A man who abducted a four-year-old girl from a campsite added her mother on Facebook while an 18-day manhunt was under way, it has emerged.
At 6am on October 16, 2021, Ellie Smith was subject to every parents worst nightmare when she woke up in her tent to find the door open and her daughter missing.
Cleo Smith had been pulled from her tent by Terence Darrell Kelly at the remote Western Australian Blowholes campsite.
Kelly, 37, was high on methamphetamine when he visited the site, which is 10 hours drive north of Perth, with the intention to steal a handbag.
However, he left the camp, at some time between 2.40am and 4.40am, with a child and prompted one of the largest search and rescue missions the country has every seen.
An army of emergency services were dispatched, as well as horses, helicopters and drones to find the kidnapper and Cleo, and it was 18 days before the youngster would be reunited with her family and Kelly would be arrested.
The failed kidnapper appeared at a Perth court on Wednesday to be sentenced, with details of the extraordinary case laid bare.
Experts have commonly predicted children abducted are killed within days, if not sooner, by those who have taken them.
But Cleo was found near her home town in Carnavron, looking unscathed in a house filled with dolls.
University of Newcastle criminologist and professor Xanthe Mallett said: “I was frankly astonished. It is an outlier in my experience – I’ve never heard of a case quite like it."
Mum Ellie Smith described the nearly three-week event as a "nightmare".
She said: “As a parent you want to make sure that they stay as a child for as long as they can.
"She lost that; that was taken from her.”
“The first week after she returned home it was probably the worst. We had to have all the doors open and all the lights on just for her to go to sleep, and even then, she would wake up screaming.
“Nightmare after nightmare, after being through the nightmare.”
The Perth court was told how Cleo was helped captive at Kelly's state housing accommodation where she was locked in a room with a mattress on the floor, with her abductor drowning out her tears and cries with the bathroom radio.
During a police interview Kelly told authorities he had smacked Cleo or "roughed her up" for being "bossy" and wanting chocolate.
During interrogation, he revealed he tried to restrain Cleo’s hands, feet and mouth with sticky tape and to tie her to a chair, but she was a "fighter" and made this too difficult.
During the frightening ordeal, Ellie Smith made numerous calls on Facebook to help return her daughter to safety.
And in a sick act, her daughter's kidnapper befriended her on the social media site.
WA district court chief judge Julie Wager said: “The fear and distress caused to Cleo's parents over those 18 days was immeasurable.
“The child’s life and that of her family has been permanently impacted, and that impact will never go away.
“Her parents were sad, scared and confused. They described being too fearful to sleep, watching the same space at the Blowholes each day while feeling completely empty and broken.
"They stayed at the place that caused them so much pain, hoping their little girl would be located."
Kelly is a Yamataji man who grew up in WA's midwest.
The court heard how by the age of two, Kelly had been abandoned by his alcoholic and drug-addicted parents and was handed to his maternal aunt Penny Walker.
A child protection report revealed he was given alcohol in his baby bottles and had speech and hearing issues.
By age 12 he was bedwetting, suicidal and hospitalised before being expelled from high school for disruptlive behaviour.
He is set to spend the next 11-and-a-half years in Perth's maximum-security prison before he is illegible for parole.
His sentence is nearly half of the maximum 20-year penalty for child abduction, but his early guilty plea, coupled with a "traumatic upbringing" were factored into his 13-year and six month jail sentence.
Judge Wager said: “No child in Western Australia should have suffered the neurodevelopmental difficulties, the trauma, the grief and the neglect that you suffered as a child and as a young person.
“Sadly, in Western Australia, many Aboriginal people have suffered the adverse impacts of colonisation. I fully accept that you’re one of them and I accept that you’ve turned to drug misuse because of the pain and trauma that you’ve suffered throughout your life.”
At 11.24pm on 3 November 2021, nearly three weeks after Kelly’s car left the campsite, police found him and stormed his home to rescue Cleo, who was locked in a room with a toy car.
A psychologist report read out in court this week said that Kelly felt euphoria when he took Cleo because he could fulfil his fantasy of having a little girl to dress up and play with.
In a victim impact statement provided to the court, Smith said the family wanted “an opportunity for their little girl to do whatever it takes to be able to lead her best life in the future”.
