Yes, she is ‘horribly misguided’.
She has shared her triumph that she had found him & now she has something that is just the two of them together. He did not & could not consent to that photo - it smacks of revenge after he had let her down. She still has to live with not knowing her father at all. Those moments & that photo will not serve her well, her heart will still ache.
Were I her half-sibling who knew of this photo & then her sharing this on social media – as others have said, her posts can be shared by anyone in that group – I would have absolutely nothing to do with her. Maybe her bio father was wary of her so chose not to meet her, chose not to introduce her to his other children.
‘ This is horribly unfair and unkind, but unfortunately very common.’
I query that statement. Being contacted out of the blue to be told that you are an unknown adult’s biological father is a huge matter. Some people (he, his family/friends) may have had a hunch about the baby given what was going on at the time of conception, but it can be a massive shock for the man. If the child has the heat of unmet needs & high expectations, this can make the relationship very challenging from the outset, & some people just cannot deal with this so keep their distance. It is unlikely an intentional act of unkindness or being horrid. Understandably, for the adult child, it can be very very difficult to take that new rejection. This is why there are formal processes around people tracing their adoptive parents, where counselling is offered to support the adult child, & newly found parent(s), as the knowledge gained & everything thereafter may not meet or the unmet needs & even worsen the heartache.
I am concerned that some of these closed or tight groups on social media that search for missing fathers (& mothers) enter into a ‘groupthink’ that is a form of online gaming where the quest is everything & must be solved or won by any means. The victor takes the spoils, but this is real life.
This is the dark underbelly of the convergence of sperm only/fatherless conception, children growing up without the barest knowledge of their paternity, consumer DNA testing & social media.
Long before donor conception, DNA testing & SM, I knew people who struggled with not knowing who their father was because of adoption, their mother’s refusal to name their father or at worst due to rape.
It can be hard enough to grow up without knowing your father due to death or estrangement. Fortunately most children can come to terms with this loss & make their own sense of this, often because they have attachment & contact with their father’s extended family. But for those who do not have even his name, the scantest of information or his extended family to tether to, this is an open emotional wound that can debilitate or destabilise attachments well into adulthood.
Throwing on the high octane fuel of affordable DNA genealogy testing, closed groups & social media on to the burning embers of the running hurt & loss of not knowing who your father is a recent thing. It is a potent mix.
I have great sympathy for children & adults who do not know anything of their father. I have friends & relatives who live with this massive unknown & uncertainty. But this does not give them rights or permissions to go crashing about in other people’s lives.