Christopher Pyne: Sinister stain on Cleo Smith’s rescue joy

The news that Cleo Smith was alive – and the audio of her rescue – should melt the hardest of hearts, writes Christopher Pyne. What happened to her parents should enrage us.

If your heart didn’t melt, your eyes moisten or you didn’t take a sharp intake of breath when you heard the audio released by the Western Australian Police of the precise moment when Cleo Smith was found alive in Carnarvon on Wednesday, then nothing could move you.

It was a real tear-jerker.

Police: “We’ve got her. We’ve got her.”

Police: “Come here, come here.”

Police: “I’ve got you bubby. You’re all right.”

Police: ‘What’s your name sweetheart?”

Cleo: “My name is Cleo.”

Police: “Your name is Cleo.”

Police: “Hello Cleo!”

The relief in the voice of the last policeman when he says “Hello Cleo!” is hard to convey. It evinces relief, surprise and the end of the search for Cleo by the WA Police for the 18 days leading up to her discovery.

There was almost an audible collective shout of joy as people across Australia woke up to the news that four-year-old Cleo had been found.

I know as a parent that when Madeleine McCann was kidnapped in Portugal in 2007, aged three, it affected me greatly.

Screen grabs from footage of moment police rescue Cleo Smith from a Carnarvon home, 18 days after they say she was taken from her family's tent. Picture: WA Police

Having a vulnerable child abducted while in your care is every parent’s worst nightmare.

Madeleine has never been found and the police believe she was kidnapped and murdered by a German man serving time in prison for another crime. They continue to build the evidence to charge him.

Then William Tyrrell, also aged only three, disappeared in 2014 in Kendall, NSW. He, too, has never been found. It’s impossible to erase the picture of his smiling face in his Spider-Man suit from your memory banks. Not that we should.

All of our minds naturally go to thoughts of how children that are abducted and never seen again are treated and their lives are ended.

The lives of their parents, carers, siblings, family and friends can surely, never be the same again. So when Cleo disappeared from the Blowholes campsite in Western Australia in the early hours of the morning, we all feared the worst.

Clearly, her mother was distraught and her stepfather supported her stoically in her press conferences appealing for help from the public.

Cleo Smith pictured in hospital after she was found by police. Picture: WA Police

The community of Carnarvon responded. The search by volunteers, community representatives and the authorities was comprehensive and relentless. The flow of information to the police was astounding.

Through magnificent investigative work and the overlay of one data set after another, the police were able to home in on the house in Carnarvon where Cleo was being held, barely a 15-minutes drive from her own home, and she was rescued.

Cleo is one of the lucky ones. Many people had given up hope that she would be found alive. She seemed destined to be added to the list of unsolved missing person cases that are publicised on the walls of police station receptions in many parts of Australia and the world.

Not this time.

Justice will now be done in the matter of Cleo’s alleged abductor. He is in custody and the story about him, and allegations about his motives and how he treated Cleo while she was in his control, will emerge.

But there was also a sinister side to the reaction of the public to the disappearance of Cleo almost three weeks ago. Social media platforms allow anonymous trolls and barking mad losers to write things they could never get away with if they had to put their name to those same claims.

Ellie Smith and Jake Gliddon, Cleo’s mum and stepdad, were grievously targeted. In some posts they were wrongly accused of being behind the alleged crime.

In others, they were simply sledged for not seeming to be unhappy enough about the loss of Cleo. It was pretty sick stuff and completely reprehensible.

But it’s a reminder that there are plenty of people out there who are just not very good people.

It reminds me of the appalling treatment of Lindy Chamberlain after her baby, Azaria, was taken by a dingo at Uluru in 1980. She and her husband Michael were vilified by an angry mob who were determined that she had killed her child.

She was wrongly convicted and imprisoned. Finally, she was pardoned and even received compensation for her treatment. At least she predated social media. That wasn’t the case for Joanne Lees. Her boyfriend, Peter Falconio, was murdered on a lonely stretch of road in the Northern Territory in 2001.

Their attacker attempted to abduct Joanne but she escaped and survived. He is now serving time in jail.

Joanne was subjected to a torrent of online abuse questioning aspects of her story and effectively making her out to be a liar. Again, they were wrong. Total strangers also accused her of not being upset enough about what had happened to her and her murdered boyfriend.

I can’t fathom the motivation for this behaviour. What are these people trying to prove? Who made these vile trolls experts on the demeanour of victims and their families?

Why don’t they just keep their mad opinions to themselves?

They would do better to remember the adage “better to say nothing and be thought an idiot, than open your mouth and remove all doubt”.