For further information:
Louise Zayed
Senior Press Officer
Tel: +353 1 419 3428
louise.zayed@tv3.ie
Kevin Shore
Press Officer
Tel: +353 1 419 3387
kevin.shore@virginmedia.ie
publicity@tv3.ie
TV3 GROUP RELEASE
IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Tuesday 29th December, 2015.
TV3 revisits its most memorable ‘Adoption Stories’ to find out ‘what happened next’!
This brand new TV3 series returns to some of the most gripping stories we saw over the first two series to see where they are now and how they are doing.
In Episode 1, we catch up with Liwen from series one, an adorable little girl who had been adopted from China by Angela Martin and Ciaran Flanagan.
The night we finished filming with them, Angela discovered she was pregnant!
Liwen is now starting to ask questions about her natural mother, particularly what she might look like and what she might be interested in. She is also starting to grasp the one child policy that lead to her adoption.
The brand new series of ‘Adoption Stories – What Happened Next’ airs this Tuesday (5th January 2016) at 8.30pm on TV3.
Video link and interviews are available on request.
The hugely successful documentary series, Adoption Stories produced by Flawless Films for TV3, returns for a brand new season entitled Adoption Stories – What Happened Next, revisiting some of the most memorable stories from the first two series and taking a look at where they are now. Since the very first series of Adoption Stories in 2010, things have changed drastically for many of the people and families featured in our earlier series, so too have attitudes toward adoption, both public and personal, and not always positively. This highly emotive programme looks back at some of the most heart-warming and heart-breaking cases and follows up with those families to see what happened next.
In the first episode of the series, we met four-year-old Liwen, an adorable little girl who had been adopted from China by Angela Martin and Ciaran Flanagan, who live in Stamullen, Meath. They had seen pictures of babies abandoned in China due to their one child policy and felt they could offer a safe, loving home with them and their three sons, Kyran, Tommy and Sean.
Angela and Ciaran spoke of the adoption process here, the length of time it took, what was entailed and what happened after they received their declaration to adopt from the Adoption Authority of Ireland. We saw their first meeting with Liwen, who was about fourteen months old at the time, and what life had been like since for all of them.
At the time, Angela and Ciaran had started the process again, in order to adopt another child from China, so Liwen would have a sibling she could return to China with, if they wanted to trace their natural families. This would complete their family, as five children was the most the authorities would allow them to have. The night we finished filming with them, Angela discovered she was pregnant.
A few weeks ago, we caught up with Liwen, who has grown into a lovely nine-year old and shares her very pink bedroom with four-year-old Moya, a bundle of laughter. Like all sisters, they play happily together and then fight over nothing. Liwen is starting to ask questions about her natural mother, particularly what she might look like and what she might be interested in. She is starting to grasp the one child policy that lead to her adoption, but she also dreams of inventing a time machine that would allow her to travel back to the time of her birth to see her mother.
The boys are all grown up and gorgeous. None of them see Liwen as being any different to Moya, their natural sister. In fact, they all think that seeing a child from another culture as part of an Irish family is not unusual any more. To them, they are a normal, everyday family and do nothing different to every other Irish family, even though Liwen is, as she puts it, 'Chirish'.
The brand new series of ‘Adoption Stories – What Happened Next’ airs this Tuesday (5th January) at 8.30pm on TV3.
Images have been sent to your picture desks & are available on request.
ENDS
For further information
Ciara Byrne – Press Officer – 01 419 3428/087 319 9732
Sharon McHugh – Head of Press & Publicity – 087 922 4143
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