers every fire on the 4th of january brilliant is it scary definitely scary yeah acne there's loads of ones with cars what if it wasn't a caravan here we go this looks like it there we go sandy lane mitchum sorry b smith oh [ __ ] my name's on there saying all the names on there and it just makes it more like i don't know i don't know i can't figure out i want family though so i think just tell me what you want to do i don't really don't really care i just like just want to i want to read it but i know i keep looking at it and i'm not taking anything in records are about can be about revelation you know with stories becoming truths or truths becoming stories yeah approximate total number who left their factory property because of the fire too annie always believed she was in the fire alone but this report clearly contradicts that briddy and biddy are both short for bridget was it her birth mum in there with her or was it someone else her being 45 when i was a baby doesn't make sense and in a newspaper report that explained her death she would have come in at about 37 38 then that's a good 10 12 years later than this either that's wrong or this is wrong now look i've got 100 questions supposed cause of fire unrecorded pending recovery or otherwise like they said that it was like they don't know who saved me and that what does that mean do we know i wish i knew do you want to come over here and have a look um the way these things work as as i understand them is they were the reports filled out by the fire began the terms within them i'm afraid i genuinely don't know what what they mean you would probably have to ask the firefighters themselves there's one name on the report that we hope will lead us to the truth the station officer in charge of putting out the fire it's good that i've got a name please say the name of the person or department you wish to contact jk backers was that craig no please of another person or department merton fire park department was that mark jones no it was merton please hold for the operator southwest area support team hi there i'm just calling just because i've recently gone through some records um and a gentleman's name jk backers came up and i was wondering if he's um still working for you or you know know of him no he's not on the sister sorry for being a pain it's just that he it says that he did work for you and he's on the records no i can't see nothing on the system for him okay [Music] i'm not sure how to get hold of him there's got to be another way but i can't quite think now i don't think i don't think i'm still i don't think i'm thinking thinking very clearly at the minute [Music] the fire was on an unauthorized caravan site sandy lane this has got to be it i've been here before it was a temporary stopping place that's now been built on but we want to see if anyone in the area might remember it i haven't seen any now in the years i've been here um and i've never really heard anyone speaking about any either but i know i hear people speaking about the past that there was a lot of travelers around [Music] hello i've just got a very random question for you how long have you been here how long has this been here the garage has been here for about 50 years 50 years oh amazing i've actually been here i'm 59 i've been here for the size 45 oh amazing do you know if there's any ever any other sort of caravan like gypsy traveller sites on sandy lane or around this area not i've never known one in san diego not literally around the corner no not that never no literally would have been around the corner yeah just literally around the corner yeah it seems the sight of the fire was so transitory that it was barely even noticed or remembered by locals what do you mean i was burnt in a caravan there's no bloody caravan what the [ __ ] literally what the flying [ __ ] i feel like i'm like calamity jane i feel like i'm being stupid i don't think you are we're confused as well oh i don't get it i just need something to hold on to here this is so [ __ ] weird frustrated by all the dead ends annie wants to press on with learning more about the gypsy community hi hello ov i'm annie alvey lovely to meet you yeah nice to meet you thank you thank you so much for having me here joe jones has invited us to a caravan site in kent where they teach people about gypsy history basically what we're trying to do is to change people's mindset on gypsies and travelers that's basically what we're what we're all about and also keeping the old ways of life yeah because if you don't know where you've come from how do you know where you're going could i have a little poke around yeah look so nice yeah do you feel in any way like a gypsy yourself i can identify with being part gypsy in the way that it's always been part of my story if you like the children would sleep underneath yeah in the old days and uh there was a seat this side and a seat outside and then you don't order cooking on the fire amazing everything was done on that fire in the winter my mum's always made comments growing up about me being a gypsy and little things i used to do but is this nature is it nurture i don't know i'm really interested in that always have been annie's birth mum was an irish traveler who had married into a romani gypsy family i was led to believe that i would have been rejected by the community the gypsy community because i was black non-gypsy people would actually believe that but in ourselves we know that's that's not true we wouldn't reject any dark-skinned children no it's it's impossible see this woman yeah she's very dark with my cold black she was yeah she looks her hair looks kind of afraid yeah that's me granny really yeah that's my dad's no way yeah we originated from india so it runs through our genetic how do you class yourself if you want to sound like me if someone said i'll wear you from it depends how sort of how much i fancy telling person on the day if i'm honest it's never something that i don't tell people because i'm embarrassed about it's just always something i would people always ask me questions what happened to your face what you know you looked hand oh but you're black oh but you're irish oh you're with