She’d always felt like the odd one out growing up - then Delimar learned the unbelievable reason why…
The photographer pointed his camera towards me and I flashed my biggest smile.
I was just six years old and already getting jobs as a child model.
‘Isn’t my daughter beautiful?’ my mum Carolyn smiled, proudly.
In front of others, Mum acted so loving, but behind closed doors she was anything but.
More often than not she wasn’t at home and I was left with my three older siblings and mum’s sister-in-law Antoinette.
Her kindness helped make up for Mum’s behaviour.
Mum would occasionally fly into rages.
Once she hit me so hard her belt left red circle marks on my skin.
I’d never know what would set her off and I grew up feeling like I didn’t belong in my own family.
One afternoon, when Mum was in a good mood, she took me to a birthday party for one of her friend’s kids.
As I got stuck into the games, my eyes kept being drawn to a tall, beautiful woman standing in the corner.
She had thick dark hair, warm brown eyes, and gave me the biggest smile.
Later, I found myself stood beside her.
‘Oh my goodness, you’ve got chewing gum in your hair,’ she said gently. ‘Let me take it out for you.’
‘Ouch!’ I yelped as she gave my locks a firm tug.
But almost as soon as the stranger had wandered off, Mum rushed over to me with a face like thunder.
‘Come on Aaliyah we’re going home,’ she snapped.
'Isn't my daughter beautiful?'
Weirdly, after that, Mum started spoiling me with presents and fussing over me.
It was like a switch had been flicked and it made me nervous.
What is going on? I fretted.
Then Mum confided, ‘There’s a bad woman who wants to take you away from me and your family. But you’re not going to let her, are you?’
‘No way!’ I insisted.
Later, Mum told me we’d been asked to go to a clinic for tests.
Yet when we got there she kept ushering me away to the toilets and spraying something into my mouth.
‘Just to make your breath smell fresh,’ she insisted.
Eventually doctors took a swab from the inside of my cheek and we left.
I had no idea then that the results of that test would change my life forever…
Mum and I were at home when suddenly police turned up at our door.
Before I knew it, an officer was leading Mum into one car and a social worker was taking me off to another.
‘I want Mummy!’ I yelped, terrified, as Mum was carted away and I was driven to a temporary foster home.
There, I learned the shocking truth.
‘What I’m about to tell you will come as a shock,’ the social worker began.
Then she said, ‘Your name isn’t Aaliyah, it’s Delimar – and Carolyn isn’t your mum. She kidnapped you when you were just 10 days old.’
I listened dumbstruck as she went on.
‘Your real Mummy is called Luz and your real daddy is called Pedro,’ she continued. ‘Your family were told you’d died when their house caught fire, but your mummy Luz never believed you were dead. She never gave up hope of finding you. ‘
Still just six years old, my head was spinning.
In time, they decided to introduce me to Luz, my biological mum – I was told it was the beautiful stranger who’d taken the gum out of my hair at the party.
Heartbroken for her and in my innocence, I hid under the table, then jumped out when she walked in and yelled, ‘Surprise!’
She hugged me tightly, as if she never wanted to let go.
And as she dabbed at the tears spilling down her cheeks, she said, ‘Don’t worry sweetheart, I’m just so happy.’
Gradually, my real mum Luz explained to me what had happened.
Carolyn was a distant relative by my marriage of Pedro – my real dad.
Just 10 days after I was born, she’d turned up at our home telling Dad she knew someone who had a job for him.
Dad had gone with her, but en route Carolyn had told him she’d left her purse at ours.
So Carolyn had nipped back to ours - alone.
‘She told me she wanted to use the toilet,’ Mum continued. ‘But not long after she went upstairs, there was an explosion and suddenly the house was on fire.
‘I rushed upstairs to get you from your cot, but it was empty. The flames were getting thicker and I had to get your brothers to safety.’
After the fire crews had put out the flames, one of them had come out of the house holding a blanket of what had looked like ashes.
‘They believed that was all that was left of you,’ Mum sobbed. ‘The coroners’ report said that you were presumed dead – completely consumed by the fire.’
Carolyn had somehow managed to escape the blaze, which was put down to faulty wiring.
‘I’d seen your cot empty, and I kept telling everyone that someone had taken you, but they thought it was the grief talking,’ Mum trailed off.
As time passed, no one had suspected Carolyn – brazenly she’d even given her condolences to my parents.
She lived just 15 miles away, but remarkably managed to change my name from Delimar to Aaliyah and raise me as her own daughter.
‘But I never believed you were dead, and I never gave up hope we’d be reunited one day,’ Mum wept.
Six years after my so-called ‘death’, Mum had walked into that birthday party, being held by a friend of a friend.
