South African woman jailed for newborn baby kidnapping 19 years ago

A South African court Monday handed down a 10-year prison term to a woman who kidnapped a newborn baby and raised her for 17 years before an astonishing coincidence reunited the girl with her biological family, media reported.


The kidnapping victim, who named by her birth family as Zephany Nurse, was taken from her sleeping mother at a maternity ward at Groote Schuur Hospital in 1997.

Her kidnapper, now 52, raised her as her own. The girl’s real identity only came to light in February 2015, when her younger biological sister began attending high school and pupils pointed out her remarkable likeness to a final-year student.

The younger girl told her parents, who met the older girl and immediately thought she could be their long-lost child.

The Nurse family had been living within a couple of kilometres (miles) of their kidnapped daughter, while celebrating her birthday every year and never giving up hope of finding her.