{"id":23832,"date":"2016-03-11T00:52:21","date_gmt":"2016-03-11T00:52:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/south-african-kidnapper-of-baby-zephany-nurse\/"},"modified":"2016-03-11T00:52:11","modified_gmt":"2016-03-11T00:52:11","slug":"south-african-kidnapper-of-baby-zephany-nurse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/south-african-kidnapper-of-baby-zephany-nurse\/","title":{"rendered":"South African kidnapper of baby Zephany Nurse guilty"},"content":{"rendered":"

{A South African woman has been found guilty of kidnapping a three-day-old baby in 1997.}<\/p>\n

Police accused her of fraudulently claiming to be the girl’s mother since snatching her from a hospital in Cape Town.<\/p>\n

The 51-year-old woman was arrested last year after suspicions were raised when there was a similar-looking girl at the child’s school.<\/p>\n

DNA tests then proved that the two girls were sisters, police said.<\/p>\n

The kidnapped girl’s biological parents, Celeste and Morne Nurse, called her Zephany, but the name she grew up with has not been revealed to protect her identity.<\/p>\n

The convicted woman, who has been denied bail while she awaits sentencing, has also not been named for similar reasons.<\/p>\n

Zephany had been living with the accused, near the Nurse family’s home in the Cape Flats, a mainly working class neighbourhood in Cape Town, when she was identified last year.<\/p>\n

The discovery came after one of the Nurse family’s other daughters started going to a local secondary school and noticed a similarity with an older girl.<\/p>\n

Mr Nurse told the court that he took the two girls out for lunch and began asking Zephany about her life.<\/p>\n

He said that her date of birth matched the day his daughter was kidnapped, and added that a photo he was shown of Zephany’s mother looked nothing like her.<\/p>\n

He said he then spent a month gathering evidence before going to the police.
\nA DNA test showed that he had found his missing daughter.<\/p>\n

A nationwide search in 1997 failed to find her.<\/p>\n

{{‘Fairy tale’}}<\/p>\n

In her evidence, the accused woman said she believed she had legally adopted the child after her own pregnancy ended in a miscarriage.<\/p>\n

She said she was handed a new-born baby at a busy railway station by a woman called Sylvia, who cannot be found.<\/p>\n

She also said that she had signed adoption papers, but they have been lost.
\nGiving his verdict, Judge John Hlophe described the defendant’s account as a fairy tale and said the “court rejects it with the contempt it deserves”.<\/p>\n

The accused told the BBC before the verdict was issued that she was a victim too as she feels she was tricked into taking Zephany.<\/p>\n

She also apologised to the Nurse family “for everything they went through”.<\/p>\n

\"Zephany<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

{A South African woman has been found guilty of kidnapping a three-day-old baby in 1997.} Police accused her of fraudulently claiming to be the girl’s mother since snatching her from a hospital in Cape Town. The 51-year-old woman was arrested last year after suspicions were raised when there was a similar-looking girl at the child’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[249],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-23832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-bbc"],"bylines":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"contributors":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23832\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23832"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=23832"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=23832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}