‘As soon as I saw your face, your dimples, your eyes, I knew you were my Delimar,’ Mum told me.
Amazingly Mum had been able to think on her feet, coming up with the excuse that I had gum in my hair so she could pull out a few strands.
Then she managed to get the hair DNA-tested.
The results had confirmed without doubt that I was her daughter.
It turned out that the substance Carolyn had sprayed into my mouth before I was given the DNA test was her own saliva.
'Why did you have to take me?'
She had been forced to take me for tests when Mum made her allegations and had tried to fake a positive result.
It’d been her last desperate attempt to cover her tracks.
Taking it all in was impossible.
At first, being back with my family, including my three real brothers, felt incredible.
My siblings doted on me.
But my life had been turned upside down.
Overnight, I had a new family, home and school.
I even had a new name – Delimar.
It was a lot to absorb.
And sometimes, at night, I gazed at a photo I had of me on a trip with Carolyn and her family and thought, I miss them.
They were all I’d ever known, especially Antoinette, who’d had no idea that Carolyn had stolen me.
Time went by and, yet again, I felt like a fish out of water as I tried to copy my family’s speech and mannerisms.
In time, Carolyn Correa entered a plea of ‘no contest’ to kidnapping, interference of child custody and conspiracy.
Her lawyers maintained that she had suffered from a psychotic condition that caused her to believe she was pregnant and that she truly thought I was her baby_._
Judge Pamela Dembe called Carolyn’s actions ‘truly monstrous’, and sentenced her to nine to 30 years in prison.
And because Carolyn had never admitted wrongdoing, the judge said, ‘I don't truly have the sense that Ms Correa has fully accepted the responsibility for what she's done’.
My case was so shocking and strange that it hit the headlines and when a movie was made out of my extraordinary story, the kids at school decided I’d got too big for my boots and gave me a hard time.
But I was a feisty little thing and stood up for myself.
I even enjoyed the press attention, it made me feel special.
In truth though, I was in survival mode, desperately trying to block out the past.
I was plagued with nightmares where someone would turn up on our doorstep telling me I had to leave my family again.
A few months after I was returned home, a therapist suggested something they thought would help me heal.
‘We’re going to take you to see Carolyn in jail,’ Mum said.
But if I thought there would be even a flicker of remorse, I was wrong.
Carolyn just sat there behind the glass, emotionless.
‘You had three children already,’ I told her. ‘Why did you have to take me?’
She didn’t even flinch.
One day at home, I was asking Mum questions about my kidnapping, when she dropped another bombshell.
‘Carolyn must have had help kidnapping you, and escaping the fire that day,’ she said. ‘Some people are going around saying your biological dad Pedro was her accomplice.’
‘Dad?’ I gasped in disbelief.
My parents had divorced before I was reunited with them.
But I saw Dad every other weekend and adored his fun, loving nature – I just couldn’t believe that he was involved in any way.
Again, I locked the thought away in a corner of my mind, unable to deal with it.
It wasn’t until I was 12 that it finally sunk in that I was never going back to live with Carolyn.
As I hit my teens, Mum and I clashed.
When I was 15, I left to live with Dad, but we argued too.
The following year, I went into foster care.
Shortly after I was diagnosed with PTSD.
But by 20, I was fed up with seeing myself as a victim – or a survivor.
It was time to just be me.
Soon after I fell in love with a wonderful man, Isaiah, and on our wedding day, I was surrounded by all my loving biological family. I didn’t have any contact with Carolyn’s family.
Two years after our big day, life is good.
I have a wonderful husband and stepson, and my family and I are all close.
Twelve years ago, Carolyn was released from prison after nine years behind bars.
But we have no relationship.
She’s never expressed remorse or given me the answers I crave.
Why did she take me? I wonder to this day.
I’ve heard various theories over the years.
One is that she’d told people she was pregnant for attention and had needed a baby to prove she was telling the truth.
Another is that she was in trouble with the law and thought having a newborn would help get her a lighter sentence.
Whatever her reasoning, I do forgive her – because I refuse to be eaten up by hate.
I eventually discovered that Dad took a lie detector test as part of the investigation which confirmed that he had no involvement with my kidnap.
But I am convinced Carolyn had an accomplice and it’s horrible to think that person is still walking around scot-free.
If it wasn’t for my real mum’s unshakable belief that I was still alive – and that twist of fate at the birthday party – my life would be so different.
I’m so grateful she trusted her mother’s instinct.
Delimar Vera, 27
PHOTO CREDITS: TLF/Shutterstock, ZUMA Press, Inc. / Alamy Stock Photo, IMAGO/Newscom World/Getty Images/