Unresolved for two decades: Breakthrough in 20-year-old case

Lavona Solomon, a South African woman, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for kidnapping a three-day-old baby from the Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town in 1997.

The girl, who grew up believing Lavona and her husband Michael were her biological parents, was devastated over the fact that the woman who raised her was now behind bars. Not only she didn’t hold any grudges against her, but she said she loved her even more knowing that she raised her even though she wasn’t her real daughter.

This crushed the girl’s biological parents, Celeste and Morne Nurse, who longed to be with their first-born daughter whom they found 17 years after she was taken away from them.

The truth about the girl’s, Zephany Nurse, whom Lavona named Miché, true identity was only discovered after the Nurses second daughter, Cassidy, started attending the same school as Miché.

Plenty of the teachers, as well as their classmates, noticed the uncanny resemblance between the two girls.

When Cassidy first noticed Miché at the school corridor, she was stunned. Soon after, the two girls became very good friends and even joked about being sisters in another life.

It wasn’t until they took a selfie and showed it to their parents that the Nurses started questioning if Miché could be their long-lost daughter.

As soon as they learned that Miché was born on April 30, 1997, they alerted the authorities.

One day, Miché was called to the Principle’s Office. There were two social workers who told her about the case of the abducted girl some 17 years ago. As the story unfolded, they told Miché they believed she was that girl and asked for a DNA test to be done. In the meantime, she wasn’t allowed to return home to Lavorna and Michael, but was placed at a safe house until she turned 18 and could choose who to stay with.

When the DNA test results came in the following day, they revealed that Zephany and Miché were the same person. Lavorna was immediately arrested, and Michael was set free upon questioning. He was made to believe that Miché was indeed his biological daughter by his wife who faked her pregnancy after failing to conceive for years.

The reunion between Miché and her biological parents wasn’t a straightforward process. Sadly, Miché didn’t have any feelings for them but was sorry for the woman who kidnapped her.

Eventually, she accepted Celeste and Morne but never forgot the people who raised her. She still saw Michael as her father, and was heartbroken Lavorna was sentenced to prison.

In the documentary Girl, Taken, the Nurses and Miché speak of their feelings and how the truth changed their lives.

Recalling the moment he met his first-born daughter after 17 years, Morne said, “It was like ‘wow.’ I had goosebumps and even when I speak about it today now, it feels like it happened yesterday.

“And that same feeling when we did the documentary arose from down deep inside of me, it felt like that day I first met her.”

It was in the documentary that Miché confessed discovering the truth made her love Solomon even more, which surprised the Nurses.

Today, Miché is a mother herself. Morne says that his and his wife’s relationship with Miché and his granddaughter is “good.”

“I don’t think we’ll ever be where we need to be and I think it’s going to take a lot of years for us to have our daughter where we need to have her. Finding a daughter at the age of 17, it’s not an easy thing.”

The good thing is that they are working on their relationship and can picture a future together.

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