How a hidden photo exposed horrific family secret
When Alex Lewis was involved in a motorcycle accident at the age of 18, his life changed forever.
The teen was left with severe long-term memory loss which ultimately wiped away his childhood memories following the crash in the English countryside in 1982.
But in the eyes of his twin brother Marcus, it was a blessing in disguise.
Unbeknown to Alex, he and his brother were victims to years of sexual abuse at the hands of their mother.
He was solely reliant on Marcus – who remarkably was the only person of thing he could remember prior to his accident – to retell every little detail of his previous years and while his brother managed to get him back up to date with large parts of his life, he omitted the darkest part of their past.
Tell Me Who I Am doco exposes childhood abuse
Their remarkable story is the focus of new Netlfix documentary, Tell Me Who I Am, which delves into their complex past and how Alex eventually found out that his brother had been hiding a disturbing truth.
“I painted a picture of a normal family,” Marcus said.
“But none of that was true. It was a fantasy that I was creating for him.”
That fantasy would start to unravel when Alex began taking note of bizarre occurrences, such as his stepfather’s dying plea to the brothers for forgiveness eight years after Alex’s accident.
The brothers, who were born into a wealthy aristocratic family, were then to lose their mother Jill five years later to a brain tumour.
While Alex noted she was distant and far from a loving mother, he had come to care for her since his accident and couldn’t comprehend why Marcus showed no emotion when she passed.
Returning to the family home, where the brothers lived in a separate dwelling on the estate, Alex began to make discoveries that Marcus just couldn’t keep covering up.
While there were Christmas presents that were kept from them stashed in the attic, sex toys found in a bathroom cupboard, it was the discovery of family photos hidden in Jill’s wardrobe that led to Marcus eventually coming clean about their abusive mother.
One alarming image was of the two brothers when they were 10 years old. In the pictured they were naked and their heads had been cut off.
It was at this point Alex asked his brother whether they were sexually abused as children.
“It was too weird. It was too strange,” he said.
Marcus could not hide the truth any longer.
“He put his arm around me, and he said ‘Yeah it’s true’ and then we cried. Both of us,” Alex recalled.
While the bombshell revelation was difficult to comprehend, Alex went in search for more details about what actually happened to them.
Brothers eventually find closure
But Marcus was reluctant and until the filming of the Netflix documentary, he never opened up to his brother over the extent of their abuse.
They first went public with their story in 2013 with the release of their biography of the same name.
But it wasn’t until the making of the Netflix documentary, in conjunction with the National Association for People Abused in Childhood, that Alex finally got the closure he was so desperately seeking.
“We’ve achieved closure beyond anything I could have imagined with each other by making this movie,” Alex told Decider.
“That’s an incredible gift the film has given us.”
They say they hope the documentary will now to break the “taboo” surrounding speaking of previous abuse.
The brothers, who are both now married and have two children each, say despite their harrowing past, they’ve lived “fulfilled lives” and run a successful luxury resort in Zanzibar together.
Tell Me Who I Am is available to watch for Netlfix subscribers now.
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