British dad and wife in El Salvador baby swap finally return home to the US after nine months
A BRITISH dad and wife have finally returned back home to the US after their child was swapped for another in an El Salvador hospital last year.
Richard Cushworth, originally from Bradford, West Yorkshire, and his Salvadoran wife Mercy were only allowed to travel home to the US with their son Moses after DNA tests proved he had been swapped with another boy.
The couple waited nearly nine months for a birth certificate and told the BBC of their pain when they realised their child had been swapped.
Mrs Cushworth told the BBC: “The thought that the baby I had been nursing, taken care of, loving him, bathing him - that he was not mine. And then I had another thought that came with it – whwere’s my baby?
“So I had two thoughts – what’s going to happen with this baby and where’s my baby?”
She was suspicious when she noticed the features of her newborn differed slightly from the boy doctors handed her the day she gave birth by emergency Caesarean in May 2015.
She said: “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.”
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The baby was three months old when the couple finally found to courage to take a DNA test, which showed he has a 0.00 per cent probability of being their son.
The couple thought the hospital could have sold their child to traffickers after a DNA test in the USA proved the baby they took home was not their own.
They accused Dr Alejandro Guidos – a gynaecologist at the prestigious Centro Ginecologico hospital – of masterminding a plot with other hospital staff to switch their light-skinned baby and sell him to human traffickers.
The pair rushed back to El Salvador and were finally reunited with their son in early September.
Mrs Cushworth told the BBC: “We were rushed in and we had to go really quickly and we barely had time to say goodbye.
“I got all his clothes and we handed him in. That was the most difficult part of all the situation.”
She added: “I think we were in love with the baby. Even when I did the DNA tests, I thought I was betraying him. That was the feeling I had – I’m betraying my son but I cannot live with this.”
The pair spent nearly nine months trying to get the right paperwork, and the process has almost bankrupted the family.
“It has forced our family to be separated, it’s been awful. I thought it would be a matter of days, maybe weeks, but not nine months. It has been dreadful”, said Mr Cushworth.
The couple are now delighted to be back home, but still have no idea how the swap happened.
Charges against the doctor who delivered the baby were dropped two weeks ago.
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