Woman on trial for stealing newborn baby 18 years ago

A woman charged with stealing a newborn baby 18 years ago stands trial in a South African court today, in a case that only came to light when school pupils noticed a startling resemblance between a student and a new girl.

The accused 50-year-old woman has been on bail since March last year after DNA tests confirmed that the new girl and the 17-year-old final-year student were in fact biological sisters.

The younger girl was the daughter of Celeste and Morne Nurse, whose first child was snatched as a three-day-old baby named Zephany in April 1997 from Cape Town's Groote Schuur hospital.

Police were alerted after Zephany's parents became convinced the older girl was their missing baby.

Without knowing it, the Nurse family had been living within a couple of kilometres of their kidnapped daughter, while celebrating her birthday every year and never giving-up hope of finding her.

Zephany, who was renamed by her new family, is now approaching her 19th birthday after reportedly being raised with love and kindness by the accused woman and her husband, who she believed were her real parents.

Her whereabouts have been kept secret since she requested protection from the media storm over the case, a spokesman for the social services department told AFP.