See what I have just found on Yahoo!News. Shanara Mobley, a Florida mother whose newborn daughter Kamiya was abducted as a newborn from the hospital in 1998, was very happy when the girl was found alive and well last year. However, Kamiya (raised by her kidnapper as Alexis Manigo and continuing to use this name) didn't accept her mother and remained bonded to the kidnapper Gloria Williams even after she learned the truth. Now, Shanara Mobley admits that she has blocked her daughter's phone and wishes that “they never would have found her.” What impresses me most in this sad story is that almost all commenters support the daughter and say the mother should be more understanding to the young woman's hostility. Some even say that the mother should have demanded leniency for the kidnapper, "the only mother the girl knew". (Williams was sentenced to 18 years, Mobley wanted a death sentence. The daughter regularly calls her imprisoned fake "mother".)
There is almost a consensus that the kidnapper gave Kamiya a "loving home" and, hence, was not so bad after all. Also, the fact that Shanara was very young, single and poor at the time of birth is cited as an argument that the baby was lucky to be kidnapped. Some even hint that Gloria was a Good Samaritan motivated by an urge to save the baby from a miserable ghetto life with a deadbeat birth mom. People also blame the mother for receiving money from a settlement with the hospital and for being "vengeful" to the kidnapper. There is a universal sympathy to Kamiya and the way she feels about the two women who shaped her life.
On another page, I found information about what Gloria Williams said in court:
Williams
agreed that how this went is the “worst” possible outcome for Kamiyah... Upon questioning from the prosecution,
Williams said her motivation for taking the baby was not out of concern
for how Mobley would raise her, but for selfish reasons..."
So you see that by Williams' own admission, her kidnapping was not motivated by a wish to protect the baby from a hard life. It was motivated by an obsession to maintain a relationship with an abusive boyfriend. Being obsessed about sex doesn't exactly make one a good parent. Williams may have been financially better off than Mobley, but I don't think she gave Kamiya a "loving home". You also see from this short text that Williams is a master manipulator. One cannot help pitying young Kamiya. As a minority of commenters remarked, she was brainwashed and is now suffering of Stockholm syndrome.
But Kamiya is no longer a child. She is a 20-yr-old young adult who knows her situation and makes her choices. And she behaves like a worthy quasi-child of her kidnapper, unable and unwilling to tell right from wrong and lies from truth. In her immense selfishness, she uses her feelings as a substitute for the moral compass she lacks, sides with her evil impostor "mother" and victimizes her true mother for a second time. What if "the only mother she knew" had killed her actual mother? There is a tiny chance that Kamiya could reform as she matures, but my observation is that at 20, the core of personality has already hardened.
The mother says: "I shouldn't have to compete with a kidnapper... I didn’t know this kidnapper had such a hold on her. I can see that it’s my child, but I can also see traits from the kidnapper in her. She would defend the kidnapper to me. She blames me for everything. I think she blames me that this woman is sitting in jail. She’s blocked now because I don’t want to argue with her. I’m tired of being hurt."
Nevertheless, the majority of people think that the mother should shut up and put up with the fact that the piece of shit who kidnapped her daughter 20 years ago conferred her personality to the girl, making Kamiya a similar piece of shit. People think that Shanara should be all sympathy and understanding. Modern Western society loves to put unrealistic demands to parents, especially mothers, and to smear them for nothing. Maybe this is one of the reasons why mothers are increasingly in short supply.
I also think the psycho kidnapper should not be allowed any contact with her victim.
There is almost a consensus that the kidnapper gave Kamiya a "loving home" and, hence, was not so bad after all. Also, the fact that Shanara was very young, single and poor at the time of birth is cited as an argument that the baby was lucky to be kidnapped. Some even hint that Gloria was a Good Samaritan motivated by an urge to save the baby from a miserable ghetto life with a deadbeat birth mom. People also blame the mother for receiving money from a settlement with the hospital and for being "vengeful" to the kidnapper. There is a universal sympathy to Kamiya and the way she feels about the two women who shaped her life.
On another page, I found information about what Gloria Williams said in court:
"Twenty years after she took a newborn from a Jacksonville hospital and brought the baby to South Carolina to raise as her own daughter, Gloria Williams is telling the court why.
Williams says she was in an abusive relationship with a man, Charles Manigo... She says Manigo wanted her to have a baby, and she thought
that would help bring peace to their home, so she ultimately got
pregnant. Williams says she miscarried as a result of the stress of the
abuse... but even after she got it medically
confirmed, she didn’t tell anyone.
