Some sell them. The woman who sold her nine and 11 year old daughters to be sex slaves and sold the now 13 year old to a lawyer… She is not fit to be called a mother.
I will never forget Ammy’s birth mother’s words when she met us when our daughter was leaving foster care and coming to us. “We loved her too much to just dump her on a field or in a bin like others do. But we knew we couldn’t raise her…”
So how??? How did this woman lose all sense of love? I heard of this precious child’s disappearance and immediately said to my husband, “Mom is dodgy. How do you leave a little girl alone with a boyfriend of yours? How do you trust him?” He said he wasn’t interested in the case. And so I started discussing it with two other ladies, one of whom said she is no longer following the trial.
And so, I come here where I’ve written about her before. I know Saldanha. I’ve been there a few times. Middelpos is not some unknown far away place. This was too close to home.
The community searched for Joshlin. Things felt even worse when the mother of the missing child told searchers to stop looking for her. She didn’t look very desperate when she appeared drinking milkshake at a restaurant smiling and happy before a week had even passed.
Her story about how and when her daughter went missing also didn’t make sense. And THEN, her (Joshlin’s mother’s) sister said publicly, that the mother, Raquel aka Kelly, had said she’d sold the child to a witch doctor. She said Kelly was a drug addict. Kelly admitted during the search that she indeed was an addict at the time.
Things looked worse. And so, we were not surprised when Kelly, her boyfriend and a friend, and another friend too, were arrested for trafficking. But we were sad. Because we still didn’t know where the child was.
And today, we still don’t know. And my heart breaks because I know the Andrews family is grieving. They are a family who had seen how neglected Joshlin was and had asked Kelly if they could adopt her.
She said no.
And now, here we are. Found guilty of kidnapping and human trafficking today with her two co- accused. (The female friend having turned State witness and also facing a sentence but shorter than that of Kelly, boyfriend and friend.)
The judge told them they have time between now and sentencing to think and reveal the truth about who they sold the child to and what was done to her.
One witness said Kelly sold the child for R20 000 (an amount that has been touted since the beginning) because the witch doctor wanted her eyes and skin.
Something I can believe. Look at how they hunt down albinos for their skin too.
Where is Joshlin? Even if her life has been snuffed out, we who care want to know where her bones lie.
I have never forgotten any of the family friends who went missing. I haven’t forgotten the dementia mother from our neighborhood who went missing in our three years ago. And so, I will never forget Joshlin.
She could have escaped if her mother hadn’t wanted money for drugs. She could have been loved and nurtured and NOT SOLD.
Six years old…probably forever six. I don’t know which is worse. A muti murder or being kept as a sex slave.
I want to know what Kelly told her trusting daughter when she handed her over to be tortured.
We who care, we who love children who haven’t been born from our hearts, are heartbroken. The community of Middelpos is not at rest. How can we be at peace when we don’t know where our child is?
Onse kind (Our child), As she became known. We all want answers. How does a mother do this?
“Dodgy” didn’t begin to describe this ‘mother.’ I am so sorry for the Andrews family who loved her and actually wanted to raise her, more than her mother and father ever did.
God shall wipe away our tears…
They said I should write a book 