My new life was thrust back in my face as soon as I left the hospital, struggling through the pack to the police van. I climbed in quickly, but we didn’t move. I sat there with camera lenses prying through the windows. I started to shake, my lip quivering. I was just an object to these people. Come on! I knew what was happening. The driver couldn’t start the van, but I was sure he wasn’t turning the key the whole way. My pulse was racing. How much had he been paid?
Back at Hotel K, there was a new drama. A guy called Benny was found hanged from a toilet window. He was three years into a life sentence and had a wife and kids. As usual with suicides, everyone suspected it was murder. Everyone was saying his hands were tied behind his back.
The following morning, I took one of the five tablets the doctor had given me. He’d advised me to take one an hour before court to calm my nerves, but I wanted to find out their effect on me first.
It knocked me out cold.
I went down fast: I swallowed the pill sitting at my cage door and within ten minutes I was crawling on my hands and knees like an uncoordinated baby to my mattress. I didn’t quite make it, but I slept solidly for the next four hours on the floor.
I woke up disbelieving. It was so ridiculous. The doctor had given me sleeping tablets. I did not take anything the next day, or any day after that during my court hearings. This was my life. I wanted to be alert, not a zombie and definitely not asleep.
Ron phoned the prison from Australia later to assure me that all would go well in court the following day. I would be acquitted; I would go home. ‘Take it easy, it’s going to be OK. Everything is going to be fine; it’s all under control. You’ll be going home. No problem. It’s OK.’ He was confident.
Robin was in Bali but Ron was stuck in Australia after speaking publicly about Balinese prosecutors asking for bribes. I couldn’t believe he’d been so stupid and was angry with him for potentially jeopardising my case. I still wanted to believe he knew what he was talking about, but was losing faith. And Lily didn’t inspire much hope.
Lily took me aside and was crying, telling me she’s sorry and that she’s done all she and the team could possibly do. OK, so tomorrow I won’t be having any good news that I’ll like. All I can do at this point is pray.
Diary entry, 20 April 2005
I was cuffed to myself on the way to court, as after the crazed drama last time, no one wanted to be attached to me. The media were still all there, but I wasn’t so trampled as in the past. I could actually see the ground I was walking on.
It seemed the judge had finally brought some order to his courtroom, too. Instead of being strewn haphazardly across the floor, the media were lined up against the wall and outside at the windows. And my five-minute photo session in the hot seat before the trial started had been cut.
Then, in the stifling heat, I sat for a very difficult two and a half hours as the prosecutors read through all the points of the case. Eka was only translating parts but enough for me to learn that they held practically none of my witnesses’ testimony as credible: not that of my brother James, Ally, Katrina, Professor Paul Wilson or my lifeline, the brave John Ford. None of it would be taken into account by the prosecutors.
I prayed almost the whole time I was sitting there. I knew that if the prosecutors weren’t listening to any of my defence witnesses, they could surely request the death penalty, and in Bali when death was requested the judge could pretty much only give either life imprisonment or death by firing squad. So I prayed for anything other than death.
As the main prosecutor kept reading, I was sinking. ‘We state that the defendant Schapelle Corby is legally and convincingly guilty for having committed crimes . . . importing narcotics. The defendant’ sactions can ruin the image of Bali as a tourist destination. The defendant’s actions can make Bali look like a drug haven and affect young people’s lives.’
The judge then told Eka to stop translating for me, for some strange reason. So I sat listening to the prosecutor request his sentence with no idea of what he was saying, except for the clue from the many faces around me in shock and tears, staring at me in sorrow. It definitely was not good news. Even one of the female prosecutors started crying. Then I recognised a word I’d learnt in church: hidup – life. That’s what the prosecutor had requested. Life. In Indonesia, life meant the age you were when arrested. I was twenty-seven years old, so he had requested twenty-seven years’ imprisonment.
I felt panic. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. I was trembling inside. I was just so scared. The room was spinning. I whispered to Eka, to myself, ‘My life is over.’
