A South African woman has been sentenced to 10 years in jail for kidnapping a baby 19 years ago and raising the child as her own, according to reports. 


The 52-year-old Cape Town native, who remains anonymous and continues to deny that she kidnapped the little girl from her mother's hospital bed back in 1997 was sentenced on Monday, the AP reports.

The girl, known publicly as Zephany Nurse, was reunited with her biological parents, Morné and Celeste Nurse, in February last year after their second daughter Cassidy befriended Zephany at school. Due to their uncanny likeness for each other, a police investigation and DNA tests later proved that they were in fact sisters and the family's missing child.



Throughout the trial the convicted woman reportedly maintained that she did not steal the child, but that she purchased the baby from another woman who said the biological parents did not want her.