Authors: Schapelle Corby
I needed to speak to someone. I needed a psychiatrist who wouldn’t run to the press, or a person I could trust to just let loose with and cry and cry and cry and tell them how shit my cell was, how scared I felt, how horrible life was and just release everything. But there was no one. I didn’t want to unload on the only people I could trust – my family – as they already had enough stress to deal with. They didn’t need to know all the gruesome details of my daily life. I couldn’t do that to them. I’d always try to put on a brave face and say, ‘No, no, it’s OK!’ I just had to deal with it all myself. I only had myself and God to rely on. It was lonely. I prayed to Him a lot, releasing through prayer. It helped to temporarily lift the heavy black cloud of despair. But I spent most of the time praying in my cell, as I no longer felt safe at church. I certainly couldn’t trust Christians any more than I could trust lawyers, guards, police or anyone else.
Even an Australian pastor who’d baptised me five months earlier stole my trust, touting his story just weeks before the verdict. He’d already run to the press when he first returned from baptising me. Now he was ringing TV programmes and newspapers offering to do interviews, even faxing journalists apersonal thank-you note I’d written and given to him. It got printed. I was shattered – now I was being exploited by a pastor! Not long before my verdict, he had the audacity to return to Bali with Channel 7’s
Today Tonight
. They’d paid for his airfares and hotel in return for promises of access to me. They didn’t get it. I refused to come out. I never ever, ever wanted to see this man again. He’d burnt me. Like so many others, he’d sold his soul to the media and in the process hurt me. If you couldn’t trust a pastor, who could you trust?
Not my lawyer. Lily came in asking me questions about my religion: ‘Were you religious in Australia?’
‘No.’
‘What was your baptism name?’
‘Abigail.’ I started feeling distressed. ‘Lily, what’s this got to do with my case? Why are you writing all this down, Lily?’
‘Oh, no reason!’
‘Scribble it out! You’re not giving it to reporters, Lily – scribble it out!’
‘Oh, I can’t do that!’
She finally did, but only after we had a lengthy argument.
Lily also asked me if I’d do an interview with a TV reporter from Jakarta. Merc and I discussed it and decided ‘no’. It might not hurt my case, but it wouldn’t help it. So why bother? I was sick of being exploited. It would also probably cause me problems with the prison boss. But Lily still tried to persuade me.
‘No! Lily, you know I’ll get in trouble.’ She kept pushing. ‘No! Lily, please!’
She came in with the reporter a few days later, regardless. My wishes didn’t count. She started again: ‘Schapelle . . . just a quick interview . . .’ ‘No.’ They both pushed. ‘No.’ I was relieved when they finally let it go.
As we walked out of the prison office to sit outside in the visit area, this reporter walked right behind me. When we sat down, I peeled off my dark-blue prison-issue T-shirt as I usually did at visits. Then my instincts kicked in. I started to tremble. Panic ripped through me. It was happening again. He was holding a small leather clutch bag awkwardly near the ground. I looked closely. I saw it. My hands flew to cover up the small lens peephole in his bag. I screamed, ‘Noooo!
Turn it off !
’ as I waved my hands frantically in front of the bag. I could trust no one.
The journalist calmly turned to give Lily a questioning look. She nodded. He put the bag down. He didn’t apologise. Lily just started pushing me once more. ‘Come on, Schapelle, I do everything for you!’ She even got Vasu on the phone to try to bully me into it.
‘Look at all we do for you, Schapelle!’
I was fuming. I refused to be bullied. ‘No!’ He left without his interview.
Lily and Vasu were furious. They came in a few days after the incident, telling me off for embarrassing Lily in front of a television journalist. Vasu blasted me for upsetting Lily. It was unbelievable. Who the hell were these people?
Later, I saw the story on Indonesian television. It had an interview with Lily and shots of me walking, peeling off my blue T-shirt and then frantically waving my hands over the lens. My lawyer had conspired with him, despite the fact that I’d repeatedly said no, despite knowing how deeply traumatised I was by sneaky cameras, and despite the little detail of her being my lawyer, whom I was trusting with my life.
