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'My grandfather is my father'

A woman who was adopted as a baby has told of the shocking moment she found out she was a child of incest, after learning her grandfather had raped her mother for years on end.

When Lois Buch decided to track down her biological mother in 1992, she said meeting her was “just extraordinary”.

“It was like looking at my twin,” Ms Buch said on SBS’s Insight.

Questions about her father were off-limits and all she managed to get out of her mother was that she fell pregnant at age 16 to “a boy she want to high school with”.

Lois Buch, when she was a young girl. Photo: SBS
Lois Buch, when she was a young girl. Photo: SBS

Four years after their meeting, Ms Buch’s mother died of cancer, leaving her daughter with countless questions about her family history.

“When she died, I really kind of thought the secret had died with her,” she said.


Until she messaged her mother’s sister on Facebook in 2012.

"I will tell you, but you need to see me face to face and you need to prepare yourself for the worst,” came the reply from her aunt.

20 years after first meeting her mother, Ms Buch finally found out the truth.

“She told me that my biological grandfather was my father. So my birth mother had been raped over many, many years, right through her childhood by her own father,” Ms Buch told Insight.

She said there was a second child born in similar circumstances who was also adopted.

“I think I was in shock honestly for about six months.”

Ms Buch told Insight she was in shock for at least six months after finding out the shocking news. Photo: SBS
Ms Buch told Insight she was in shock for at least six months after finding out the shocking news. Photo: SBS

Realising her birth mother was also her sister played a huge role in her psychological trauma and she sought the immediate help of counsellors.

Ms Buch said she recalled meeting her grandfather on several occasions when she was younger but at that time did not know “what impact he had in my being here”.

She described him as “the quiet man sitting in the corner” who never made eye contact with her.

He passed away before she ever got the chance to confront him.

News break – May 18