Reunited after 29 years
After 29 years, Ria and Sharease have found each other
HER face lights up as she hobbles up to the gate. In a flash she envelops her daughter in her arms. The hug seems to last an eternity – it’s as if the two women are afraid to let the other go because they are worried they might lose each other again.
In the late ’80s, mother and child were ripped apart under traumatic circumstances. But Ria Ohlson never gave up hope that one day they’d be reunited. And now, after years of hoping and praying, that moment has finally arrived.
“I can’t stop crying,” Ria (57) tells us. “I searched for 29 years. And now the Lord has given me my child back.”
In this unassuming house in Springs, Gauteng, a pivotal event is taking place.
Almost three decades ago YOU wrote about the miracle baby who’d escaped death while still in the womb, surviving a horrific family shooting that put her mother in a coma and claimed the lives of her father and grandparents.
“That baby is me,” Sharease van den Berg says, pointing to a poignant photo of a plucky infant lying on Ria’s chest in our article (YOU, 4 May 1989). “It hurts seeing this picture,” she adds. Tragically, after everything they’d gone through there was no happy outcome for the baby and her mom. The shooting left Ria paralysed on the left side of her body and welfare authorities decided her baby would be better off with adoptive parents.
Ever since finding out about her biological mom as a teen, Sharease has had a driving need to find her. And after countless dead ends and disappointments she recently received information that led her to her long-lost mom, who lives almost three hours away from Sharease’s home in Memel in the Free State.
YOU’s sister publication, Huisgenoot, recently published an update on Sharease’s story, resulting in a tip-off that put her in touch with Ria’s brother, Jannie Joubert. He was able to give Sharease her mother’s contact details.
Ria couldn’t believe her eyes when she received the call: “I’m the baby in the picture.”
“My left leg started shaking. The tears came in floods,” she recalls.
Today is the day when mother and daughter are finally together again after so many painful years apart – and they invited us to the emotional reunion.
“I wrote you letters every day,” says Ria, who’s been living in an epilepsy centre in Springs for the past eight years.
“Here’s what I wrote to you today,” she adds, taking a piece of folded paper from her shirt pocket. “Mom’s darling, I know it feels unreal . . . Your grandmother would’ve loved to be here.”
But it isn’t only her mom Sharease is being reunited with today – she’s also seeing her half-sister, Melanie Welthagen (36).
“The last time I saw you I held your tiny foot in hospital,” Melanie recalls, wiping away tears.
AMONTH before Christmas in 1989 Ria’s estranged husband, Frik (36), a diesel mechanic, walked into her parents’ Joburg home looking for her. Johannes (64)
and Martha Joubert (53) had been taking a Sunday afternoon nap when he shot and killed them. Frik then turned the gun on himself.
Tears flow freely as mother and daughters relive the trauma.
Melanie was six at the time. “My brother, Frikkie (then 4), and I hid in the living room,” she recalls. “We heard the shots. Frikkie was scared so I told him it was firecrackers, but I knew what it really was.”
Ria recalls trying to help Martha off the floor while calling, “Mommy, mommy!” Then she was shot in the forehead and cheek “and everything went blank”.
Ria, four months pregnant at the time, was airlifted to hospital and spent months drifting in and out of a coma.
Her baby was born four months later – miraculously healthy despite all the trauma – but Ria still couldn’t remember much of what had happened and doctors feared she might have brain damage.
By the time she was fully conscious, little Martie Aletta – the name Ria had given Sharease – was gone.
Ria had to stay in hospital for a year to learn to walk and talk again. The shooting left her with epilepsy and a speech impediment.
But for her the most traumatic thing was losing Melanie and Johan van Zyl (then 8) – her children from a previous marriage – as well as Frikkie and her baby girl, her children with Frik.
Her first husband couldn’t take care of three kids so he took Johan and left Melanie and Frikkie behind. As a result Melanie and Frikkie ended up living in an orphanage for six years before their mother regained custody of them.
In 2000 Ria remarried but the union lasted only two years before ending in divorce.
After that she moved around a lot with Melanie and Frikkie, unaware her youngest daughter was looking for her.
Sharease was desperate for more information about her birth mother but her adoptive parents couldn’t tell her much because they didn’t know where Ria was.
Sharease grew up with Casper and Hazel Jerling in Mossel Bay in the Western Cape. Although they gave her a loving, stable home she yearned to find her biological mother – and the Jerlings supported her in her search.
When Sharease was a teen, Hazel told her the whole traumatic story and Sharease decided there and then she wouldn’t rest until she found Ria.
But sadly, in adulthood Sharease’s life mirrored her mother’s. She got involved with an abusive man and endured the pain of having her children taken away.
She was 20 when she married Tertius van der Bergh in Mossel Bay. They already had a one-yearold daughter but after their son, Helgaardt, was born, Sharease left Tertius and moved to Pretoria with the baby. She left her four-year-old daughter with her husband, believing she couldn’t look after two kids.
When Tertius demanded to see his son she allowed him to fetch their three-month-old baby. It’s a decision she bitterly regrets.
Tertius is now serving a nine-year jail sentence for attempted murder for the abuse he inflicted on Helgaardt, which left the child partially paralysed and with permanent brain damage.
As a result Helgaardt and his sister were placed in foster care. Sharease was devastated earlier this year when she received a phone call telling her Helgaardt (6) had died in his sleep. Her daughter is still in foster care.
“I’m so sorry about your little boy. I’d have loved to have met him,” Ria says.
“He was a beautiful boy,” Sharease says. “He was this one’s size,” she adds, pointing to Melanie’s six-year-old son, Martin. “They would’ve enjoyed playing together.”
BEFORE Sharease heads home, Melanie quickly instructs her on how to take care of their mother. There’s great excitement because Ria will be going home with her youngest daughter to the Free State for a while to try to re-establish a bond.
“You have to help her – her paralysed foot sometimes makes her topple over,” Melanie warns.
A little later mother and daughter are seated next to each other in the car, chatting away as they make up for lost time.
Sharease tells her mother about her partner of four years, “MacGyver” Verwey (53), a motor mechanic, who supported her in her quest to find Ria.
After a few hours of driving we reach our destination. When we walk into MacGyver’s home he’s putting the finishing touches to Ria’s room – he just wants to lower her bed so she doesn’t struggle to get in and out of it.
He refuses to reveal his real name but, as his nickname suggests, he can fix anything.
“She was a wreck when I met her,” MacGyver tells Ria about her daughter.
“I’m glad you’re here. Welcome.”