[imagesource: Facebook / @SonWhereRU]

Salomé Vonita Tadford fell pregnant in horrific circumstances she was just 13 years old and then mysteriously lost her son when he was three months old.

Confirmed pregnant after being sexually assaulted by her half-brother, her parents sent her to a place for unmarried young mothers so that she could give birth in secret.

She gave birth to a beautiful boy, who she named Frits Brandon, completely alone on September 17, 1981, a day that would become a feature for a large portion of the rest of her life.

She shared with News24 how her son was taken when she returned home:

…without any warning, people arrived at the house, claiming they were welfare workers. At the time, her parents were at work and Tadford, confused and alone, watched helplessly as they took her son away.

She never saw him again, nor did she know where he was taken. She was only left with one photo of him, which she carried wherever she went.

That photo can be seen above and is also the profile photo of the Facebook page, called SonWhereRU, that Tadford created to bring awareness to her tragic story.

Although she married and had more children, she never gave up on finding her firstborn.

All that hope and prayer was well-received, as Tadford finally found her son las month.

She shared the moment that she found out that her son was alive and well on her Facebook page:

Load shedding problems aside, she managed to get the details of where her now 40-year-old son was via a woman named Lente.

Lente had matched the details of Tadford’s story to those of her friend, also named Brandon, and sent Tadford a message:

Hello, I’m sorry to bother you so early. But your story has me in tears, and I think I may have information. I know a Brandon; his birthday is 18 September 1981, and not the 17th, and on his adoption papers, it says Fritz Brandon Olmar Erasmus. Could it be the same person? ….

After reasonable disbelief and back-and-forth, Tadford recognised the handwriting on Brandon’s birth certificate, which confirmed that he was her long-lost son:

“My son is alive! Not only that, somebody knows where he is,” she recalls of her thought process during that life-changing moment.

She managed to chat with Brandon himself and they arranged to meet up in Pretoria where Brandon lived some way away from her in Krugersdorp:

Image: Facebook

Meeting her son after 40 years of worry and wonder must have been completely overwhelming:

“I finally have my arms around my son. After over 40 years, I get to hold my son in my arms again. Even though I must stand on my toes to reach around his neck! He has grown up to be quite a tall man,” Tadford wrote after this momentous day.

…”That night, I climbed into bed. My prayers have changed. It’s no longer ‘keep him safe and return him to me’, my prayers now are ‘Thank you, God, for returning him to me and keeping him safe all these years’.”

Brandon lost both his adoptive parents when he was younger – his adoptive mother died in a crash in 1992 when he was 11 and his father passed away in 2009 – so having his birth mother in his life now is even more touching.

In fact, Tadford is a grandmother as Brandon has been married for three years and has a 16-year-old daughter.

Consider your heart sufficiently warmed.

[source:news24]