Cape Town – Western Cape High Court Judge President John Hlophe is expected to deliver judgement on Thursday in the case against a woman accused of kidnapping baby Zephany Nurse almost two decades ago.
Both the state and defence have wrapped up their cases, and will make final arguments on Wednesday.
The Lavender Hill woman has pleaded not guilty to abducting three-day-old Zephany Nurse on April 30, 1997, from her mother’s bedside at Groote Schuur hospital in Cape Town.
Read: I’m broken, says man who raised #ZephanyNurse
The woman cannot be named to protect the teenager who is known by the name given to her by the accused.
The accused has testified that she miscarried in December 1996, and met a woman called Sylvia at Tygerberg hospital.
Sylvia offered to help her with fertility treatment or an adoption process, and told her it would cost R3 000.
Also read: #ZephanyNurse accused says sorry
After paying a deposit of R800, she was given five fertility tablets, but when they failed to work, she decided to opt for adoption.
She claims that on April 30, 1997, she had arranged to meet Sylvia to discuss the adoption process but was instead met by a stranger who handed over a newborn baby.
She was told to go to the Retreat hospital and phone Sylvia which she did. She said Sylvia told her the baby had been born to a young mother who didn’t want it. The accused said she had a “bad feeling” as this had not been the arrangement and she had wanted to be present at the child’s birth.
She admitted to the court that she decided to pretend that the child was hers to her family and partner, and that she had not disclosed her miscarriage to any of them.
“In my mind, this is the baby the mother didn’t want. I didn’t tell them (her family) that it was my biological child, they assumed this was my biological child.”
The accused further told the court that her partner was living with his mother at the time.
She said she believed Sylvia was organising adoption papers through the courts, and had met up with her once two weeks after receiving the baby.
“I wasn’t satisfied after that meeting,” she told the court.
State prosecutor Evadne Kortje put it to her that Sylvia had not honoured her fertility agreement, nor her promise to introduce her to the mother of the adopted child, to which the accused responded: “I didn’t think about it.”
She claimed that a man arrived at her house several weeks later and wanted her partner’s signature for the birth registration forms.
She was adamant that she never went to Malmesbury in 2003, where the child’s birth registration forms were handed in.
She said she simply received the birth certificate in the post in March of that year, in time to enroll the child in primary school.
“After the man visited (in 1997), I never heard from Sylvia again,” she told the court.
When Kortje asked her if she had ever tried to locate Sylvia, she responded: “I didn’t think of things like that.”
The acccused said the child’s first word was “daddy” at about the age of two years of age, the year she married her partner.
In her plea explanation, she described an altercation with the child in which the child said the accused loved her brother more than her. (The accused also raised the son of her sister).
When questioned about this altercation, she said she explained to the girl: “I said ‘no, he’s a boy and you a girl’.”
The soft spoken woman told the court she never told the child that she had been adopted.
When she applied for her enrolment at a high school, she admitted she gave the impression that she and her husband were the girl’s biological parents.
The accused claims the first time she heard that the girl had been kidnapped was when the Hawks arrived at her house in February last year armed with a search warrant.
She admitted that she had lied to the police when she had told them that she was the teenager’s biological mother.
When asked why she did not tell the police the truth, she insisted “because I myself did not know the truth”.
“I have done nothing wrong.”
The woman has had no contact with the teenager since her arrest on February 26, 2015.
She earlier apologised to the Nurse family, but maintains that she was not at Groote Schuur hospital on the day Zephany Nurse was kidnapped.
Another witness, Shireen Piet, has, however, placed her on the scene on both April 29 and April 30, 1997, and earlier in the trial told the court that the accused had first tried to snatch her baby, but that she had stopped her.
“I’m very happy you found your child. I’m really very sorry Celeste. I never took the child out of Celeste’s arms. I didn’t know the baby was stolen,” the accused told the court.
Her husband also took the stand on Tuesday as a defence witness and spoke of his heartbreak when he discovered the truth last year.
“I’m devastated, I’m broken, I’m shocked”, he said in a voice close to tears.
The Nurse family packed the public gallery. As they left the Western Cape High Court, Zephany Nurse’s biological father Morne, said the apology had come too late.
“We just have to wait until Thursday for judgement,” he said.
African News Agency
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