In July 1998, Williams says she was leaving work, when she
essentially went in to autopilot... She says she doesn’t know why she drove down I-95 from
her home in South Carolina... “It was definitely not to take a baby, that’s for sure,” she says. That blank slate continued as she walked in to the hospital...
Williams says she went and looked at the other babies and thought about the one she had lost, and then walked in to Shanara Mobley’s room, again telling the defense she wasn’t sure why.
Williams says she spent a lot of time talking with Mobley
and helping her out. She was still wearing scrubs from her job, and
while she told the prosecutor that she didn’t claim to be a nurse at the
hospital, she admitted that she knew that’s what Mobley thought. Then
the newborn, Kamiyah Mobley, was brought in to the room.
“I was thinking about, you know, maybe this baby could help
Charles, that’s what I was thinking. It was like, she [Shanara] was so
young, and she just wasn’t real sure about what she was gunna do, and
just my mindset at that time wasn’t logical, it definitely wasn’t
logical. But for what I was thinking at that time, it seemed right, it
seemed right,” Williams says.
Williams would ultimately take the baby back to her home in
South Carolina, renaming her Alexis Manigo, and telling Charles Manigo
it was his baby. She says the baby did not bring peace to their home
after all, though, and when she ultimately had a custody agreement with
her two sons from a prior marriage changed because of the abuse, she
decided to leave with Kamiyah as well...
The defense walked Williams through a series of photos
showing awards, celebrations and gatherings featuring Kamiyah while she
was growing up. Williams further said Kamiyah was always cared for and
provided for.
Things changed, when Kamiyah decided she wanted to start working.
Williams says Kamiyah asked for her birth certificate and social
security card, so she could finish all the paperwork on a job she had
already lined up.
“I said, ‘you’re not my daughter’. I said, ‘I took you a long time ago’,” Williams says she told Kamiyah at that time.
Williams says she offered to turn herself in at that time, but Kamiyah told her not to. They went on another year and a half or so before the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office ultimately learned about Kamiyah and reached out...
So you see that by Williams' own admission, her kidnapping was not motivated by a wish to protect the baby from a hard life. It was motivated by an obsession to maintain a relationship with an abusive boyfriend. Being obsessed about sex doesn't exactly make one a good parent. Williams may have been financially better off than Mobley, but I don't think she gave Kamiya a "loving home". You also see from this short text that Williams is a master manipulator. One cannot help pitying young Kamiya. As a minority of commenters remarked, she was brainwashed and is now suffering of Stockholm syndrome.
But Kamiya is no longer a child. She is a 20-yr-old young adult who knows her situation and makes her choices. And she behaves like a worthy quasi-child of her kidnapper, unable and unwilling to tell right from wrong and lies from truth. In her immense selfishness, she uses her feelings as a substitute for the moral compass she lacks, sides with her evil impostor "mother" and victimizes her true mother for a second time. What if "the only mother she knew" had killed her actual mother? There is a tiny chance that Kamiya could reform as she matures, but my observation is that at 20, the core of personality has already hardened.
The mother says: "I shouldn't have to compete with a kidnapper... I didn’t know this kidnapper had such a hold on her. I can see that it’s my child, but I can also see traits from the kidnapper in her. She would defend the kidnapper to me. She blames me for everything. I think she blames me that this woman is sitting in jail. She’s blocked now because I don’t want to argue with her. I’m tired of being hurt."
Nevertheless, the majority of people think that the mother should shut up and put up with the fact that the piece of shit who kidnapped her daughter 20 years ago conferred her personality to the girl, making Kamiya a similar piece of shit. People think that Shanara should be all sympathy and understanding. Modern Western society loves to put unrealistic demands to parents, especially mothers, and to smear them for nothing. Maybe this is one of the reasons why mothers are increasingly in short supply.
I also think the psycho kidnapper should not be allowed any contact with her victim.
3 comments:
Maya,
What would you do if you were the girl?
Bill
As a child i worried that my brother and I were adopted. Silly in retrospect; no one in our happy can keep a secret. Eventually I read about Oedipus, crown prince of Corinth, who questioned his paternity and great good fortune. We all know how badly that turned out!
If I was adopted and I always figured they abandoned me for some reason and I did nit want to get caught up in that mess, like this poor girl is caught up in
Bill
Bill,
I think I would try to become again my mother's daughter. As for the woman who had kidnapped me and brought me up, I would surely pity her and most likely still love her, but I would know that she is deeply flawed and has done something terrible.
I mean, Kamiya / Alexis is motivated all by her feelings, but feelings are not everything. There is right / wrong dichotomy, morality, something that is apparently absent from Kamiya's mindset because she was brought up by people who lacked it.
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