Gone baby gone

Seventeen years after two-day-old Zephany was kidnapped, she was reunited with her biological family…

- HANNAH DAVIES, IAN MACEWAN, SEAN MARLAND

NEW FACTUAL

Girl, Taken From Monday 25 July, Paramount+

Celeste Nurse had always dreamed of becoming a mother and as she lay in Cape Town’s Groote Schuur Hospital with her two-day-old daughter, Zephany, the 18-year-old thought her world was complete.

As the young mum drifted off to sleep following a dose of morphine, a ward sister offered to hold her baby for her. Celeste would not see her daughter again for 17 years.

‘I remember someone waking me up and saying “Celeste, where’s your baby?”’ she recalls. ‘We looked everywhere but Zephany was nowhere to be found. My whole body went into shock.’