Reunion raises hope for missing child families

NEW YORK - The missing children's group that last week reconnected American kidnap victim Carlina White with her real parents has said that calls to its helpline doubled during the day on which the extraordinary reunion made headlines around the world.

Officials with the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) said White's case - in which she approached them to confirm her suspicions about the woman who had posed as her mother - raised the prospect of many more such cases being solved.

Last Friday alone the volume of calls to the group's telephone helpline doubled and at least 200 inquiries have been sent to its analysis unit for further investigation.

"We check out every lead," said Robert Lowery, executive director of the group's missing children division, adding that cases of children being abducted as very young infants, or from hospitals - as White was - often meant that they were raised by their kidnappers, unlike those snatched by sex predators when they are older.

"Many of these children are probably still alive but raised by other families. That happens with infant abductions. We have other cases that we are hopeful will get solved as a result of this," said Lowery.

White's tale has struck a chord across America. Oblivious to her real history, she was raised by Ann Pettway in Bridgeport, Connecticut, in a tough household where Pettway dabbled in drugs and petty crime.

White had grown more and more suspicious of her background after Pettway could not produce a birth certificate or social security number.

White had always been told her name was Nejdra Nance, but she eventually contacted the NCMEC and with their help matched her identity with a baby kidnapped at less than three weeks of age from Harlem Hospital in 1987.

DNA tests proved the link was genuine and White - who has a 5-year-old daughter of her own - was reunited with her real family last week.

"I feel like I'm in a dream," she told the New York Post. "I see my face in both my parents."

Pettway, 49, who surrendered to authorities on Monday, was on parole as part of an embezzlement conviction. She has a history of run-ins with the law dating back to 1977.

White's mother, Joy, told police at the time of the kidnapping that she had given her 19-day-old baby, who had a fever, to a woman dressed as a nurse who was then never seen again. A US$10,000 ($13,000) reward was offered. Joy cried to reporters: "Just give me my baby back, please! I want her back now. I just want her back."

Now, more than two decades later, that cry has been answered.

The White family have embraced their missing member and spoken of the joy in solving the mystery that blighted their lives for more than two decades.

"All our friends and family can't wait to get together to have one big family reunion," White's grandmother, Elizabeth White, told Reuters.

The story of White's investigation of her own background is a remarkable one.

She broke away from the Pettway family some years ago and settled in Atlanta, Georgia. After getting in touch with the NCMEC, she reached out to Joy White because her baby photos bore an uncanny resemblance to those of the missing infant that had been posted on the group's website.

Then they contacted the police in New York who carried out extensive DNA tests to see if they were a match.

Now retired detectives from the original kidnapping are also being quizzed to see if there are any clues that might have helped track down Pettway.

The White family have also revealed heartbreaking details of life growing up with Pettway. White's real father, Carl Tyson, told the New York Daily News that Pettway had always told Carlina that her biological mother had died, her father was in jail and that she had been put up for adoption. White has also described being hit as a child.

But as astonishing as the White story is, abducting children to raise them as your own is not an uncommon crime. It is usually carried out by disturbed women who may have lost their own child or cannot conceive.

Already details of similar cases are emerging across the United States. One involved the 1988 disappearance of Kamiyah Mobley in Florida. She was kidnapped from hospital by someone wearing a wig and pretending to be a nurse. The 12-year mystery has never been solved.

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