Stolen At Birth, Young Woman Still Loves Kidnapper, Calls Her Mom

WALTERBORO, SC — Keeping everyone happy — the woman she thought was her mother for the better part of two decades, the biological parents she was snatched from in 1998 and never knew existed — is proving to be a delicate balancing act for Kamiyah Mobley,

Least of all, Mobley can’t make people who’ve never been in her shoes — and that includes nearly all of us — understand how she can still love Gloria Williams, 52, who was sentenced Friday to 18 years in prison for snatching the hours-old Mobley from a Jacksonville, Florida, hospital maternity ward 20 years ago and raising her as a daughter.

But Mobley, who grew up believing she was Alexis Manigo, does love Williams. She talks with her or visits her in prison several times a week, and still calls her Mom, the 20-year-old told ABC’s “Good Morning America” in her first interview since Williams’ sentencing.

Seated at Mobley’s side was her lawyer, Justin Bamberg, who said his client has conducted herself admirably during the emotionally explosive case.

She told ABC that she plans to go to college after she gets her identity sorted out.

"Who wants to sit around and be sad all day?" said Mobley, who wants to go to college once she gets a birth certificate and Social Security number. "I mean, it doesn't help anything. It's not going to change anything. I learned that a long time ago."

The mother-daughter relationship with Williams is still strong, Mobley said, adding that she had talked to Williams earlier in the day.

"Oh yeah, she calls and still gets on me. Yes, yes she does,” said Mobley, who still lives in Williams’ Walterboro, South Carolina, home.

At the same time, she has been spending time with Shanara Mobley and Craig Aiken, who spent years searching for their daughter. Mobley said she has been to Florida several times to visit them and the siblings she didn’t know she had until last year. They talk daily, she said.

"I like it. It's new people who act just like you, they look just like you," she said. "It's almost just like extended family. You know, that's really what it feels like."

Mobley acknowledged a chaotic balancing act, especially during the court proceedings.

"It just looked like a dysfunctional family reunion,” she told ABC. “So I'm glad that we're done with it cause it's like this side is over here, this side is over here. This side hates this side. This side doesn't want to talk to this side. It's just too much."

Williams posed as an emergency room nurse and told Shanara Mobley, who was 16 at the time, that her daughter had a fever and needed to be examined in another room, then vanished, according to a 1998 report filed with the sheriff’s office. She used phony documents to raise her as Alexis Manigo, but the ruse began unraveling two years ago when Mobley wanted to get her driver’s license, and Johnson couldn’t produce a valid birth certificate.

Williams testified in court that Charles Manigo, the man Mobley grew up believing was her father, was abusive; that she was depressed; and that she had suffered a miscarriage about a month before kidnapping the infant from University Medical Center in Jacksonville.

Williams apologized during her sentencing to both Mobley and her biological parents, who had testified a day earlier that the abduction had “destroyed” them.

“I never meant to hurt you,” Williams said. “I never meant to cause you any harm, any pain, any of that. I’m sorry.

“I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me. I tried to love you the best way I could.”

To Mobley’s biological parents, Williams said: “I know I can’t give you back 18 years. If I could, I would.”

As a condition of sentencing, Williams can’t make any profit off her crime while she’s in jail, and can’t write a book or sign a movie deal.

Mobley may have known for months that she was not Williams’ biological daughter, according to the “Good Morning America” story. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children got a tip in August 2016 from someone who said Mobley had claimed she had been kidnapped as an infant from the hospital in Jacksonville. A DNA test confirmed that.

In January 2017 after Williams was extradited to Florida and charged with kidnapping, Mobley told HLN that she still considered Williams to be her mother.

"I still feel the same way about her," she said at the time. "My feelings toward my mother will never change."

More than a year has passed, and Mobley’s resolve is the same. Williams was a good mother, she told ABC.

"She was very open to all my friends I brought through that door," she said of Williams. "She was one of those mothers, she was like open to sleepovers, open to company. Always smiling, always upbeat, up-tempo about everything. Very hard working, very hard working. She was actually getting her master's [degree] before she was incarcerated."

To those who can’t accept her affection for the woman who kidnapped her, Mobley says only this:

“They’ll be fine.”

Photo via Shutterstock / Chayut Thanaponchoochoung