“It would have been an unbelievably terrifying ordeal for the child … the impact would be significant on that feeling of safety and feeling vulnerable and the parents who would have felt they did not properly protect their children.”
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State prosecutors told the court it was like something “straight from the movies or a TV show” as the case was compared to that of the abduction of Cleo Smith who was taken from a campsite near Carnarvon in November 2021.
Terrence Kelly was sentenced to over 13 years in jail for the four-year-old’s abduction after she was found alive by police 18 days after she disappeared.
On Friday, Rafferty told the court it would be “an affront to justice” not to sentence Anthony to a term of imprisonment over the incident, despite hearing that he was suffering from schizophrenia and the effects of Cannabis and butane abuse leading to a psychosis.
Anthony, who later pleaded guilty to seven charges in relation to the incident, told police that he was in the middle of a paranoid delusion and believed aliens were everywhere and that he needed to save the children.
He was then charged with two counts of person who forcibly/fraudulently detains a child, one count of deprivation of liberty, two counts of aggravated burglary, one count of disguising to commit a crime and one count of indecently recording a child.
He was sentenced to a total of eight years in prison, backdated to March 2023, when he was arrested, and will be eligible for parole in March 2029.
A lifetime restraining order was also granted to protect both of the boys from Anthony.