your gypsy i'll bet you live here oh but your family are white you're black you know what i mean like there's so many little bits and bobs if you're black white pink purple or whatever color you are you should be proud of what you are and then burns on your face is nothing it's what's here is the main thing yeah right we all carry scars one way or another how do you see how you see us how do i see you yeah it just feels like it feels honestly it feels really normal i feel like i've known you for ages like i feel really relaxed and it's nice yeah of course no it should be like that most gypsy people right i've always had um prejudice against them one way or another so as us being gypsies right we couldn't be prejudiced against anyone because we've had it so much against us i found the whole community very family orientated which was really nice um very warm very inclusive you know why wouldn't you want to take those values with you we're still unclear about the identity of the other person in the fire with annie the woman listed as being 45 so we want to see if it was reported in any local papers which particular year um 86 right okay excellent thank you thank you very much please crack down now oh god this is horrible you don't want to you want to find something but then you don't want to find anything baby saved from blaze a six week old baby and her grandmother were taken to george's hospital cheating after fire destroyed their caravan on a site in sandy lane mitchum on saturday evening it is believed the fire started when a gas heater set light to cushions while annie and 45 year old briddy were asleep and it says grandma so it's a grandma so she was in the fire as well so why would i why do i think it's something else annie had always been told that her mother put her in a caravan alone and set light to it deliberately finding out her grandmother was in there with her changes everything why would i be led to believe another way very strange unless that's what people thought but why would they think that who would come to that conclusion definitely made me think more about any story that i've been given and i have to take things into my own hands i mean i've always known you know there's always three parts of the story there's you know what he said what she said and then the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle we soon found out that annie's grandmother died in 2005 taking her tale of the fire to the grave i feel a bit sad just because i probably should have done this sooner so i started myself and i should should have done it soon [Music] training has always been my time it's just a little bit of time to be on your own i think and a bit of thinking time you know [Music] it's been a bit of a roller coaster and it's been very up and down and so my emotions have been a bit like pulled back facts is always what's needed to make yourself feel better jk backers don't know maybe try john with the caravan site long gone her birth mother and grandmother both dead tracking down the firefighter is our last hope of reaching anyone who was there at the time would you be able to find out if he did once work for you it was in the 80s wanting to take a break from it all annie's visiting her adoptive sister in swansea my sister jay is three years older than me i've got problem or something's upsetting me i can always i know i can call her and she always gives me great advice get your feet wet oh yeah i love wearing wellies it sounds really stupid but i feel like i'm free it's just yeah it's really neat you'll sleep well tonight see ya in the lungs i've been a bit anxious so this is me before you relax this whole thing feels like i've been sticking my hand in you know like a hot water like oh you know i mean you don't know what you're going to get back you've never like walked though have you i remember when you were really young and you had all those dressings remember oh your head and stuff and they they used to bathe them off you so no wonder you didn't like water not me i love it i'm like a fish i know you are you've always kind of defied the odds though i mean mum's always said the nurses and doctors didn't expect you to even survive your first six months after the fire did they they said you wouldn't be able to write and hold a pencil because your hands were so scarred and damaged but you've done all of that you know you're stronger than you think and it's good that you're doing this now because i think you're always going to have a bit of a natural curiosity about yeah your heritage the more and more i do it the more i know i'm doing the right thing like just to understand a bit more and it's actually giving me a bit more confidence which is really strange it's a big deal and i think you need to be in a certain stable uranus you know yeah we're engaged you've got your house you do it working on your life is secure and i think you shouldn't regret like doing it doing it now and not doing it earlier this this is the right time i think [Music] hi there i was wondering if a man called jk backers worked for you why do you need to get hold of it it's regarding me and my family and i just wondered if you could answer some questions that i'm not getting from the forum thank you very much after weeks of searching for the elusive jk backers we've finally got a lead [Music] hi annie i was informed you are trying to get in touch with jk backers as luck would have it i live opposite the daughter of one of his old colleagues i have spoken with john today and he is happy for you to oh wow you to contact him oh amazing i wasn't sure i thought he would be dead that's so rude tonight i think i'd got used to being like oh that's really good i'm happy with that i needed some happiness [Music] i've got this opportunity to actually go and speak to someone that was there that knows about it that's willing as well i'm hoping he'll remember a bit about the day obviously i'm not pinning my hopes on it look at me i'm lying i am i'm already like please remember [Music] we're hoping that the man in charge of putting out the fire that burned annie will finally give us a reliable firsthand account of what happened hello hello john very nice to