A Canadian woman has spoken of her “utmost happiness” at seeing her son for the first time since he disappeared more than 30 years ago.
Lyneth Mann-Lewis was reunited with her 33-year-old son, Jermaine Mann, in an emotional meeting in the US last weekend.
Mann was 21 months old when he vanished in 1987 during a court-ordered visit with his father, Allan Mann Jr, in Toronto.
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Police say his father first took him to New York City, before moving to the town of Vernon, Connecticut, where he raised his son under an assumed name.
Mann grew up believing that his mother had died shortly after his birth and remained unaware of his true identity or how he had entered the country until Friday, when US marshals took his father into custody.
The following day, Mann-Lewis, who said she never stopped believing that her son would be found, was flown down to Connecticut for an emotional reunion.
Speaking to reporters outside Toronto police headquarters yesterday, Mann-Lewis said her son had told her “you have my eyes”, as they saw one another for the first time in three decades.
“I squeezed his head. I wanted to feel if he was real,” she said. The pair “stayed up late into the night talking” and spent time cooking together over the weekend visit, The Globe and Mail reports.
However, she acknowledged that their decades apart will “pose difficulties” in rebuilding their relationship, Canadian broadcaster CBC reports.
A cross-border investigation was finally able to solve the 30-year mystery when detectives made contact with relatives of Mann Jr, who tipped them off that he had moved to Connecticut and adopted the name DeSouza.
He appeared in a federal court in Connecticut on Monday, charged with making false statements to the US Department of Housing by submitting false identification documents in his application for subsidised housing.
Canadian authorities say they intend to pursue extradition once the US case is resolved, so that Mann Jr can be charged in connection with the 1987 abduction.
