Cleo Smith’s mother has broken her silence after the man who kidnapped her little girl was jailed for 13-and-a-half years.
Terence Kelly was handed the lengthy sentence on Wednesday after admitting abducting Cleo, who was just 4 at the time, and holding her captive for 18 days.
Cleo’s mum, Ellie Smith, says “the anger always will be there” despite Kelly, 37, being locked up.
Speaking to 60 Minutes, Smith added that she and her partner Jake Gliddon “also feel a contentment he is behind bars”.
“And we do have a number to hold with us of how long he is away,” she said.
“But there is always going to be anger, always — how could there not be?”
Cleo had been on a camping trip with her mum, stepfather and little sister Isla when they decided to stay at the Quobba Blowholes campsite, about a 50-minute drive north of their hometown of Carnarvon in Western Australia on October 15, 2021.
Some time early the following morning, as the family slept, Kelly crept into their tent and made off with the young girl.
Cleo Smith’s mum Ellie Smith and stepfather Jake Gliddon outside the Perth District Court. Photo / NCA NewsWire/ Tony McDonough
A huge manhunt was launched, grabbing headlines across the world, before she was found 18 days later at Kelly’s home in Carnarvon.
In a victim impact statement read to WA’s District Court on Wednesday, Smith said Kelly “ripped their lives apart” when he took Cleo, and that her anguish had been “immeasurable”.
Kelly did not speak during the sentencing, merely nodding to acknowledge his name and indicate his plea of guilty.
During the time he held Cleo captive, no one else visited the property and Kelly went about his usual business; attending face-to-face employment meetings as required, seeing relatives, and giving them lifts.
During these outings, Cleo was locked in a room in his house, the door to which had been modified so it could only be locked from the hallway side.
Terence Kelly has been jailed. Photo / Colin Murty
Kelly changed her clothes and played with the girl, although he also became angry with her and “smacked her a little bit”, according to one of his two four-hour police interviews.
Cleo would cry and plead with Kelly to see her parents, prompting her captor to turn up the radio to mask her sounds from the neighbours. Sometimes Cleo would hear her own name on the radio, exclaiming: “They’re saying my name!”
It was also revealed that during the 18-day search for the girl, Kelly added Smith as a friend on Facebook.
Judge Wager acknowledged kidnapping Cleo formed part of Kelly’s “fantasy of having a little girl he could dress up and play with”.
Social media photos of his home that emerged following his arrest showed boxes of Bratz dolls stacked high against walls, a collection Judge Wager said was “consistent with your anxiety”.
Investigations eventually led officers to Kelly’s home on November 3, after a terrifying 18 days for Cleo, when she was rescued in a dramatic early morning raid.
In handing down her sentence, Judge Julie Wager said there were “no truly comparable cases” to this one.
Ellie Smith spoke after Kelly was sentenced. Photo / NCA NewsWire/ Tony McDonough
The maximum sentence available to Judge Wager was 20 years. However, Kelly received a discount due to his early guilty plea and a diagnosis of “complex personality dysfunction” due to a myriad of mental health problems stemming from a troubled childhood.
“No child in Western Australia … should have suffered what you did as a child,” said Judge Wager in her sentencing remarks, detailing the trauma Kelly suffered growing up with a violent father and both parents abusing substances.
He ended up in prison in 2014 for three years on burglary offences and began using methamphetamine upon release.
The evening following Kelly’s arrest, he barged into a room at Carnarvon Police Station, armed himself with a riot shield, and hit officers on the hands before he was restrained.