I felt dazed, weak, light-headed. I felt like I was going to fall. My chest was heaving, I was trying not to scream, not to get hysterical in court. I was gulping back sobs, trying to force back hysteria, with tears pouring down my face. I turned to look at Merc. She looked sick, pale and shocked. I ran across to hug her.
‘Merc, it’s not fair. It’s so unfair, Merc!’
She was hurting, trying not to cry, trying to be brave, to be strong. She hugged me tight. ‘It’s OK, Schapelle, it’s OK.’ But she was sobbing.
Nothing was OK. Nothing.
Photographers mobbed me as I was dragged back to the holding cell. I hurt all over. I was convulsing, shaking. I couldn’t keep it in. I cried and screamed a high-pitched, blood-curdling scream tearing straight from my broken heart. My life was finished. Cameras were being pushed through the bars, wanting to catch my agony. I didn’t care.
Robin Tampoe came to the bars. I didn’t want to see him. What did he want? I’d told everyone not to come, no matter what happened.
Then I saw my beautiful cousin Melissa, who’d brought me a bottle of water. She started stroking my face through the bars as tears poured down my face.
I cried hysterically all the way back to Kerobokan. I was so down. I was a mess. In my cell, I screamed, furiously smashing my bag against the walls. I kept screaming and screaming until I collapsed in an exhausted heap onto my mattress and sobbed for all the injustice, for all the pain and hurt this was causing me and my family. It was all such bullshit. It was all so unfair. I should have been able to go home. I had done nothing wrong. I was innocent, but I couldn’t change this sick, twisted, bitter turn in my life.
The girls in my cell were all a bit scared of me, as I howled like an animal. I didn’t tell them how many years the prosecutors had demanded. I couldn’t bear to say it. They were all keeping their distance, which was good, as it gave me some space. But they stood looking and whispering. They didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to do either. I couldn’t believe it, twenty-seven years, my whole lifetime over again in this shit hole. It might have only been a guideline, but I’d learnt that the judges usually stuck closely to it.
What can I say? He didn’t request death, so I’m still alive; the sentence can only get lighter. My world sucks!
Diary entry, 21 April 2005
Later that day a guard came into the women’s block and handed me his mobile phone. It was Chris Packer, who was now sailing his boat to South Africa and had followed my day on the Internet. He wanted to advise me to change to his lawyer, who had successfully got him and Chris Currall freed.
Changing lawyers was something Merc and I had talked about often, but we just didn’t know how to say ‘Piss off, Lily and Vasu’ halfway through my trial. We were scared. Would we get better or worse? We’d also given them almost $80,000 and couldn’t afford to switch, as despite Ron continually telling the press he was bankrolling my defence – ‘whatever it costs, whatever it takes’ – he wasn’t.
We’d been worried about our legal team for a long time. I now rarely spoke to Vasu, as I found him belligerent and arrogant, and Lily was out of her depth. The two were close, but Lily was under Vasu’s bombastic, bullying thumb. She didn’t ever brief me on strategy, she didn’t advise me on what would happen in court, even on the day I was asked to speak. She knew but didn’t bother to tell me. She and Vasu flew to Jakarta for some
reason on the day I was due to get the prosecutors’ demand.
And the fact is that Lily was lame in court. She often cried but rarely stood up to ask questions. Merc and I were always scribbling notes to her, trying to get her to fire up, challenge a witness, say something, do something. She usually just sat there, often on her phone sending text messages. I was praying the texts were strategies or questions from Vasu or Ron or Robin. But they weren’t. I realised how little focus she had when I glimpsed a text message as I sat next to her at the bench. An important witness was up, and I was willing her to get up and fire questions. Come on, Lily, please. This is my life. Then the text came through. I saw what appeared to be a flirty message from Ron. I went numb. I couldn’t believe it. I slumped back in my seat, thinking, You’re kidding! This is my life and you’re sending fucking lovey-dovey text messages? She got all hot and bothered and started fanning herself. I just sat there, very scared and very, very alone.
