South African woman is convicted of kidnapping and selling 6-year-old daughter

A South African woman was convicted Friday of kidnapping and selling her six-year-old daughter in a case that horrified the country. The girl went missing more than a year ago and hasn’t been found.

Kelly Smith and two men — her boyfriend and their friend — were convicted of kidnapping and human trafficking over the disappearance of Smith’s daughter, Joshlin, who was six when she went missing in February 2024.

Smith, whose full name is Racquel Chantel Smith, was initially a figure of sympathy when her daughter went missing.

Community members rallied around her and volunteered to help police search for Joshlin in the sand dunes near their poor neighbourhood of shacks close to the west coast town of Saldanha Bay, around 120 kilometres (75 miles) north of Cape Town.

A photograph of Joshlin smiling and with her hair tied in pigtails was broadcast by news stations across South Africa as police then launched a nationwide hunt.

Smith said she had left Joshlin with her boyfriend on the day she disappeared, but the case took a shocking twist when Smith was arrested.

A woman testified during the trial that Smith had told her she and the two men had sold Joshlin for around $1,000 to a traditional healer who wanted the child for her body parts.

The judge’s verdict did not make any conclusions on who the child was sold to or exactly what happened to her.

Smith, her boyfriend Jacquin Appollis and their friend Steveno van Rhyn face life in prison, and the judge said sentencing hearings will begin next week.

People attending the trial cheered and applauded when Judge Nathan Erasmus read out the guilty verdicts. The trial was held in a Saldanha Bay sports centre that had more space than a courtroom so that members of the community could attend.

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