Cleo Smith: Man sentenced to 13 years in prison for abducting 4-year-old girl

A 37-year-old man has been sentenced to 13 years and six months in prison for abducting a four-year-old girl from her family’s tent at a remote Western Australian campsite.

Following an extensive search, Cleo was found alone in a house in the small town of Carnarvon, 18 days after she went missing in 2021.

The house belonged to Terence Darrell Kelly, who pleaded guilty in January 2022 to a single charge of abducting the girl.

Kelly abducted a sleeping Cleo Smith from the campsite in the early hours of 16 October 2021, and then drove her 47 miles to his house, where he kept her locked in a bedroom, according to the court transcript.

Judge Julie Wager, while imposing the sentence, said that Kelly has a severe and complex personality disorder and had injected methylamphetamine on the night he kidnapped the girl.

"You pose a high risk of seriously psychologically harming any future victim in the event that you did re-offend," she said, according to a transcript of proceedings.

Kelly will be eligible for parole after serving 11 years and six months of his jail time.

The judge acknowledged Kelly’s troubled upbringing, his prenatal exposure to drugs and alcohol and a life surrounded by violence as contributing to his offending.

“I fully accept that your personality disorder was caused by the environment that you were raised and by the deprivation to you as a child,” she said.

A psychiatrist consulted in the case said Kelly suffered from a severe personality disorder that led him to create a "fantasy world" with the existence of multiple imaginary children by different women.

Kelly appeared before judge Wagner in person, wearing a green, short-sleeved button-down shirt and dark shorts, with his long hair tied in a bun. He was flanked by two bailiffs, Nine News reported.

The court heard how Kelly kept the girl in his house for over 18 days by locking the door from the outside. Kelly turned up the volume of the radio in the bathroom to cover up any noise that Cleo made, the court was told.

"The young victim heard her name on the radio and she said they were saying her name."

Kelly reportedly told the police that he tried to "rough Cleo up a bit a few times" and became angry when she got "bossy" asking for chocolate. However, he claimed he didn't want to hurt her and wanted to make sure she was "comfortable".

Cleo cried often and Kelly was unsuccessful in tying her up. "I just used sticky tape, but it wasn't working. So, I thought, 'I won't tie her up any more with the sticky tape'. I tried to tie her to the chair and that with her hands, feet and mouth. I tried to do that. She was a bit of a fighter," he told police.

The judge said Cleo was often alone at the house which was "distressing" for the child. "But 18 days without contact or explanation, and with hours totally on her own and no access to the outside world would have been very traumatic for the child," she said.

"Her parents didn't know if she was alive or dead … they didn't know what had happened to her, or if she'd ever return. This shattered her family, and has been damaging and traumatising for the child."

Kelly is a member of Australia's Indigenous, or Aboriginal community. "Sadly, in Western Australia, many Aboriginal people have suffered the adverse impacts of colonisation," Judge Wager said.

"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."

With input from agencies