Kidnapped girl to be returned to real mother
A girl who was snatched from her cot by a woman who then set fire to the family house to cover the kidnap is to be returned to her biological mother.
A judge in Mount Holly, New Jersey, approved a plan to grant custody of Delimar Vera, now six, to the mother, Luz Cuevas.
Delimar was thought to have died in the house blaze in 1997 until Luz spotted her at a party in January. She took strands of hair from the child which she used to prove that the girl was her daughter.
“I’m going to have my baby pronto – very, very soon,” Luz said today.
Her lawyer, Andrew Micklin, said the custody transfer will be a gradual process before the girl lives permanently with her mother.
Shortly after the Family Court hearing ended, the girl and her biological parents were reunited at an undisclosed New Jersey location.
The little girl’s case was thrown into the national spotlight on Monday, when authorities in Philadelphia announced they were charging the only mother she has ever known – Carolyn Correa – with kidnapping, arson and 13 other crimes.
Police said Correa took the 10-day-old baby from her crib in December 1997 and then set fire to the home to cover her tracks. The infant was thought to have been consumed in the flames.
Cuevas lawyer Anthony Cianfrani said the biological mother told authorities she believed Delimar had been kidnapped, but that nothing was done.
Correa, 42, named the baby Aliyah Hernandez and raised her in Willingboro, New Jersey, just a few miles from Philadelphia.
Six years passed before Correa, the little girl and Cuevas all wound up at the same birthday party, where Cuevas said she had a hunch Aliyah Hernandez was really her own daughter.
To obtain DNA evidence Cuevas, Cuevas pretended there was gum in the child’s hair so she could pull off several strands. The strands were later turned over to police.
Within days, authorities were able to prove Cuevas and Pedro Vera were the biological parents.
Correa was charged this week, and is being held on €500,000 bail. Delimar Vera has been in the care of New Jersey’s Division of Youth and Family Services.
According to the custody plan approved by Superior Court Judge James Morley, Cuevas and Vera will share legal custody but the girl will live with Cuevas.
Micklin said a child psychologist would be present at the initial meetings. Officials have said they need to proceed cautiously because the girl has grown up knowing the woman charged with her kidnapping as her mother.
Another complication in the new mother-daughter relationship is that Delimar does not speak Spanish and her mother speaks very little English.
Cuevas said she intended to improve her English and hopes her daughter will learn Spanish. She also said at first she will call the girl Aliyah, the name she’s been known as virtually all of her life.
Cuevas, 31, said she has been told her daughter is excited to meet her.
“I don’t think she understands,” everything that has happened, Cuevas said.
