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| The 51-year-old defendant was pictured arriving in court in March before she was found guilty of kidnapping Zephany Nurse |
A seamstress who kidnapped a three-day-old baby and raised her as her own for nearly 18 years was today jailed for ten years for ‘causing so much harm’ to the girl and her devastated birth parents.
The 51-year-old woman had ‘betrayed and lied’ to the stolen child, the judge told her in a stinging rebuke, before he sent her to the cells.
Outside court, the kidnapper’s relatives and the birth family of the girl – who has become known as South Africa’s Madeleine McCann – came close to blows following the short, but tense hearing in Cape Town.
The story of how the girl named Zephany by her birth parents, Morne and Celeste, was snatched from her sleeping mother’s arms in April 1997, has gripped South Africa for almost two decades.
The incredible turn of events that led to her recovery 18 months ago, seemed to be the happy ending everyone had hoped for.
After losing Zephany when she was just three days old, Morne and Celeste never gave up hope that she was alive – throwing parties every year on her birthday to keep her memory alive, which were widely covered in the media.
But it was not until last year when their 13 year old daughter, Cassidy, told them about her new, older friend at school with whom she felt an inexplicable bond, that Morne became convinced that his long lost daughter had finally been found.
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| Zephany, pictured as a baby, was stolen from Groote Schuur hospital in Cape Town, in April 1997 |
Cassidy said her new friend bore a striking resemblance to her and her parents and DNA tests later confirmed the teenager was Zephany.
In fact, the teenager now 18 was living just a few streets away from the Nurse family.
Like the kidnapper’s husband – whom she believed to be her father – she had no idea of her true identity.
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| One of the 17 birthday cakes made for the Nurse family’s beloved daughter, featuring her picture |
Today Judge John Hlope condemned the kidnapper, who cannot be identified, for failing to return the stolen child to her distraught birth parents and showing ‘no remorse’ for the appalling deception against her own and Zephany’s family.
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| The Nurse family celebrated Zephany’s birthday each year in her absence, in the hope that one day she might return to them |
He told the packed court: ‘You had all the opportunity in the world to return to the child.
‘Year in and year out, the parents marked the birthday and made the event public and there was wide publicity.
‘There is no way you did no know that this was their child, but you decided to keep her anyway.’
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| The family worked hard to make sure people don’t forget about their missing daughter over the years, including a big appeal in 2010 in the local newspaper the Cape Argus, but no one ever came forward |
During her trial for kidnapping and fraud, the woman denied she had taken the baby and told the court she had suffered a string of miscarriages and heartbreak before meeting a mysterious woman called ‘Sylvia’ at a hospital in Cape Town, who later sold her a baby at a busy train station.
To date, she denies she had dressed in a nurse’s uniform in order to snatch tiny Zephany from her mother’s arms.
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| Zephany’s biological parents, Morne and Celeste Nurse, embraced each other after the woman who kidnapped their daughter was jailed for 10 years today |
An earlier attempt to take another newborn at the Groote Schuur hospital had been foiled by the mother, the court heard.
Although the reunion between Zephany and her parents was initially celebrated as a ‘dream come true’ for both sides, relations between them have since soured.
