TV animal expert Leon Towers, 46, has been reunited with his mum who fled without her children 45 years ago.
Audrey Clifford was just 20 years of age when she fled her home, blaming her in-laws for the death of husband Brian who died when her youngest son was just six weeks old.
Fleeing on her own, she left her two children – six-week-old Leon and older sister Nikki, who was two at the time, in the care of her in-laws whom she blamed for her husband’s death.
Despite Audrey blaming her in-laws for Brian’s death, Leon and Nikki were brought up to believe that it was their mum’s fault that their dad was dead.
When Leon felt as though he “didn’t belong anywhere” he decided to take a deep dive into his past and asked on Facebook if anyone had known his dad.
Old family and friends soon started to reach out – something that left Leon feeling completely taken aback.
After some digging online Leon found out that his mum Audrey had been scapegoated by his father Brian’s family – not only this, but he also learned that his father’s family forced her to flee without her kids.
Wanting to reach out to his mum, Leon tracked down his mum on social media and dropped her a message which read: “So sorry for the life you’ve gone through. You’ve had nothing but misery.”
Four minutes later his mum replied and that was the first time that they ever spoke online, with Audrey telling her son that she had been too scared to contact him.
“We began speaking every day. We had so much to catch up on,” Leon told The Mirror.
“On my birthday last June she sent me 46 birthday cards. She’d never sent me one before so she sent me the full range – for a one-year-old, two-year-old… all the way.”
Audrey had seen her son on the TV when he featured on Channel 4 ’s Embarrassing Pets and BBC’s Crufts, she thought she would never get the chance to get to know him properly.
According to Stella Media, Leon is a qualified Dog Behaviourist, Nutritionist and Hydro-therapist.
In a decade he has worked with more than 10,000 dogs and improved the lives of their owners using only positive reinforcement.
The website also states that Leon was once a full-time foster parent to over 12 children, stating: “it was after the last child left home and left him with empty nest syndrome that he saw a documentary on hydrotherapy and turned his caring and nurturing side to animals.”
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Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
