Tanya Eiserer, WFAA-TV, USA TODAY
DALLAS — A Dallas couple who said their child was switched in El Salvador have been reunited with their biological child.
And they have named him Moses.
Rich Cushworth and his wife, Mercy Casanalles, of Dallas were reunited with the baby Monday after they were given the wrong baby by a private hospital in El Salvador.
“They are overwhelmed with happiness,” said James Read, a close friend of the couple. “He sent me a text message … and the text message simply said, ‘Dude, they found my child.’ ”
Read and other friends at the Christ for the Nations Institute in Dallas — where the couple met and fell in love — see God’s hand in all this. They are calling the outcome an answer to prayer.
The family’s El Salvadoran attorney and friends in Dallas also say the reunion comes with a bittersweet feeling, because they had to give up a child they had grown to love. The couple is expected to remain in El Salvador for a few more weeks as they iron out the details to bring their child back to Texas.
Controversy continues to swirl around the doctor and the hospital in the Central American country. The hospital calls it human error and not something more nefarious, according to El Salvadoran media accounts. Authorities there, however, are investigating how it happened. The doctor still faces criminal charges over the situation, at least for now.
The couple’s dramatic international saga began in May when Casanalles gave birth to the little boy in her homeland. They named him Jacob. A day-and-a-half later, doctors brought her a baby that she was certain was not hers.
“I understand that they’re claiming at the hospital that it was just a mistake, but she was resistant at the very first,” Hollar said. “She told them, ‘This is not my baby. I think you’ve given me the wrong baby.’ And they said, ‘No, no no,’ and she tried to tell them, but they wouldn’t hear her at all.”
Casanalles, an El Salvadoran national, returned to Dallas several weeks ago to continue her studies at the institute.
Once in the United States, the couple decided to have DNA testing. Those tests showed the child they brought back with them could not be theirs. So they returned to El Salvador to find their baby.
Hollar said Casanalles was suspicious that it might not have been an accidental switch because prior to the birth of the child, the midwife kept saying, “Your baby’s going to be dark.”
DNA testing was conducted on all of the male babies that were born in the hospital on the same days as theirs, which led to the reunion Monday.
Word quickly began to spread among their friends in North Texas.
Late Monday night, Hollar received a text message from his secretary. It read: “Did you hear? Mercy found her baby. He’s in her arms now.’’
He woke his wife up to tell her about it.
“We had a little hallelujah party over the answered prayer,” Hollar said. “Usually in countries like most of the countries in Central America, when a baby disappears, he’s gone forever. To have this kind of result, we just feel like God answered our prayers.”
Read, who originally introduced the couple, said Cushworth is a man of few words, while Casanalles is driven and passionate. The couple currently live on the campus of Christ For the Nations Institute in Dallas. Cushworth — a Zimbabwe-born British citizen — is a graduate of the institute.
“They are missionaries at heart,” Read said. “They’re such a sweet couple. They balance each other out.”
The baby was Cushworth’s first. Casanalles has a 12-year-old son from a prior relationship.
Hollar and Read said the outcome comes with mixed emotions.
“She’s a mom. She’s a mother, and she loved this baby,” Hollar said. “It was just terrible to have to turn loose of a baby she has learned to love over three months.”
But both men see a Biblical message, too.
“I mean, what’s the chance of them naming their baby ‘Jacob,’ from the Hebrew word meaning ‘the replacement?’ ” Read asked. “And then — three months later — finding baby Moses … exactly the same as what happened in the Old Testament scripture.”
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