- Mercy Casanellas and her British-born, US-based husband Richard Cushworth have been reunited with their biological son, Moses
- They had been raising another couple's child, who they named Jacob, as their own after the children were swapped shortly after birth in El Salvador
- Fears were confirmed three months later when a DNA test said there was 0.000 chance Jacob was theirs
- The couple reunited with son after parents of babies born the same day at the hospital underwent DNA tests themselves
- Ms Casanellas had previously spoken of her desire to raise both children
This is the emotional moment the parents of baby Moses, who was swapped at birth for another newborn, says goodbye to baby Jacob, the child hey had been raising as their own.
Brit Richard Cushworth and his wife Mercedes ‘Mercy’ Casanellas took their son back into their arms last night, three months after he was taken in an alleged 'mix up' at a hospital in El Salvador.
However, as overjoyed as the couple were to be reunited with Moses, their heartbreak is evident as they parted with the 'swapped' child, who they had been calling Jacob.
In an interview with MailOnline this week, Ms Casanellas spoke of their desire to raise both Moses and Jacob, whom she had been 'breastfeeding, loving, and caring for 24/7' since May.
Final goodbye: Richard Cushworth kisses Jacob, the child he and his wife Mercedes Casanellas had been raising as their own, before being reunited with their actual son Moses, and handing Jacob over to his parents
Speaking exclusively to MailOnline from her home in Wilmington, Delaware, Richard’s mother, Lynne Cushworth revealed: 'They have named him Moses because he was lost for three months and now he’s been found.
'Moses was hidden away for three months before he was found by the Prince of Egypt. It’s very moving.’
According to Mrs Cushworth her husband David, who had flown to El Salvador to be with his son and daughter-in-law will now return to the family home in Delaware tomorrow, while son Richard is booked on a flight back to his home in Dallas on Saturday.
She said she did not know when Mercedes would join her husband but said it was likely she would remain in her native El Salvador, where the couple married two years ago, a little longer.
Mrs Cushworth and her husband were born in Bradford and lived in Zimbabwe when it was the British colony of Rhodesia before moving to the US, where they brought up Richard - who has a British passport - and his sister.
She explained that the whole family hoped to be reunited with a trip to Yellowstone National Park planned for next Friday.
She added: 'We have joy and gladness in this house. Praise God, our prayers have been answered. I knew that God would bring forth the baby and that’s what He’s done.'
In the Old Testament, Moses was hidden by his parents for three months because Jewish babies were under a death sentence, before he was put in a basket in the reeds beside the river, where he was found by Pharaoh's daughter.
Richard and wife Mercedes had made a public plea for their baby’s return after DNA tests showed the child they cared for since birth was not theirs.
We have joy and gladness in this house. Praise God, Allelulia our prayers have been answered. I knew that God would bring forth the baby and that’s what He’s done
Lynne Cushworth, the 'swapped' baby's grandmother
In a statement, the couple said: 'There are no words to express what our heart feels to have our baby at home.
'Thanks to all who joined our pain and fed our hope.
'Thank God our family has gathered, for the moment we are not allowed to upload photos but soon we'll give more details of the outcome of this miracle.'
Richard reportedly told The Sun: 'It was such a long day but with such a beautiful ending.'
Mercedes admitted that she still thinks about Jacob, the other baby she was raising, as she spent her first night with her biological child.
'I am so happy but I could barely sleep,' she reportedly told the newspaper.
'I could not help but think about him too.'
Yesterday, Mr Cushworth's father David told MailOnline of the family's joy, but that their thoughts are with the other family, who had no idea they were raising the wrong child.
Investigators tracked down the Cushworths' biological child by ordering other new mothers to have their babies DNA tested.
David Cushworth, who accompanied the couple as the two children were swapped and reunited with their biological parents, said: 'We're all absolutely thrilled. This is an answer to so many prayers.
'All the circumstantial evidence pointed to a criminal act, but the official story we are being told appears to show it was a mistake, a mix-up.
'I can't say for sure what really happened. We'll have to see how it works out through the legal system before can be certain.
'I feel for the other family. We know nothing about them, except that they only just found out today that their baby isn't really theirs. It must have been devastating.
'At least we suspected there was something wrong. It seems like they had no idea. Or if they suspected something, they didn't want to say.'
Speaking to MailOnline on Monday Mr Cushworth Snr, a former police officer from Bradford, West Yorkshire, said the family have been forced to sign a gagging order.
The child exchange took place before a judge in a sixth floor office at the Prosecutor General's in Santa Elena a suburb of San Salvador.
David Cushworth would not comment on whether the family still thought the doctor was involved in the child swap.