The betrayals were non-stop. The invasion of me was at its worst. I’d developed a sixth sense for hidden cameras. I was very aware, always alert, always looking out. I saw them everywhere. It wasn’t paranoia – everyone was filling their pockets. I saw disposable cameras and camera phones constantly, as guards, prisoners and visitors weren’t exactly professional paparazzi, expert at hiding in bushes with longlenses. Usually, they were clumsy and obvious. Girls would blatantly point their camera phones at me. I’d test it by moving and the phone would always move with me. Or a group of male guards would stand with disposable cameras outside the church, all ready to snap me when I came outside. ‘No! You’re not allowed to use cameras in here. No!’ I usually screamed at them before running off in tears.
But the media were hungry and always looking for willing amateurs. A male prisoner told me a journalist had offered him a wad of cash and a disposable camera to get photos of me throughout my day. He refused. He had a heart.
The irony was that every time a sneaky photo of me was in the news, I’d cop the flak. I was regularly called to the boss’s office to get yelled at for a picture of me in the press. Twice I had to write apology letters, even though I’d tell him in tears, ‘It’s your guards taking the photos; it’s the people your guards let in here taking the photos. It’s not
my
fault!’
One of the most devious and sinister ways of getting shots of me was with ‘the Bible camera’. Christians would visit the prison church with a box crafted to look like a Bible with a little camera inside. It was so hypocritical. But nothing surprised me. I was so super-sensitive to sneaky cameras that I’d instantly sniff them out. I’d see a Bible pointed at me with a little peephole. I’d move seats. The Bible would follow me. These people weren’t journalists posing as Christians; they were devious Christians keen to fill up their pockets with fast cash. I often ran out of the church, shaking and in tears.
But in jail, the cameras weren’t always hidden. Sometimes they were smack-bang in my face. Kerobokan was cashing in and becoming Bali’s busiest film lot. Camera crews were endlessly setting up for yet another media stunt, like the beauty-school course and the yoga course. I went gleefully to the first day of both but turned around and walked straight out as soon as I saw cameras. Unsurprisingly, both courses were cancelled instantly.
On Hotel K’s birthday, the Governor of Bali and all his men came through with a local TV crew. He made a beeline to my cell with his entourage. He shook my hand for the cameras, patted me on the back and said, ‘You go home!’
‘Soon?’ I asked.
He smiled and walked off. He had his shots. It was all just another media stunt, with the footage broadcast on both Australian and Balinese TV that night. After he walked away, the others shook my hand, two women indiscreetly whispering to each other: ‘Oh, she’s small, young and pretty. On TV she looks big and old!’ What did they think I was . . . a Madam Tussaud’s waxwork dummy?
No one could have cared less about my feelings. I felt that no one saw me as a person with a heart. I was just a monkey. Sometimes I’d be sitting in my cell reading a book when a group of Indonesian university students would turn up and walk into my cell, just gawping at me. The visitors’ hall was always swarming with Westerners trying to catch a glimpse of me or meet me. I started refusing to come out of my block to visits with strangers, as I was so sick of being stared at like a freak. I was also too exhausted to keep talking to twenty strangers a day. Local drivers would often bring in vanloads of tourists. It was bizarre. This was a notorious maximum-security prison, crammed with murderers, paedophiles and terrorists, yet Australian tourists would arrive in their beachwear with their babies and little kids. This was a jail, not a must-see tourist hot spot! But Hotel K had an open-door policy: anyone could come in to see its most popular wax dummy. The guards were raking in more money in a day than they were paid in a year. It was raining rupiah.
I had to get out of this hellhole, but my hopes were further dashed when I realised I wouldn’t get any real help from the Australian Government. I was shattered when the Australian consul came to see me a week before the verdict, bringing a copy of the supposedly crucial letter about the airport crime. I’d been pinning my hopes on it. It was useless.
Following a joint investigation, which has been conducted over the last six months, the Australian Federal Police and the NSW Police have dismantled a Sydney-based syndicate involved in the trafficking of drugs. Police are currently investigating a number of baggage handlers who work at Sydney International Airport about these drug trafficking activities. The Police believe these baggage handlers were on duty on 8 October 2004, when a shipment of drugs was brought into Sydney International Airport.
