A young South African girl is still missing a year after her disappearance was first reported. Shortly before Joshlin Smith went missing, her mom allegedly told people that she was planning to sell the girl to a healer. The girl’s eye and skin color was deemed desirable, which reportedly motivated her mother to exchange her for money. Her mom was arrested for trafficking her daughter, and now faces life in prison for selling the girl. In the year since she disappeared, no one knows what happened to Joshlin or where she is.
Racquel “Kelly” Smith, along with her boyfriend Jacquen Appollis and their friend Steveno Van Rhyn were found guilty of kidnapping and trafficking the girl. They were each sentenced to 10 years for kidnapping. Additionally, Judge Nathan Erasmus sentenced them to life in prison for human trafficking, CBS News reported. The terms will be served concurrently.
“I am also ordering the entry of your names to the child protection register,” Erasmus said. “There is nothing that I can find that is redeeming and deserving of a lesser sentence than the harshest I can impose.”
According to the judge, the fact that the three are drug users is not an excuse.
As Kelly Smith sat in court, the judge said she was manipulative. He also noted she showed “no indication of remorse” when it comes to her daughter’s disappearance.
The BBC reported a neighbor testified that the mother told her she planned to sell Joshlin Smith to a “sangoma,” a traditional South African healer. A local pastor testified he heard Smith say she sold Joshlin and a sibling for the equivalent of $1,100. The healer allegedly wanted the girl for “her eyes and skin.” She also claimed she would have accepted $275.
“How do you sleep [and] live with yourself?” Kelly Smith’s mother, Amanda Smith-Daniels, asked in a victim statement. Smith-Daniels sat in the courtroom wearing a shirt featuring the young girl’s face. “We could have provided for her better than her mother,” family friend Natasha Andrews, who cared for the girl as a baby, said.
To this day, no one knows where the girl is, outlets reported. She went missing in February 2024. When her teacher asked Kelly Smith where Joshlin was, Kelly Smith told her the girl was “on a ship, inside a container, and they were on the way to West Africa.” This hasn’t been confirmed. The teacher, Edna Maart, also said she struggles with how to handle classmates who ask where Joshlin is.
