Facebook may have stolen much of its UK audience from those people who used Friends Reunited, but now Facebook has stolen away the great success stories as well. Friends Reunited tried to reinvent itself as ‘Genes Reunited’, a website that helped people get in touch with long lost relatives. However it was never really that successful due to a small userbase. Now Facebook is succeeding where Friends Reunited failed, by reuniting a woman from
Liverpool with a son she hadn’t seen in 27 years.
Three year old Gavin Paros was taken from his mother by her husband in 1982 and she never saw him again. Avril Grube looked for her son without luck, but her husband had taken her son and fled to Hungary. Avril and her sister Beryl tried the Hungarian Embassy and even Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, but with no luck.
27 years later and Avril has been reunited with her now 30 year old son, and her grandchildren who she never knew she had, all because of Facebook and a little help from Google. A search on Google revealed that Gavin had a Facebook page, where he could be contacted, in Hungary.
The search wasn’t quite over yet however as Gavin didn’t reply to the message as he didn’t look at Facebook very often. Luckily Avril tried harder and contacted some of his family and friends who were on his friends list, and that led her to Gavin, and her 27 year search for her son came to an end.
The two were then reunited over Skype before meeting up in person on Dorset, where Grube now lives.
Between Facebook, Google and Skype a woman has been reunited with a son who was stolen from her.