I didn’t know what was going on between Ron and Lily, but every time I saw her she’d say to me, ‘I think Ron likes you! I think Ron likes you!’ It was ridiculous. It was like primary school. I guess she thought I had the hots for him (which I so didn’t). I’d say, ‘Er noooo . . . he likes you!’ and she’d laugh and get all flustered. I couldn’t believe I was talking about this shit with my lawyer, who was supposed to be saving my life. I would go with the flow, but the flow was just absurd.
My trust in Ron had almost evaporated, too. I was disappointed in him. I no longer believed he knew what he was talking about. His promises of freedom had turned into twenty-seven years. When he called the next day I could barely speak to him. He still kept saying I was going to be acquitted.
It was also clear by now that his focus was to whip up publicity and for me to make money. He was always pushing me to write songs, to write a book, telling me I’d never have to work another day in my life. He’d make me rich. I also knew now that anything I said or wrote to him went straight to the media, despite often asking him to keep it private. I was embarrassed when I copied a poem for him and he gave it to the papers as if I’d written it. When he snapped me on his camera phone, it went in the papers. He kept saying I was suicidal. I kept telling him, ‘Ron, I’m not, I would never do that to my family. Never. Never!’
‘She is not coping, I am concerned she is going to become suicidal. She just wants to go home. I keep telling her we are going to take her home if it’s the last thing we do.’
Ron Bakir, quoted in the Daily Telegraph (Australia), 15 April 2005
My week continued to get worse after the day of the demand. A girl in my cell had been released and stole all my creams. It was comparatively a tiny, tiny issue but a kick in the teeth, a reminder of who I was living with. Then I was heaped with humiliation. I’d heard so many of the lies written about me, like I was a prostitute and I’d had an affair with Russell Crowe when I was a high-class escort in Japan, and now came the embarrassing, baseless, ridiculous rumour that I was pregnant. It was so humiliating, and unbelievable that this crap was printed in respectable newspapers. I learnt of the story when the prison boss and the doctor came to take me to the jail clinic.
What’s going on, have I had some bad test results from last week’s urine and blood tests from the hospital, and the Kerobokan doctor has to tell me the bad news? What kind of disease do I have? What else could possibly go wrong in my life? The doctor told me of big news: I’m pregnant.
Come on, give me a break. Two months pregnant, the papers say. This place is disgusting, and in my situation sex is the last thing to cross my mind. I’m not going to say it hasn’t crossed my mind, but it is certainly the last thing I would do here. Take someone into the toilet at church or maybe in the court holding-cell toilet? That’s just sick. I have morals. I do have respect for myself, and dignity. How could anyone believe I would do that in a place like this?
So I peed into an empty plastic cup after telling the doctor I would not pee in a plastic bag. And the doctor took photos with a digital camera of them doing the pregnancy test and the result – which of course was negative. We all had a laugh about the stupid rumours that get around, but I am quite embarrassed that someone could believe it.
Diary entry, 26 April 2005
We had one last defence day in court, and I had a final chance to speak.
Didn’t sleep much. Put a few points down on paper through the night after I finished praying. Tried to put the words together, but I’m not sure exactly how I should do this. I feel I don’t want to speak of the points that the prosecutors and I dispute over, as I’ve said it all before. I’m tired of the broken record going round and round and round. My lawyers will be pointing it all out in their closing statement, anyway. I feel I want to speak from my heart but nothing that I feel, nothing that I can put on paper, seems adequate. I’m only skimming the surface of how I’m feeling.
Each time I dig a little more I tear apart; I can’t handle the pain, and when my pain is so deep I can’t think. My head gets full of unbearable visions, my mind races, full of thoughts. They all swim around so fast I can’t grab hold of even one to concentrate on. What do I do? What can I possibly say?
But I pray for wisdom, strength, courage to get me through yet another day. One day at a time, that’s all I can ask.
Pray for the judges’ and prosecutors’ hearts to open and show compassion. This scares me, as I think nothing I can say can express my innocence.
Diary entry, 28 April 2005
The next day, forty-one of us went to court in the sardine bus. As usual, I let everyone off first so they wouldn’t all get caught up in the scrum. Then, as I did the hideous walk to the holding cell, reporters threw a new and humiliating line of questions at me.