'We're just happy it's resolved,' he said.
On Tuesday morning, the Cushworths took to Facebook to thank their supporters as they revelled in being reunited with their child.
'There are no words to express what our heart feels to have our baby at home! Thanks to all who joined our pain and fed our hope.
'Thank God our family this gathered, for the moment we are not allowed to upload photos but soon we'll give them more details of the outcome of this miracle.
Both the Cushworths and the parents of the son they were rearing were placed under a gag order by the judge in the case as the children were exchanged officially late Monday.
Prosecutor General Luis Martinez told reporters the two boys' privacy was paramount. 'The families need to keep it to themselves to protect the children's rights,' he said.
'We appreciate the help we received from the forensics to help solve this tragic event.
'It ended up being a scenario where love, friendship and tenderness won.'
'Let's remember the story where King Solomon used his sword - but here we did not use a sword, here we used the force of truth and justice.'
The Cushworths had 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.
But yesterday afternoon, hours after the family attended court to hear Dr Guidos formally accused, the country's Attorney General's Office announced that their investigations had already identified their biological baby.
Dr Guidos was freed by authorities on Monday evening, but it is understood that he is still under investigation.
Speaking to reporters, Dr Guidos said: 'I'm perfectly calm. I have nothing to prove. I am innocent.
'The tests proved that and we move on.'
He also attacked both the Cushworths and the Centro Ginecologico hospital, adding: 'A public apology will not be enough.'
'The doctors have humiliated me. They judged me and condemned me before time.'
The parents of four other boys who were also born on the same day, May 21, had last week brought their babies to be DNA tested after an order was issued by the country's Prosecutor General's Office, which had taken over the investigation.
The baby whose tests were last to be processed proved to be the couple's real child.
Cushworth, who is a British citizen but has spent almost his entire life in the United States where his parents are also missionaries, had pleaded for support from UK but not US authorities.
His father had flown from Wilmington, Delaware, to be with him and his wife, who is from El Salvador.
Speaking last night, Prosecutor General Luis Martinez said that the babies of two couples had been mixed up and that each would be returned to their rightful parents at a special court hearing.
He added: 'We understand the painful drama of these two families. We are talking about two children who were swapped.'
The family's lawyer, Fernando Meneses, said that the case 'apparently' seemed to be an accidental mix-up of the infants and urged the hospital to review procedures to ensure it could not happen again.
Speaking exclusively to MailOnline before finding out about their biological son, Mercy said that she and her husband hoped to keep their 'changeling' baby, who they have been calling Jacob.
'I love my baby, he is my baby, I am even breastfeeding him right now,' she says of baby Jacob.
'If they can't find his mother, he already has parents, us. We are taking care of him and, even though we know he isn't our biological son, we still love him.
'We are praying and trusting in God that he will help us.'
Ms Casanellas said she was convinced that her obstetrician, Dr Alejandro Guidos who is currently under arrest, had planned the swap all along.
Mercy, a missionary working in a large church in San Salvador, had been based in Dallas, Texas with her British husband Richard Cushworth.
The Cushworths' son was due to be born on June 20, and in order to prepare to be present at the birth, Mr Cushworth had departed for a month-long trip mid-May.
However, just a few days later - five weeks ahead of due date - Mercy was told by Dr. Guidos that she would need an emergency Cesarean.
'Richard was out of the country and suddenly the doctor said "no the baby has to be delivered today", so he got me to the hospital immediately and got the baby out by c-section.
'The anesthesiologist, the pediatrician - the entire team was chosen by him, I did not know them.'
Ms Casanellas also told MailOnline that Dr Guidos had been unusually close to her during her pregnancy.
'One night in January we feared that I was about to have a miscarriage, and he stayed with me the whole night, stayed by my bedside and cared for me.
'I considered that very nice of him, very professional, and it was not until I told the investigators about this after the swap that they told me that this is not how it is done.
'He was also the only person who knew that my husband was British and that he would be out of the country for one month.'
Ms Casanellas was taken to the Centro Ginecologico, a private hospital in San Salvador, and underwent an emergency Caesarean on May 21st this year, at 35 weeks pregnant. Jacob was born weighing six pounds.
'I saw my son at 9.30pm when he was born, and then they put me to sleep. In the morning, around 8am, they brought in everyone's baby, but they never brought mine.
'I told them 'Where is my baby? Where is my son?' but they just told me: 'He is coming, he is coming.'
'They brought him at lunch time, and I asked them "why is this baby different?" He has darker skin, his facial features were different, his nose, his eyebrows.
'They told me that it was because he was a newborn and that he was swollen and that he would change.
