‘KELLY MADE OUR LIVES HELL’

KELLY Smith and company face a sentence of life behind bars today after her eie ma said she has made a family’s lives a living hell.

Kelly was found guilty of kidnapping and trafficking her daughter for R20 000 earlier this month, alongside her berk Jacquen “Boeta” Appollis and chommie Steven van Rhyn.

Ahead of today’s sentencing, probation officer Errol Daniel Pietersen called for life for Kelly and Van Rhyn, while he recommended a more lenient sentence for Boeta.

In Kelly’s case, he described her as abusive towards her children and “manipulative”.

He concluded that: “It is therefore not a stretch to conclude that Kelly Smith is the mastermind behind the trafficking of her own daughter.”

Kelly’s mother, meanwhile, said that her eldest child was “heartless” in her victim impact statement.

Her statement, read out in the Western Cape High Court sitting in Saldanha, read: “Kelly, you’ve come to make our lives hell on earth. You came to break us and tear us apart.

"Do you know what it’s like to lie awake every night and what it feels like, my heart is ripped out of my body because I pray for Joshlin?”

The hartseer ouma also asked Kelly a question, perhaps the entire nation was hoping to ask. 

She said: “How did your heart feel on Mother’s Day? I cried my eyes out when my grandchildren came to surprise me with breakfast in bed, and your son wished me a Happy Mother’s Day. Didn’t you wish you had your three children with you?

“You tried using our personal lives to air dirty laundry with your actions.”

She explained that while Kelly was adopted by her grandparents, it was because she herself was young and had no knowledge of rearing a child, but, she let them rear her because she went job hunting and knew they would give her daughter the best that they could. 

She called Kelly heartless. 

Smith Daniels said: “I pray to God to be with you and awaken the mother in you. How heartless can one be? No sentence will be enough until we find Joshlin.

How do you think your son is handling it - having to be the butt of jokes? Children teased him because his mother uses tik and she sold his sister.”

Joshlin’s teacher, Edna Maart, also submitted a victim impact statement detailing how the former Grade 1 learner at Diazville Primary School is missed by her klasmaatjies.

She shared a picture of a card from her friends, reading: ‘Dear Joshlin. Our friends and I miss you terribly. We pray you are safe and will return to us soon. Your friends from Diazville Primary”.

Judge Nathan Erasmus will hand down the trio’s sentences today.