‘I knew she was my daughter’

Cape Town - Zephany Nurse’s biological father said the first time he saw his daughter 17 years after she was kidnapped as an infant, he had a burning sensation in his chest, which made it impossible to leave her.

On Monday, Morné and his wife, Celeste Nurse, spoke frankly to Cape Talk presenter John Maytham.
The parents of the 17-year-old said they had always known their daughter was alive.
“Deep down in my soul I knew my daughter was out there,” he said.
Zephany was abducted from her mother’s Groote Schuur Hospital bed in 1997, three days after she was born.
Morné Nurse saw Zephany on the first day of the school year, when he went to fetch his second daughter Cassidy, who had just started Grade 8 at a Retreat High School, where Zephany was in matric.
“Cassidy said to me ‘dad, there’s this girl that looks like me; I want you to see it for yourself’.
“From that day when I saw her I felt a strong burning sensation in the middle of my chest. I couldn’t leave her for a moment, from a distance we connected eye-to-eye.”
Three days later he and Zephany spoke and she confessed that she felt a connection to him and Cassidy.
When Celeste Nurse was shown a photo of Zephany she thought it was of Cassidy.
 
“They look exactly the same; I knew that that was my daughter.”
But Celeste said she left room for disappointment, and prepared herself for “bad news”. “A part of me had a little doubt, about 5 percent doubt, but the resemblance was too much.
“She looked like me; she looked like her dad and Cassidy. She looked like everyone.”
Celeste told Maytham she had attempted to see Zephany at school, but on the day that she went, Zephany was absent.
“It’s a good thing she was not there or I would have bawled in tears.”
After a month-long probe and DNA testing, it was confirmed that Zephany was the Nurses’ biological child.
Celeste then met her daughter at a formal meeting which turned into an “emotional moment”. “We were in a conference room and when she came in she ran to her father (Morné) and hugged him. When she saw me she hugged me tight and I told her ‘Wow. I have been searching for you for 17 years’.”
Moving ahead, the family said they planned to do as Zephany had asked, which involved seeing the family that raised her.
They said they have forgiven the 50-year-old woman who took her.
On Friday, the woman was released on R5 000 bail, on condition she had no dealings with Zephany. She is due back in court on May 29.
“She is in the law’s hands,” said Morné. “She did the crime and she will do the time.”