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Eight hours after her birth in 1998, Kamiyah Mobley was taken from her mother’s arms by a woman posing as a nurse in a sickening kidnap which sparked one of America’s longest-running missing person’s cases.

Kamiyah grew up not knowing that her “mother” was her kidnapper – until three years ago, when she was 18, a series of tip-offs led police to her home and DNA tests proved her true identity.

Now reunited with her real family, she sits with her father Craig Aiken as he sends a message to Madeleine McCann’s parents, telling Kate and Gerry to look to his story and “never give up hope” that their daughter will be found alive.

Craig, 45, says: “We are bound together by the terrible crimes that befell our daughters. Very few parents in the world are united by such an atrocious wrong. But I have worn the shoes the Kate and Gerry now wear. I have walked the footsteps they now tread and I have come out the other side.”

He says he would welcome the chance to speak to the McCanns, whose three-year-old daughter went missing from a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, Portugal, on May 3, 2007.

(Image: Roland Leon/Daily Mirror)

He says: “I know only too well their very real pain ain’t going to stop until their child comes home and that’s when the healing is going to begin.

“All I ever used to say is that Kamiyah is coming home. Never once did I give up on my hopes and prayers. I never felt once Kamiyah was dead. I never gave up hope. I would teach Kate and Gerry hope.

“They have to stick together because sometimes you blame it on each other as we did. It can tear you apart. It takes away the concern for the child.”

Kamiyah Mobley was snatched from a hospital in Jacksonville, Florida, in July 1998 by Gloria Williams, who had entered new mum Shanara Mobley’s room posing as a nurse telling her the baby had a fever and had to be checked.

Williams left the ward with the baby and raised Kamiyah as her own, giving her the false name, Alexis Manigo, and a forged birth certificate. Three years ago, after a series of tip-offs, police found Kamiyah in Walterboro, South Carolina, 200 miles from where she was born, living with her abductor.

Williams is serving 18 years for the kidnap, while 21-year-old Kamiyah tries to come to terms with her true origins.

Her relationship with her birth mother is strained, but Kamiyah and her father Craig have a strong bond.

At the time of her birth, music producer Craig was in jail on a minor drugs charge. He explains how a female officer broke the news of her kidnap.

Craig says: “She said, ‘I have good news and bad news’. I said, ‘What’s the good news, because I am already in jail. What could be worse than this?’.

"She said, ‘Your daughter was born seven pounds eight ounces. Her name is Kamiyah’. I began to get excited, and then I saw no one else around me was.

“I asked her what the bad news was, and she said, ‘Your daughter was kidnapped’. I was like ‘kidnapped?’.

“I was confused. I was hurt. I was lost. I couldn’t understand or process what it all meant. To me, kidnapping was only on TV or in the movies.”

Craig and Shanara were then treated as suspects, much as Gerry and Kate were by the Portuguese police, who named them “arguidos”.

Craig says: “The police and FBI kept asking me if I had any enemies or do I owe anybody money.

“But it was only after my release from jail, I realised I was becoming a suspect when they spent more time on me than the actual kidnapping.”

Craig says: “I know like the McCanns what it’s like to be a parent that was accused or had suspicion upon them. It felt like the world turned against me at a time when you needed it most.

“All you wanted was to find your daughter. You just want the nightmare to end.

"But because of what the police didn’t put out, the lack of information made us suspects.

“One of the main reasons Kamiyah was kidnapped for so long was because the police wasted so much time on us.

“If they would have used as much focus and harassment that they used on me to find her, she would have been found.

"The same goes for Madeleine. It felt like I was under suspicion for 20 years almost.

“Eighteen years went by, and people still suspected her mother and me of kidnap.

"It was only when Kamiyah was found that the suspicion on us ever stopped.”

(Image: PA)

Asked whether he believes any harm could have come to Madeleine, Craig says: “I hope it ain’t too late for their daughter.

“I’m not saying that she has come to any harm.

“I never once thought that about my daughter and they shouldn’t about theirs.

“I would tell them to keep hoping because if it happened to me, then it can happen to them.”

Kamiyah then gives her own message to the McCanns.

She says: “I am the proof that eventually we find our way back home.

"Never give up that Maddie will one day do the same too. Take heart, and we are always here for you.”

Since being found Kamiyah’s relationship with her birth mother, who split from Craig soon after the kidnapping, has had its up and downs.

At one point, Shanara revealed she was not even on speaking terms with Kamiyah because of her daughter’s continued attachment to Williams.

Shanara said: “I shouldn’t have to compete with a kidnapper – she has to pick one of us.”

She said the pain of being rejected by Kamiyah had cut just as deep as the day Williams kidnapped her.

She said: “It’s like a tug of war between us. Whenever I feel I’m winning her back, boom, the other side pulls me down.”

Earlier this year, Kamiyah said she would still like to see her “mother” Gloria Williams, saying: “I just want to let her know I’m okay.” But Kamiyah’s relationship with her father has become incredibly strong.

Only last week she was in Jacksonville house hunting in order to move closer to him.

Asked how he felt about Williams and why he had managed to move on, he says: “I have a lot of open-mindedness. You can’t hold grudges if you’re trying to move on.

“If you’re trying to overcome something, you just can’t hold on to yesterday’s hate. It has to give way to today’s hope. I don’t have no thoughts towards Gloria Williams. I don’t like her. I do have anger towards Gloria.

“She took my daughter for 18 years, which I don’t think I ever can forgive her. I don’t focus on her, though.

“I feel like I have too much catching up to do with my own daughter. She’s taken away enough time from me.”