Woman jailed for kidnap of newborn 20 years ago

A South African woman who kidnapped a newborn nearly two decades ago from a hospital and raised the girl as her own was sentenced yesterday to 10 years in jail.

Judge John Hlophe in Cape Town announced the sentence, telling the 52-year-old convicted kidnapper that she had caused “immense” pain to the biological parents whose baby was taken from them, the African News Agency reported.

Publicly, the young woman who was kidnapped as a baby is known as Zephany Nurse, the name given to her by her biological parents (below) and used in the media in the years since her disappearance.