Doctor arrested in El Salvador, accused of masterminding kidnapping of newborn baby

THE couple who claimed their biological son had been swapped at birth has been reunited with their child.

Richard Cusworth and Mercedes Casanellas’ had feared their son had been sold to child traffickers and had initially accused their doctor of masterminding the exchange.

However late on Monday, El Salvador’s Attorney General’s office said the couple’s real son had been located after DNA tests had been carried out on the babies of other new mothers, The Guardian reported.

Prosecutor General Luis Martinez said the two couples’ babies had been accidentally mixed up. According to the newspaper, video footage from local TV appeared to show the moment they were then reunited.

The child’s grandfather, David Cusworth, who was in San Salvador, told the Daily Mail Online the family had been reunited but that they had been forced to sign a gagging order preventing them from speaking about the ordeal.

“We have our grandson - and he looks like his father,” he said.

The former police officer from Bradford, West Yorkshire, claimed the other family only discovered they had the wrong child on Monday following the DNA tests.

“They were devastated,” he said. “How would you feel? I don’t even know their name.”

The couple’s horror story began in Dallas, Texas, where they conceived their baby boy.

The pair made a decision to travel to El Salvador so Ms Casanellas could give birth in her home country. That decision would come back to haunt them.

During the final stages of her pregnancy, Ms Casanellas and Mr Cushworth met obstetrician-gynaecologist, Dr Alejandra Guidos. They say his strange behaviour tipped them off that something was not quite right, but they didn’t realise just how wrong things were going to go.

The birth went to plan and Ms Casanellas was handed a pink-skinned beautiful baby boy. Pictures show the pair in post-birth bliss, cuddled together, the newborn wrapped in a white blanket.

“I remember thinking that he looked like my husband,” Ms Casanellas told a local TV station this week.

She didn’t know it at the time, but that would be the last time the mother held her baby.

Soon after, when doctors came back to check on Ms Casanellas, they allegedly told her she was “stressed”. They gave her drugs that put her to sleep. When she woke up the following morning, the baby she was handed looked nothing like the baby she gave birth to.

“Around 8am, they started to bring the babies to their mothers, and I waited for mine,” Ms Casanellas said.

“But when I took him I saw that he was very different to the one I had held in the delivery room. When I changed his clothes I noticed that his genitals were very dark and not rosy like how I’d remembered.

“I said to the nurse, ‘look, his genitals are very dark’, and she told me, ‘no, that’s normal, that’s normal’.”

It was not normal but doctors and nurses persisted. Despite their doubts, the couple flew back to Dallas and tried to convince themselves that their instincts were off.

“I would take photos of him and put them next to my husband, trying to find something of us in him. I kept trying to convince myself that he was really ours, that over time we would begin to see a resemblance.”







The dark-skinned baby the couple took home to the US. Picture: Supplied Source: Supplied





Richard Cushworth and Mercedes Casanellas pictured with a baby DNA tests show is not theirs. Source: Supplied

At three months old, a DNA test confirmed their worst fears. It showed the baby they’d been handed was somebody else’s. They’re convinced the doctor was in on it all along, and that their biological son has been trafficked in Central America, a victim of a black market that trades in white skin.

The pair flew back to El Salvador and to San Salvador’s Ginecologio hospital, considered the best private hospital in the country.

After initially denying there was a problem, the hospital agreed to investigate. That investigation led to the arrest of Dr Guido.

The couple said the doctor insisted during Ms Casanellas’ pregnancy that the pair’s child would be born with dark skin.

“I always thought that was strange,” the new mother said. “How would he know that from the ultrasound scans, and why would he keep saying it?”

In a heartbreaking television interview, Ms Casanellas begged for her baby to be returned.

“I have a beautiful baby at home,” she said. “It’s not mine and maybe there’s another mother suffering the same as I am and perhaps I have her baby.”

The El Salvador Gynaecology and Obstetrics Association said in a statement that Dr Guidos should be presumed innocent and it is “impossible” that he was involved in a baby swap.

“When an obstetrician attends a birth, whether naturally or by caesarean, it is normal that the baby is immediately handed over to the neonatologist or paediatric nurse,” a spokesman said.

“If there is any swapping of the baby it is impossible for the obstetrician to do this.”

Asked if she would abandon her current child, or give him back to El Salvador, Ms Casanellas was firm.

“Never,” she said. “If they can’t find his mother, he already has parents; us. We are taking care of him and, even though we know he isn’t our biological son, we still love him.”







‘We won’t give up our son.’ - Mercedes Casanellas. Source: Supplied







Centro Ginecologico in San Salvador is considered among the best hospitals in the country. Picture: Supplied Source: Supplied