Dad finds out son not his after 21 years
A DNA test has left British man Andy Phillips without a son and the realisation that his wife lied to him for 22 years, London's Daily Mail reports this morning.
Mr Philips remembers vividly the emotional day in November 1990 that Jordan was born at Tameside General Hospital in Derbyshire and placed in his arms.
He remembers buying him his first drum kit and watching amazed as his little boy immediately beat in perfect time to Hey Jude! by The Beatles, the Mail reports.
But now the happy memories have been obliterated by the memory of 21-year-old Jordan turned up on Mr Philips' doorstep with the results of a DNA test.
"Jordan said there was something he had to tell me," he told the Mail. "He paused, and then he said: 'You're not my dad'."
Since then Mr Philips has tried to understand how he could have been so horribly deceived by Jordan's mother, 42-year-old Andrea Roberts.
Forced to pay child support after they separated when Jordan was seven, Mr Philips believes that his wife always suspected the boy was not really his son.
A bitter court case ended this week with Ms Roberts agreeing to pay Mr Philips $35,000, but Jordan is no longer to speaking to the man he once called 'Dad'.
Mr Philips told the Daily Mail he still "loves him like a son".
"He doesn't want to know me," he said. "It's as if I've lost him twice over."
Ms Robert told the court she didn't know for certain that Jordan wasn't Mr Philips' son under the DNA test in October 2011.
She wrote to Mr Philips telling him she wasn't a "bad person".
"I truly didn't have a plan at 18 years old, but as a terrified, immature, confused girl whose own father turned his back on me, I took each day and tried to do what was best at the time. You and I were together and that's how I wanted it to be. I'm not a bad person and wouldn't want to hurt anyone," she wrote.
However, to add salt to Mr Philips wounds, Ms Roberts is now in a relationship with Jordan's biological father - her former childhood sweetheart.
According to the Daily Mail, court documents reveal the couple met in a Derbyshire pub in 1989 when Andrea was 17 and Andy 19.
"She approached me," Mr Philips said. "She was very pretty and chatty. We started going out together and I'd always walk her home afterwards. I was very loyal to her, right from the start."
But several months after they became lovers, she cheated on him with her first boyfriend, Paul Rothery, another former pupil from Glossop Comprehensive who Mr Philips knew from playing football at the local youth club.
Ms Roberts claims her affair was a one-night stand.
"I can't forgive Andrea for not coming herself to tell me," he said. "I can't think what Jordan went through having to break that news to me because his mother didn't have the guts to do it.
"He'd already known for a few months, so I wonder if he'd done his grieving. He said that it wouldn't affect our relationship and that he still saw me as his father and that wouldn't change. I was in absolute shock but I said the same: that I loved him and he'd always be my son."
According to the Daily Mail, Mr Philips' solicitor Roger Terrell said paternity fraud claims were increasing.
In January 2013, in what was believed to be the first case of its kind, another of his clients received $46,000 in damages after discovering the son and daughter he had raised were not his.
Since then Mr Terrell has been contacted by dozens of other men who have been similarly deceived - it is estimated that one in 25 fathers are unwittingly raising children who are not theirs, the Mail says.
