Story of mother who regrets that police found her girl kidnapped 20 years ago
The mother of a baby abducted from a Florida hospital 20 years ago now wishes that “they would never have found her.”
Kamiyah Mobley was kidnapped 8 hours after her birth at a Jacksonville hospital in 1998 by Gloria Williams, who desperately wanted a baby after her own pregnancy resulted in a miscarriage.
Eighteen years passed and after finding out her true identity, Mobley told a friend about her true origin. Eventually, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children received an anonymous tip about Kamiyah’s location, and Williams was arrested.
The girl finally met her birth mom, but Kamiyah has refused to stop speaking to the woman who abducted her when she was just hours old and raised her as her own for 18 years, as The Florida Times-Union reported
Kamiyah continues to call Williams, who is currently in prison sentenced to 18-years behind bars for her crime. The girl even has the number to the Duval County Jail saved under “Mommy,” according to the Daily Mail
Despite Kamiyah was returned to her biological family after her abductor’s arrest, she continues to live in Williams’ South Carolina home where she grew up and go by the name her ‘foster mom’ gave her, Alexis Manigo.
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Kamiyah found out about her true identity 18 months before Williams' arrest when she confessed that she was not her real mother. Instead of turning her in, she urged Williams to flee if she got caught, as the Daily Mail reported.
Before Williams was sentenced, Kamiyah said she was hoping that the loving woman who raised her did not get a long sentence. But Shanara Mobley, Kamiyah’s true mom, said the appropriate punishment would have been a death penalty.
Mobley doesn’t want her daughter to have a relationship with the kidnapper and told the Times-Union that she hopes the 52-year-old woman would die in prison so she could possibly have a real relationship with Kamiyah.
Mobley hadn’t seen her daughter since Mother’s Day when the two argued until she drove off. “She would defend the kidnapper to me… I think she blames me that this woman is sitting in jail,” she said.
“If you want to be Alexis, be Alexis. If you want to be her child, be her child. This is a battle that I can’t keep fighting. This is a battle that nobody is going to win,” said Mobley to the daughter she lost and then found.
“I don’t deal with disrespect,” she added. “I wish they would never have found her,” Mobley confessed. She worried about the impact on her other five children, who range in age from 3 years old to 15. “I’m still lost, what did I gain? Nothing,” she concluded.