‘Is it true, Schapelle? Are you pregnant? The papers say you’re pregnant, pregnant, pregnant . . .’
I focused on walking. I never answered their questions, as I wanted them out of my face as fast as possible. And I certainly wasn’t going to answer their sick questions today. I was so embarrassed. What did people think of me? I don’t take sex and pregnancy lightly. It would be nice to have sex, and to be pregnant would have been absolutely wonderful. But in a dump like this? No, thank you. I longed for human affection, but I could wait.
The holding cell was worse than usual. Everyone was smoking, making it difficult to breathe, and the air stung my eyes so badly that I had to sit with them squeezed shut.
It was soon time to go into the courtroom, which was full of placards that Merc, Wayan and his family had made and handed to supporters, saying ‘Corby Tidak Bersalah’ (Corby is not guilty) and ‘Bebaskan Corby’ (Free Corby). They’d also tied yellow ribbons every where. The anti-drugs group GRANAT were still there with their signs, as Merc had refused to do a deal with them to go away when they approached her for money. Until we paid, they assured her they’d keep turning up with their vicious signs.
The lawyers read for one and a half hours, and then it was my turn. I read out the statement that I had written the previous night.
I ask for you to find me innocent, to send me home. Firstly, I would like to say to the prosecutors I cannot admit to a crime I did not commit. And to the judges, my life at the moment is in your hands, but I would prefer it if my life was in your heart. And I say to you again, that I have no knowledge of how the marijuana came to be inside my bag.
I believe that the evidence shows that:
One: there is a problem in Australia with security at airports and baggage-handling procedures;
Two: my only mistake was not putting a lock on my luggage;
Three: I have never at any stage claimed ownership of the plastic bag and its contents;
Four: had the police weighed all of my luggage for the total weight, it would have shown a difference from the total weight checked in at Brisbane airport;
Five: the police had the opportunity to fingerprint both plastic bags to prove my innocence, but they chose not to;
Six: I am an innocent victim
of a tactless drug-smuggling network;
Seven: I am not a person involved in drugs and I’m not a person who might become involved in a drug-smuggling operation; and
Eight: I love Bali and would never want to create problems for any of its people.
I believe the seven months which I’ve already spent in prison is a severe enough punishment for not putting locks on my bags. My heart and my family are painfully burdened by all these accusations and rumours about me, and I don’t know how long I can survive here. And I swear, with God as my witness, that I did not know that the marijuana was in my bag. Please look to your God for guidance in your judgment of me, for God only speaks of justice. And, your honour, I ask for you to show compassion, to find me innocent, to send me home. Saya tidak bersalah [I am not guilty].
I walked to the bench and handed my statement to the chief judge. The court applauded. Lily and I were both in tears as we hugged.
I didn’t know how much impact it would have. One of the judges was picking his nose, another reading a book called Life Sentence. Beautiful Merc called out ‘See you, Schapelle’ as I was leaving. ‘Love you, Merc!’ I called back.
I don’t think I went too well. I couldn’t remember what I had to read out; I felt like my head was full of nothing but air, could not hold it together. Today only one prosecutor was there. The main man and the main woman were absent. The judge didn’t ask for my statement to be translated for them, even though it was addressed to them. I had to stand, give him the paper I’d just read, then he would give it to the prosecution to read. I feel like I’ve let everyone down.
Diary entry, 28 April 2005
15
A Test of Faith
Cried so much last night while everyone was sleeping. I cannot imagine living here after my court is finished. Actually can’t use ‘living’ as a word in this dump – more like breathing and walking like a zombie. But I also can’t envision the judge saying ‘Go home!’ What’s going to become of me? I swear, I will not stay here after the final verdict. If the judges don’t come to my favour, I’m not sure what I’ll do, but I swear my body will not stay one minute longer in this place. I will somehow escape. There are many meanings to the word ‘escape’. Got to stop thinking about the ifs. Must be patient – sabar. Pray, pray, pray.
No More Tomorrows Page 19