Rod Smith, DFAT, 13 May 2005
What could I do but sit and cry? The letter was nothing. I fought with myself not to rip it to shreds. Instead I folded it back up and placed it back inside Brent’s shirt pocket. It did not mention my name; it was not addressed to the judges, instead addressed to Lily, my lawyer, and it even spelt her name incorrectly. It was not written by John Howard but someone else. How would the judges even acknowledge or give it a twice-over when they’d had no idea who this person is who wrote it . . . what a waste of paper. John Howard . . . what a lame Joe Blow to have in charge of our country.
Diary entry, 19 May 2005
Everything was out of my control. The pressures were relentless. My world was spinning fast. I kept talking to God, kept praying endlessly. But even praying didn’t calm me; I just cried hysterically to God. Everyone wanted a piece of me: staring, stalking, staking me out and harassing me and harassing my family. Photographers were hanging outside my little sister’s school, waiting at James’s football games, waiting outside Mum and Dad’s houses. It was worst for Merc. She had reporters following her in the street and was too scared to go out for dinner in case she got criticised for enjoying herself while her sister rotted in prison.
But Ron and Robin kept whipping up the media, telling me that the Australian opinion polls were now at 92 per cent in my favour. They were excited. The media were going ballistic. They were interviewed on morning shows, afternoon shows, on radio, newspapers, many times every day, giving the media a good thrashing. They were always coming up with ways to get more exposure, saying any publicity was good publicity.
A week before my verdict, Ron rang Merc to ask her all about our brother Clinton, who was in jail in Queensland. It was no state secret. Merc had told Ron and Robin about him in their first meeting, when she was asked if there was anything they should know. Vasu and Lily had also known about him since day one, and a few journalists knew, but incredibly it hadn’t hit the press so far. But Ron was suddenly asking for details. ‘What’s his surname? Which prison is he in? When will he be released?’
A couple of days later, Clinton’s story hit the press.
Six weeks before Ms Corby landed in Bali’s Ngurah Rai Airport with 4.1 kg of marijuana in her body board bag, her half-brother Clinton Rose was locked up in a Queensland jail. Rose will get out in about four months while Ms Corby will find out in six days whether a Bali court decides to accept the prosecution’s recommendation of a life sentence – or worse – or set her free as an unwitting drug mule.
The Australian
, 21 May 2005
Ron was in a frenzy about the media, trying desperately to tie up last-minute deals and make some cash. He still wanted me to write songs, write a diary, do interviews. I felt like I owed him. I still naively believed that he was putting a lot of money towards my defence, even though I was hearing that actually he wasn’t. I could also feel the friction between Ron and my family building daily. Merc was edgy around him. But he kept telling me he was paying for everything and spending so much money. All he talked about was money.
He was also trying to persuade me to write diary notes on the final four days leading up to the verdict. He’d already clinched a deal with
New Idea
. He pushed and pushed me: ‘Just
try
, Schapelle. Just do it.’ I couldn’t. I was too stressed. He started harassing Merc. ‘She’s not up to it, Ron!’ she’d tell him. He kept pushing right up until the day of the verdict.
Ron was also pushing Merc about doing a book. He’d been pushing her for weeks to sign a deal, but Merc and Mum both felt it wasn’t the right time. Ron was furious.
‘You’re making a big mistake! You’ll be sorry! You’ll regret it!’ he yelled at them in a three-way phone call. He angrily told them how much work he’d put into getting a deal.
Mum got upset and angry, too. It was the last thing on her mind, as all she wanted was her baby safely home. ‘No, Ron!
No!
’ The phone call abruptly ended.
With Ron trying to stitch up deals all over town, Merc was receiving a lot of questions from journalists about whether she had a contract with him, but Ron kept telling her to lie. He didn’t want the truth known. She had to keep spinning the ‘Nothing’s signed, there is no contract’ line. She was stressed. She felt sick.