'They said his skin would get lighter and that the swelling would go down. They said everything was ok, so I believed them.
'But then my family started to make comments, they kept saying "this baby has darker skin", and "he doesn't look like your husband and he doesn't look like you" for the next two months.'
After Mercy had recovered from her c-section she and her husband began readying themselves for their return to Dallas, Texas, where she is set to study for a Masters degree at a Bible college.
'I didn't want to think about the idea of a switch because I am very connected to my baby and I breastfed him every day - I still do.
'I thought, "how could I even think that this is not my child?", but the thoughts were always on my mind, and finally I made the decision to to a DNA test because I didn't want to have these thoughts hanging over me as I went to study for my Masters.'
CHRISTIAN PARENTS SPREADING THE WORD IN EL SALVADOR
Richard Cushworth is a self-confessed former heroin and cocaine addict who credits Christianity for being clean.
He has spoken of his he had 20 years of drug use, starting with marijuana, then having a hard drugs habit.
But in a YouTube video on the website of the missionary group run by his parents - themselves devour Christians - he says a year of faith-based rehab finally cured him.
He then went to the Christ for the Nations Institute in Dallas, Texas, where he met Mercedes Casanellas - before returning to El Salvador where he appealed for help to set up a drug rehab facility based on the one he had been through.
'The Lord called me here to the little nation of El Salvador,' he said, introducing a video asking American donors for help for get a drug rehab facility he was running.
'The Lord has just laid an incredible vision on my heart of what this facility can do.'
It is not clear what the status of the project is, as he had been in Texas again earlier this year, working for
His Salvadorean wife has been previously involved in evangelical Christian missionary work in Guatemala and on the website recounts how she was in a car which was shot at four days before she was due to study at the Christ for the Nations Institute.
She said it was 'Satan' who had been behind the shooting, to stop her studying at the institute.
Casanellas was working as an administrator at another church project in the country.
The college where they met equips students to preach an evangelical, Pentecostal and charismatic version of Christianity.
There is no room for debate on sexuality morality or on the literal interpretation of the Bible.
That includes creationism. The institute has in its ground the Museum of Earth History, which is run by the Creation Truth Foundation.
It says that 'dinosaurs are an enemy to the Gospel of Jesus Christ' and preaches that they were made extinct by the flood which Noah survived in his ark.
The Christ for the Nations Institute has been heavily promoting work in Latin America, where the evangelical Christian movement has been making major inroads to traditionally Catholic countries.
It runs a dedicated Spanish-language program.
He has spoken of his he had 20 years of drug use, starting with marijuana, then having a hard drugs habit.
But in a YouTube video on the website of the missionary group run by his parents - themselves devour Christians - he says a year of faith-based rehab finally cured him.
He then went to the Christ for the Nations Institute in Dallas, Texas, where he met Mercedes Casanellas - before returning to El Salvador where he appealed for help to set up a drug rehab facility based on the one he had been through.
'The Lord called me here to the little nation of El Salvador,' he said, introducing a video asking American donors for help for get a drug rehab facility he was running.
'The Lord has just laid an incredible vision on my heart of what this facility can do.'
It is not clear what the status of the project is, as he had been in Texas again earlier this year, working for
His Salvadorean wife has been previously involved in evangelical Christian missionary work in Guatemala and on the website recounts how she was in a car which was shot at four days before she was due to study at the Christ for the Nations Institute.
She said it was 'Satan' who had been behind the shooting, to stop her studying at the institute.
Casanellas was working as an administrator at another church project in the country.
The college where they met equips students to preach an evangelical, Pentecostal and charismatic version of Christianity.
There is no room for debate on sexuality morality or on the literal interpretation of the Bible.
That includes creationism. The institute has in its ground the Museum of Earth History, which is run by the Creation Truth Foundation.
It says that 'dinosaurs are an enemy to the Gospel of Jesus Christ' and preaches that they were made extinct by the flood which Noah survived in his ark.
The Christ for the Nations Institute has been heavily promoting work in Latin America, where the evangelical Christian movement has been making major inroads to traditionally Catholic countries.
It runs a dedicated Spanish-language program.
The DNA test, which was sent from El Salvador to two separate labs in the U.S., came back to show that there is zero per cent chance of Mercy and Richard being the biological parents of little Jacob.
Ms Casanellas and Mr Cushworth - whose parents were from Bradford, West Yorkshire, before moving to what is now Zimbabwe and was then Rhodesia - previously appeared on a local TV station, pleading for their child's return.
A teary Ms Casanellas said: 'We haven't been able to sleep thinking about where he is, and who has him.
