The man who abducted four-year-old Australian girl Cleo Smith used a disturbing lie to lure her out of her tent, the child's mother has claimed in a new bombshell interview.
Smith's mother and stepfather, Ellie Smith and Jake Gliddon, featured on 60 Minutes on Sunday night in an interview reported to have netted them about NZ$2.1 million.
The pair spoke of the ordeal last October when Cleo was kidnapped from her tent at Quobba Blowholes campsite in Western Australia. She was found 18 days later just minutes away from their family house at a property in Carnarvon, home of 36-year-old Terence Kelly. Kelly, who is obsessed with Bratz dolls, has since pleaded guilty to forcibly taking a child under 16 and will be sentenced in March.
The child's mother revealed to 60 Minutes that Cleo has blocked out much of the incident.
"She was locked in a room and she was scared and she didn't know where we were," she said.
"She's blocked out a lot as to what's happened. She kind of went into survivor mode and pushed it very far away."
But the girl does remember "why she was taken", or at least the story Kelly told her.
"She tells us that she was taken because her baby sister was sick and so she needed to be taken away from us so that we could help her baby sister," the mother said.
Ellie said that angered her and the stepfather, but the couple are trying to focus on helping Cleo rather than "having our hearts full of hate".
It was also revealed that a "little pink bike" parked in front of the family's tent may have tipped Kelly off to the young girl's presence.
"Cleo had a bike at the front which indicated we had a child in that tent and that was all he needed to know," Ellie said.
"How are we meant to know putting a little girl's bike out the front of our tent indicated for someone to get her?"
The parents believe the crime was opportunistic rather than targeted, saying their own tent was unzipped at some point in the night Cleo was abducted, indicating the man didn't know where the girl was.
"He must have looked at ours and realised she's not in this side … and then gone to the other side and that's where she was."
After Cleo was found, Ellie said her daughter's hair had been dyed and cut. The girl apparently told her that pink dye had been put into her hair, but then washed out. The mother said they had to get her hair cut again as it had been "cut into chunks".
The family is now focused on the future and will be moving away from Carnarvon.
"Hopefully we find somewhere that is pretty similar to what we love and what we do because we don't want to let go of everything that we are and who we are.
"We want to build our girls' childhoods the way we wanted with fishing and camping, we're just going to do it on the road for a little bit.
"They're going to have such an amazing life."
