A heavily armed riot squad removed the man charged with the seizure and imprisonment of a four-year-old girl from his small West Australian town on Friday and transferred him to a maximum security prison amid fears of racial violence.
The arrival of the state’s prison riot squad in Carnarvon followed the dispatch of extra police to the town on Thursday and a plea from Western Australia’s police chief to avoid racist reprisal attacks after the arrest of the local Aboriginal man, Terry Kelly, 36, who is accused of abducting Cleo Smith from a campsite.
Police were deeply concerned that Aboriginal people in Carnarvon were being targeted and provoked by racists over the abduction, The Australian reported.
Kelly, who is alleged to have taken Cleo from a tent early on October 16, as her family were on a camping weekend south of the town, was brought to a Carnarvon court under close guard late on Thursday after more than 30 hours of questioning by detectives.
After 18 days of frantic searches and desperate pleas from her parents, Cleo was found alone playing with toys in Kelly’s Carnarvon council house when police broke in early on Wednesday.
Advertisement
Charged with several crimes including one count of forcibly taking a child under 16, Kelly has self-harmed twice since his arrest, including bashing his head against cell walls.
Barefoot and wearing a black T-shirt during the special late-afternoon hearing, Kelly shouted “I’m coming for you” at journalists inside the small courtroom, there to cover the alleged crime which shocked Australia.
Extra police were deployed to the town of 4,000 residents on Thursday because of fears over racial unrest and recriminations over the child’s seizure.
As social media simmered with accusations and theories about the accused, Western Australian police commissioner, Chris Dawson, convened an emergency meeting of about 20 Aboriginal elders in Carnarvon, telling them: “You are influencers in your community and you can talk to people who are more impressionable.”
Police feared not only racial clashes in the town which has a large Aboriginal population but also unrest within the tight-knit Aboriginal community over Kelly’s alleged crimes.
Advertisement
The police chief told the elders that police were in Carnarvon in larger numbers to protect and serve everyone. He added that an entire group of people could not be held to account for what one person was believed to have done.
The town has a long history of racial unrest and Aboriginal impoverishment going back to the forced removal of hundreds of Aboriginal people from the town a century ago to offshore islands from which they never returned.
A statue in the town of an Aboriginal woman looking out over the Indian Ocean and covering her eyes is the centrepiece of a memorial to those shipped offshore.
Tensions between police and Aboriginal people in Western Australia escalated in late October after a police officer charged with the murder of a mentally-ill, knife-wielding Aboriginal woman was acquitted by an all-white jury in the state capital, Perth.
Kelly, whose social media accounts show he had a large collection of dolls and that he drove with dolls in his car, will be kept in a maximum security cell in Perth until his next court appearance in December. He has not so far entered a plea in response to the charges.
Advertisement
Facebook profiles linked to him appeared to show an obsession with toys for young girls and included images of a room in his house filled with the Bratz line of fashion dolls. “I love my dolls”, he wrote in one post. Another read: “I love taking my dolls for drive arounds and doing their hair and taking selfies in public.”
Via several linked profiles, Kelly claimed to be the father of several children including at least one girl, although neighbours say that he was childless.
Cleo was said to be in good spirits after being reunited with her parents. “I am pretty sure they all slept in the same room, just cuddling all night and I think that’s just such a wonderful story,” Col Blanch, Western Australia’s deputy police commissioner, told Sky News Australia.
Police remain guarded about what the child may have suffered while being held prisoner, and said they would be carefully questioning her about her experience. “That’s a really hard process and it’s OK if she doesn’t want to tell us,” Blanch added.
“But again, such a small child taken away from mum and dad, 18 days in a stranger’s house — you can only imagine what might’ve gone on and what trauma she will have out of that and I hope she can recover.”
