Thursday, a South African woman was given life in jail for selling her 6-year-old daughter.
On the same day that Kelly Smith was sentenced, her boyfriend and another guy were also given life sentences by the judge. All three were found guilty earlier this month of kidnapping and selling people.
Joshlin Smith, Smith’s 6-year-old daughter, went missing in February 2024, which led cops all over South Africa to look for her. She hasn’t been found yet.
The sentences for Smith, her boyfriend Jacquen Appollis, and their friend Steveno van Rhyn were life in prison for selling people and 10 years each for kidnapping.
The judges gave them their terms at a sports center in Saldanha Bay, a town on the west coast. The trial was changed to the sports center so that people from the neighborhood could go.
When Smith’s daughter went missing, people felt sorry for her (her full name is Racquel Chantel Smith). People in the area came together to support her and offered to help police look for Joshlin in the sand dunes near their poor neighborhood of shacks, which is about 75 miles (120 kilometers) north of Cape Town.
During the search for Joshlin, every news station in South Africa showed a picture of her with her hair pulled back in pigtails and happy.
On the day she went missing, Smith said she had left Joshlin with Appollis. But when Smith was caught, the case took a shocking turn.
Smith told the woman that she, the two men, and Joshlin had sold the child to a traditional healer for about $1,000 because the healer wanted the child’s body parts.
The judge’s decision didn’t say who the child was sold to or what happened to her, but it did say that she had been sold for slavery or things that were like slavery.