'We just want them to give us our son back.' Mr Cushworth, who met Ms Casanellas when he worked as a missionary in El Salvador, added: 'It's a horrible situation. I have a child and I don't know where he is.'
Before finding out that another couple had been raising their biological son,Mercy and the Cushworth family provided evidence that their child may even have been swapped.
In the pictures taken by Mercy's friend who was present at the birth, their biological child can be seen with a yellow clip around his umbilical cord - a clip which is not removed until the cord falls off naturally.
However, the baby that was handed back to Mercy had a white clip around his umbilical cord.
'We had the footprints taken of my child when he was born for his birth certificate. Later when I went back to change a mistake on the document I noticed that the prints on his certificate were different to the ones we had - they were smaller and a different pattern.'
At first San Salvador's Ginecologio hospital, considered the best private hospital in the country, denied that the baby could have been swapped, saying it was 'impossible' due to their 'high standards' of control.
In the indictment against Dr Alejandro Reyes Guidos on Monday, prosecutors from the Attorney General's Office asked for urgent authorization to perform searches of facilities at the Centro Ginocologico hospital, and Dr Guido's clinic, saying they have the necessary evidence to suggest that in these premises 'objects linked to the probable crime' would be found.
Among the accusations made by the mother was that she asked Dr Guidos on several occasions if the baby would be white, to which he responded 'No, because Latin genes are stronger'.
The report said that, after leaving hospital with the baby four days after the birth, Ms Casanellas changed him for the first time and noticed that his testicles were very dark, unlike how she had remembered. She also saw that the baby had 'an abundance of black hair, when she had remembered her baby being bald.'
She also said that, while in the delivery room her son had weighed six pounds, ten days after the birth when Ms Casanellas took him to be weighed again, the baby weighed seven pounds, which she thought was strange for a baby who had been born premature. Babies tend to lose weight rather than gain it in the first days after birth.
The baby she took home also had a mole, unlike the baby she had held in the delivery room, according to the indictment.
Ms Casanellas made contact with the El Salvador authorities on August 27, after receiving the results of the DNA test, but said she was 'feeling very ill' and wasn't able to travel to the country immediately.
The Attorney General's Office ordered the confiscation of all the hospital's CCTV equipment, administration and medical registers, and information about all the mothers and babies attended by Dr Guidos.
Earlier on Monday, The El Salvador Gynecology and Obstetrics Association (ASOGOES), of which Dr Guidos is a member, called for the presumption of innocence enshrined in the country's constitution for Dr Guidos, and demanded that 'due process is performed, respecting this guarantee as a person and as a medical professional.'
They also called on the Attorney General's Office to conduct investigations 'in order for Dr Guidos' innocence to be proved.'
'When an obstetrician attends a birth, whether naturally or by Caesarean, it is normal that the baby is immediately handed over to the neonatologist or paediatric nurse,' a spokesperson said.
'So if there is any swapping of the baby it is impossible for the obstetrician to do this.'
He also said that it is normal for a mother who has had a Caesarean to be sedated following the birth in order to 'avoid stress' and relax her.
The misfortune is not the first to befall the couple. Mr Cushworth's last known address was in the Dallas suburb of Waxahachie, living on a quiet street where the houses are well-maintained and tidy.
But Mr Cushworth's house was unlike any other on Noxona Drive. 'It was filthy, totally dilapidated,' neighbor Shawna McGrady told Daily Mail Online exclusively.
'He just rented a room there, he was only there for about a month and a half.'
We just want them to give us our son back. It's a horrible situation. I have a child and I don't know where he is.
Richard Cushworth
In January while Mr Cushworth was out of the country the house burned down. 'It was a total loss,' recalled McGrady. 'We weren't exactly sorry that it went because it was in such a terrible state. We joked that I had torched it.
'He came back about two months ago to see if there was anything he could retrieve, but it had all gone. Everything was lost in the fire and then they came and bulldozed what was left.'
Mr Cushworth shared the house with another man, who was at home with his four sons when the blaze broke out, said McGrady. 'They all got out unhurt, but I still don't know what caused the fire.'
McGrady said she never met Mr Cushworth's wife. 'I knew he had a wife and child and that is why he went to El Salvador.
'But I was surprised she was having the child there — maybe she couldn't get a visa to come here, I don't know.'
Mr Cushworth worked in construction while in Waxahachie. 'He always drove a white truck with a ladder on it,' said McGrady.
He also sold a special potting soil containing diatomaceous earth — which he mixed himself for a nursery selling soil enriched with chalkstone, said McGrady. 'He was very nice, he gave me a couple of plants,' she said.
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