Shanara Mobley and her daughter Kamiyah aren’t on speaking terms at the moment. (Photo by James Breeden / Daily Mail)
The biological mother of kidnapped Florida teen Kamiyah Mobley is at her wits end trying to win her daughter’s love and refuses to compete with the woman who ripped her child from her arms 18 years ago.
Shanara Mobley’s attempts to win her daughter over have gone in vain as Kamiyah, who was stolen just hours after her birth, continues to run into the arms of her captor, Gloria Williams. In an exclusive interview with the Daily Mail, Mobley said she recently gave her daughter an ultimatum — it’s either her or me.
“… I shouldn’t have to compete with a kidnapper — she has to pick one of us,” she said, adding that the pain of being rejected by Kamiyah, 19, cuts just as deep as the day she was snatched by Williams. “It’s like a tug of war between us. Whenever I feel I’m winning her back, boom, the other side pulls me down.”
Williams was recently sentenced to 18 years in prison for kidnapping young Kamiyah from a Jacksonville hospital in July 1998. She posed as a nurse, stole the infant and a drove her to South Carolina where she raised the child as her own for 18 years. Even after her arrest last year, Kamiyah admitted she still speaks to Williams several times a week from jail and seemingly has no plans of cutting off her captor anytime soon.
Speaking to ABC News, the 19-year-old said she still “loves” Williams and looks forward to the day she’s finally released from prison. She also revealed she’s still living in her captor’s home rather than moving in with her biological family, who she was finally reunited with in January 2017.
“We actually talked today,” Kamiyah said of Williams. “I still do call her ‘Mom,’ ”
Her daughter’s constant contact with the now-jailed woman has just been too much for Mobley to bear.
“Nobody acknowledges my pain,” the grieving mother told the Daily Mail, choking back tears. ” … I feel like I’m being robbed all over again every time she reaches out to my daughter. Every phone call they share, every Mother’s Day card Kamiyah sends her — it just makes the pain worse.
‘I’m being rejected for a kidnapper, how do you think that feels?,” she added.
Mobley revealed she and her daughter aren’t on speaking terms right now and that the teen has the number for the Duval County Jail stored under the name “Mommy” in her phone. Mobley attended the hearing last Friday when Williams was finally sentenced for her crime but maintained the death penalty would’ve been a more appropriate punishment.
She told the Daily Mail she fears her “brainwashed” child will never fully accept her as her “real” mom and takes issue with the fact that Williams is still able to contact her daughter. Despite the pain it causes Mobley, prosecutors said there is nothing they can legally to do stop the two from communicating.
The mother said she’s tired of being “disrespected” and has since blocked Kamiyah’s number.
“When a man rapes a woman he’s, never allowed to contact her again. So why can this kidnapper continue to reach out to her victim?” Mobley asked rhetorically. “I don’t feel that she should still be able to contact Kamiyah and I don’t feel that her family should be able to contact my child.”
