An adult who grew up next to the guy who kidnapped Cleo Smith has confessed to enticing a little girl out of a park and sexually abusing her.
After bringing the nine-year-old away from Doubleview park, close to Perth’s Newborough Primary School, in July, Ashely Bropho, 39, pleaded guilty to two charges of indecent assault and one count of enticing a minor to do a sexual act.
WA Police have dropped a fourth allegation of holding someone else against their will in return for his guilty plea.
Bropho was reared in the same home as the man who kidnapped Cleo Smith, it was discovered after his incarceration.
On October 16, 2021, a little girl named Cleo, 4, was abducted from her family’s tent at a seclusion camping area in Carnarvon, Washington.
She was ultimately located by authorities on November 3 at Terence Kelly’s housing commission property, only a few blocks from her own house, after an 18-day state-wide search after her abduction.
After entering a guilty plea in December, Kelly will be punished for kidnapping Cleo over a two-day period.
The 9-year-old child was taken by Bropho, according to the court, to his 300-meter-distance state-owned residence.
Before she could escape and inform her family of what had occurred, he committed a sexual attack on her.
Shortly after, Bropho was detained and will stay there until his November sentencing.
The late Aboriginal elder Penny Walker’s grandson is named Bropho.
When Bropho was just two years old, Ms. Walker took him in since his “mother didn’t want him and she tossed him away.”
She told The West Australian, “I looked down at him and this tiny guy – God – was giving me something back into my life… my children.”
Following the death of Kelly’s mother, Ms. Walker’s daughter, from multiple sclerosis, Kelly and his brother moved in with Ms. Walker.