News

Girl Kidnapped After Birth Meets Biological Sister At School 17 Years Later

by Gillian Fuller

Celeste and Morné Nurse never gave up on finding their baby girl, Zephany.

At just three days old, the infant was taken from Cape Town's Groote Shuur Hospital by an unidentified female.

A police report filed at the time claimed that “the unknown female spoke to the mother about the baby and the mother fell asleep, when the nurse came to wake the mother up, Zephany was gone.”

Though search and rescue efforts yielded no results, the Nurse family never gave up hope that their baby girl was alive.

Every year, they'd celebrate Zephany's birthday on April 28 with their other three children.

In a 2010 interview with the Weekend Argus, Morné insisted that he'd one day find his daughter.

He said,

I'll never, ever give up hope. I can feel it in my gut -- my daughter is out there and she is going to come home.

And incredibly, five years later, she did.

When Zephany's biological sister Cassidy started high school last month, students were shocked at how similar the two girls, supposedly from different families, looked.

Morné, too, was taken aback -- so much so, that he contacted police and requested a DNA test, which soon confirmed  Zephany was his long-lost daughter.

Authorities have since arrested a 50-year-old woman in connection with Zephany's abduction.

According to police,

The suspect is being charged with kidnapping, fraud, and contravening sections 32 (4) (a) and (b) of the Children's Act — in that she fraudulently pretended that she was the biological mother of a child.

Zephany, they added, “has since been placed in the care of the Department of Social Services of the Western Cape Government” and is awaiting her return to her biological family.

Citations: Zephany Nurse Kidnapped South African Baby Discovered (People), Kidnapped newborn baby finds parents 17 years later after meeting identical sister at school (Metro )