South African woman gets life sentence for selling daughter
A court in South Africa has convicted a woman of selling her 6-year-old daughter. The girl has not been found despite a massive nationwide search since she disappeared last year.
A court in South Africa has convicted a woman of selling her 6-year-old daughter. The girl has not been found despite a massive nationwide search since she disappeared last year.
A woman has been sentenced to life imprisonment in South Africa for selling her small daughterImage: Sumaya Hisham/REUTERS
A South African court on Thursday sentenced a woman to life in prison for kidnapping and selling her 6-year-old daughter, with prosecutors alleging that the girl was sold to a traditional healer for her eyes and fair complexion.
The girl, Joshlin Smith, went missing in February last year from her home in Saldanha Bay, a fishing town 135 kilometers (85 miles) north of Cape Town.
The disappearance sparked a huge nationwide search at the time, and her mother, Racquel “Kelly” Smith, was initially the object of much sympathy from across the country.
Judge Nathan Erasmus ruled that Smith, 35, along with her boyfriend and a mutual friend, should be jailed for life for human trafficking.
In addition, they were all sentenced to a concurrent 10 years of imprisonment for kidnapping.
Their names were also to be added to the child protection register, the judge said.
“There is nothing that I can find that is redeeming and deserving of a lesser sentence than the harshest I can impose,” he said.
Erasmus said Smith, who has two other children, had shown “no indication of remorse” over Joshlin’s disappearance.
He also said the fact that all the accused were drug users was no excuse.
Many of the people in the courtroom, who included the girl’s grandmother, applauded when the verdict was announced.
