KIDNAPPED AND BETRAYED: ZEPHANY NURSE LASHES OUT

‘Wild speculation’ forces teen to break silence

ZEPHANY Nurse has broken her silence and lashed out at the media for “ripping the skin off her face” and dragging her reputation through “disgusting gutters of filth”.

In a statement released exclusively to the Sunday Times yesterday, the 18-year-old, whose story has grabbed headlines worldwide, made an emotional plea for privacy.

“Don’t hurt me no more with these lies please,” Nurse said in the statement released through her legal guardian, Ann Skelton, the director of the Centre for Child Law at the University of Pretoria.

Skelton said the teenager, who was abducted as a newborn in Cape Town in 1997 and reunited with her biological parents in February last year, is writing her matric supplementary exams in the midst of the trial of the woman who raised her.

Nurse is now known by the name this woman gave her, and the woman cannot be identified to protect Nurse. She has pleaded not guilty to kidnapping.

“Zephany has had a difficult year adjusting to the new situation,” Skelton said yesterday. “Although she is a victim of a crime, she finds herself being vilified and criticised in the media. Although it is against her instinct to reveal her feelings in the media — and she feels she should not have to do so — wild speculation about her is making her extremely unhappy.”

Nurse sent the statement to Skelton in an SMS. It reads: “Wow you have done it again. Have you got no shame or a bit of remorse about what I am going through?

“I am writing my supplementary exams. You invaded personal things about me and my loved ones.

“Not even half of those things are true. You have no idea what it’s like to walk in the street where people know me and judge me because of you invading personal things about my life.

“Take all the professionalism away and think how it would be if this was you and your family, and your reputation gets swept through the disgusting gutters of filth. How would you look at yourself in the mirror?

“How would your daughter or son feel when their skin feels ripped off their face?

“Appreciate the privacy you have with your family and think what I am going through, and my father and mother.

“I plead again: don’t hurt me no more with these lies please. I am 18 years old. I am also trying to structure my life. “Thank you.” This is Nurse’s first statement since March last year, after her identity was discovered.

Back then, she said: “I want to say thank you to all the people who supported me through this, for continuously praying and never giving up on looking for me. Under the circumstances I am doing fine.”

Skelton said that, from the outset, “the girl known as Zephany Nurse has tried to keep her private life private”.

“Yet again, she is asking the media to respect her feelings.”

Nurse had “a difficult year adjusting to the new situation she finds herself in”, explained Skelton, adding that the teenager had been unable to write her matric exams last year because of what she had been through.

Nurse decided to speak out after “spurious allegations of cruelty to her siblings” hurt her deeply. She was also worried about her siblings’ feelings.

“My client should not be made to feel responsible for hurting other people when she has quite enough hurt of her own to deal with,” said Skelton.

Some of Nurse’s relatives seemed to have understood this and had stopped giving interviews, but “other more extended family members are sought out by journalists to give their spurious accounts” while “hangers-on and extended family she doesn’t even know” featured strongly in articles about her. The quest for “sensationalist news” caused ongoing harm, said Skelton.

Nurse went from being an ordinary pupil at a Cape Town secondary school to the centre of a sensational story when classmates remarked on the strong resemblance between her and a new Grade 8 pupil, Cassidy Nurse.

A DNA test confirmed they were sisters, and that Zephany was the baby who had been snatched from Groote Schuur Hospital almost 18 years earlier, and she was reunited with her biological parents, Morne and Celeste Nurse.

The kidnapping trial will resume tomorrow.

You have no idea what it’s like to walk where people know me and judge me