see you come on in here lovely to meet you i've brought you a few little bits i know it's very silly but i didn't want to come empty-handed it's pretty nice biscuits and some pastries are in there i don't know oh thank you so much for having me oh lovely you coming am i sitting here yeah absolutely brilliant thank you right right this is a home office form 30 years later you come up with come up with this report and sort of uh surprised me uh sorry as you guys sorry i do really appreciate you talking i don't want you to feel like i'm delight because but i'm just amazed that you actually have survived because on this section here i'm recording pending recovery or otherwise because it was expected for accounts that you would not survive more than 24 hours or possibly two days oh really yeah absolutely yeah so the these fit did you write this yes this is all this is my report yes your grandmother was taken to hospital with burnt hands and you was taken elsewhere the ransom burns unit you know that's where you went to now did you see the one no i did not see yourself or your grandmother so they went on the scene when you were there as i arrived the whole of the trailer van was the light and you had already with your grandmother had been vacated to the van and obviously been moved to hospital because it was something farmers are severe and couldn't establish initial calls what i did was i asked for the attendance of the fire investigation team the results of the official investigation have been lost but john backus believes that the newspaper report about the cause of the fire is likely to be correct cutting from the local newspaper at the time of the of the incident it is believed the fire started when a gas heater set light to cushions while annie and 45 year old briddy were asleep that information is normally obtained from the local fire station there's no way of knowing who took annie to hospital but john's got an idea about who saved her life what i suspect happened because your mother's hand burnt she obviously in my view obviously lifted you and carries you out from the van i always think the simplest answer is usually true but sometimes i guess it's best to ask the questions but i just think that it makes sense that it's her hands so i think that she got me out there unfortunately it would appear that your grandmother is no longer alive so really as soon as you will tell you the truth uh but actually it will be able to give you that information you're desperately looking for which is a shame from your perspective you wish i could actually say more than that no i'm sitting here that's more than enough really i'm so glad that i get to speak to you as well can i keep crying i'm so sorry [Music] this is this is brings back lasting memories and even though i get upset about certain issues and sort of stuff thank you so much yeah that wasn't an issue like you know i was willing to help if i possibly can that's what we're here for when you're ready oh teapot i'm gonna i'm gonna get teapot for the house i've done the count one day i think it's approximately 20 22 cups of tea i drink a day nice i love a cup of tea it's so good sammy is so nice like good is a good guy you know like a good guy kind of in called uh invitation to the wedding so yeah there we go that him and his wife are coming it's important for me to speak to john knowing the man that wrote it makes me feel like i can fully believe the report and then that can back up thinking that it was more of an accident it's completely changed everything i thought growing up no logical normal sane person would do what was told but then for me the hard bit was more why was that implied annie is still frustrated by how the story she grew up with came about she wants to get joe jones's take on why such a damning accusation would have been spread hello annie how are you yeah i'm good how are you people will exaggerate something if they don't know anything about you and people hear half a story then they pass that half a story on and then someone adds something else to that story and then it becomes very dramatic you know we were good storytellers our parents our grandparents were good storytellers used to keep us kids amused for hours on end and then as you get older you realise that it wasn't quite what they said there was a little bit it wasn't quite like that we'll never know the absolute truth of what happened that night but we finally unearthed enough for annie to put the story to rest it's just an incident in your life either you let that destroy you yeah or you use it because you seem confident enough i want you to move on [Music] [Applause] i think the stories we grow up with shape who we are our new beliefs which we then take on it builds our character then it builds our own identity because i didn't have any background or people that linked to me i was able to build my own ideas of myself and build blue surround myself now after all everything that's happened i'm certain that that was the right way for me to go and i don't need necessarily to be part of any pac or this group or that group for this group i am my character [Music] annie now has a much deeper understanding of why her birth mum struggled to cope with her arrival [Music] despite the absence of hard facts about the cause of the fire what we have found out has allowed annie to make up her own mind in light of everything that's happened the bets you know in my birth mom's favor now i'm really glad now that i've done this you know you never judge brick lights cover never just regime give everyone a chance everyone [Music]

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Rating: 4.8831201 out of 5

Keywords: Real Stories, Real Stories Full Documentary, Real Stories Documentary, Full length Documentaries, Documentary, TV Shows - Topic, Documentary Movies - Topic, full documentary, full episode, extraordinary people, medical documentary, facial scarring, mystery documentary, medical mystery, traveller community, racism, discrimination, hidden past, uncovering the truth, crime documentary, amazing stories

Id: r7HQ-YPGLuo

Length: 45min 44sec (2744 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 01 2020