the Staff at the crèche was surprised by his mother’s violent reaction, when little Moses began to cry, after she had handed him.
Tears ran down the Mercy Casanellas’ face, when Moses would not have, that she left him – but not of the cause, as the teachers had expected.
They thought she was angry over his 18-month-old son crying and tried to calm her by saying, that it is quite common that the children are getting bored of it, when their parents leave them.
But it was not for Moses – because of the boy’s exceptional history.
“I broke down in tears, but said ‘I don’t understand it’. He has never cried over me in all his life before today. I’m so glad to see it. These are tears of joy,’ says Mercy Casanellas to the Daily Mirror about the incident in the nursery.
For the boy’s tears was the end of one long, tough struggle his parents had struggled, since shortly after being parents discovered that something was wrong. Completely wrong.
Mercy Casanellas and her husband Richard Cushworth was in the central american country of El Salvador as missionaries in 2015, as they got a surprising message of the midwife during a consultation:
‘You must give birth today.’
At the time was Mercy only 35 weeks along, but later in the day, came their little boy to the world. The new mother was placed in the anesthetic shortly after the birth, because she was very nervous and her heart galloped away.
Felt wrong
But when she woke up the next day and had his son in his arms again, she got a shock.
The little boy looked like not the baby, Mercy had held in his arms the day before.
She felt the same strong bond to her baby and asked the doctors whether there could be been an error. A mix-ups, maybe. The answer was no. It was completely out of the question.
the Answer convinced the Mercy Casanellas and Richard Cushworth, but Matadorbet as the weeks went by began the benefit of the doubt yet not entirely extinguished.
Mercy Casanellas decided to have a DNA test. The result was shocking.
the Boy, which they had baptized Jacob, and Mercy had given the breast in several weeks, was not their biological son.
“My legs gave in. Richard found me crying on the floor several hours later,” says Mercy Casanellas to the Daily Mirror.
The american resident pair went straight back to El Salvador and put a lawyer on the case. They also went to the police.
In getting him to never see again
Police first message to the couple was heartbreaking.
Investigators were convinced that Mercy and Richard’s son had been the victim of mennekehandel – and they would never get him to see again.
But a few weeks later, they received a new call. Their son had been found. He had not been the victim of trafficking in human beings, but a mix-ups at the hospital.
12 weeks after the birth got Mercy and Richard, finally, their own son in his arms again. He and Jacob were swapped back to the biological parents.
It sounds like the happy ending of the story – but it was not to be.
The difficult time after the reunification
When the babyforbytningen was unveiled in the spring of 2015, history was in the headlines in the world press, but it is only now that Mercy Casanellas stands up and tells what happened after returning to the couple’s home in Dallas, Texas.
She and Richard were happy to have had their biological son back – but for a long time, the joy was not reciprocated.
For the little Moses was the Mercy of a foreign woman and not his mother. The band had the little baby related to the woman who had taken care of him for 12 weeks – in the belief that he was her son.
Mercy Casanellas and Richard Cushworth gave the little boy lots of love and care, but it would take a long time before they had to experience it, as most parents take for granted.
That in their son’s eyes was the ‘mother’ and ‘father’. It happened the first time in the day in the nursery – and the first who knew the Mercy of Casanellas, that Moses had taken her to, as she is his mother.
But only when the boy filled three years, he took the very word ‘mother’ in his mouth. 38-year-old Mercy Casanellas and 41-year-old Richard Cushworth has chosen to tell Moses about his very unusual upbringing – and has promised him that they will never let him be away from them again.
