Six years is not enough.
This is the view of the parents of Zephany Nurse, after parole hearings for Lavona Solomon began on Friday.
Solomon is imprisoned at Worcester Female Prison.
Following a meeting with the Nurse and Solomon families, the Department of Correctional Services said a decision was taken that Solomon undergo further assessments by specialists, as well as a Victim Offender Dialogue process for the purposes of restorative justice.
Her profile will have to be submitted again in July 2023.
Solomon was convicted of kidnapping, fraud and contravening the Children’s Act and was sentenced to 10 years behind bars in 2016.
Morne Nurse said that they did not want to comment prematurely but confirmed that Solomon’s parole hearings did not sit well with them.
“Six years does not do it justice,” he said. “We are aware that the parole hearings are taking place. We will respond to how we feel after this has taken place because we want to see what the outcome is.”
Miche Solomon, also known as Zephany Nurse, would only say to Weekend Argus it was “a very personal matter”.
Three-day old baby Zephany was snatched by Solomon, a seamstress from Seawinds in Lavender Hill, at Groote Schuur Hospital in April 1997.
Seventeen years after the kidnapping, the Nurses found their daughter.
Their youngest daughter, Cassidy, who attended the same school as Miche and befriended her, and the two girls’ resemblance to one another raised suspicion.
DNA tests later revealed Miche was, in fact, the Nurses’ long last daughter.
During the trial, it was revealed that Solomon had suffered miscarriages and was desperate to have a child of her own and that she wanted the baby so that her partner, Michael, would marry her.
She denied stealing the infant and claimed a woman named, “Sylvia” had handed her the baby at Wynberg Train Station but this was dismissed as a fairytale by the court.
Zephany, who chose to use the name given to her by her kidnapper, is now 22 and published a book titled, Zephany: Two mothers, One Daughter, a few years ago.
In the book, Miche details the day her mother (kidnapper) was sentenced, saying she felt “disappointed, sad, confused” as she always had hope that her mom wouldn’t go to jail.
“I remember the day she was found guilty... It honestly felt like someone had died that day. I went into the room and I burst into tears on my bed,” she wrote.
Last month, the Nurse family’s documentary film, Girl Taken, which features parents, Morne and Celeste Nurse, Zephany and Michael Solomon, the kidnapper’s husband premiered at the Labia Theatre in Cape Town.
Morne told Weekend Argus that the doccie would for the first time show their true emotions.
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