No More Tomorrows

by Corby, Schapelle

  ‘It is a bit of a long shot here that it’s connected to the Corby case in any event . . . At best, a person is giving hearsay evidence about what other parties supposedly said. It is very light on,’ Mr Keelty said of Ford’s evidence, effectively scuttling the Corby team’s best hope of an acquittal.

  Sydney Morning Herald, 18 March 2005

  Before news of the cocaine syndicate broke, Mr Keelty had been denying the airports had a problem with airport workers – baggage handlers – involved in drug crime.

  Keelty is under fire for strenuously denying – in relation to the Corby case – the existence of baggage handler drug smuggling operations when his officers were investigating one.

  Daily Telegraph (Australia), 14 May 2005

  Then, after the news broke, he instantly hit out with negative comments, undermining my lawyers, who were trying to use it to help in my defence. He did it knowing his comments made news in Indonesia and regardless of the fact it was just two weeks from my verdict – with death or life still highly possible. But he didn’t shut up.

  Despite the new allegations about baggage handlers, Mr Keelty said the Sydney cocaine syndicate case had no bearing on the defence of accused Bali drug smuggler Schapelle Corby. ‘This is very different to the sort of scenario that has been drawn around the Corby case,’ Mr Keelty said.

  The Australian, 11 May 2005

  ‘These are baggage handlers who are part of the international syndicate, who are operating to help import drugs into Australia,’ Mr Keelty said. ‘These people were part of the syndicate. This is quite different to the suggestion about domestic transfer of drugs on the domestic side.’

  Daily Telegraph (Australia), 11 May 2005

  ‘I have never said publicly one way or the other about Schapelle Corby’s innocence or guilt,’ he told Macquarie Radio . . . ‘There are tens of thousands of people who travel to Bali each and every year. The evidence and intelligence of interference with those bags or drugs suddenly arriving in Bali just doesn’t exist.’

  AAP Bulletin, 16 May 2005

  ‘It’s rare that the person carrying drugs doesn’t realise that they’re carrying the drugs on behalf of a syndicate.’

  Herald Sun, 17 May 2005

  The truth was our airports were riddled with crime, and our bags were tampered with. Qantas chief executive Geoff Dixon admitted the airline had a complaint a day about things stolen from people’s checked-in luggage. While Mr Keelty was trying to put the lid back on the can of worms, they were squirming out everywhere. Reports, new and old, kept leaking out, showing that drug crimes by airport staff had been rife for years, well before my boogie board and I flew to Bali in 2004. My case simply put a public focus on it all.

  It was revealed that since 2003 police had been running Operation Flora, a specialist police drug squad to target ‘drug activity’ at Sydney’s domestic airport terminals.

  ‘The purpose of this operation was to target the transportation of prohibited drugs between cities via the domestic airline system,’ a police statement of facts tendered to the court said.

  AAP, 14 July 2005

  A customs report done a month before I travelled to Bali, but not made public until it was leaked to the Australian newspaper after my verdict, revealed that there were two customs operations – called Berlap and Tempest – that had been targeting two groups of baggage handlers, each working in a gang of six.

  It [the report] says baggage handlers had diverted bags containing large amounts of narcotics from incoming international flights to domestic baggage carousels, sometimes changing baggage tags, to avoid Customs examination. Baggage handlers are suspected of large-scale pillage and may use the roof area to gain illegal entry to passenger baggage, the report says. The roster system makes it easy for baggage handlers to get their ‘mates’ working in the same gang, it says.

  The Australian, 31 May 2005

  Then there was an investigation into airport security by British aviation expert Sir John Wheeler, done four months after my verdict, which found that ‘cannabis is moved through [Australian] airports’ and that criminals involved in drugs were responsible for ‘subverting or suborning airline or airport employees’.

  The authorities no doubt want the public interest in airport crime to get back in its box. Perhaps that’s why it all went quiet about the baggage handlers involved in the cocaine syndicate. There has been no news of any baggage handler ever convicted, despite Qantas boss Geoff Dixon stating, at the time the story broke: ‘We have for many months and have continued to have full knowledge, I mean full knowledge, of the activities of those baggage handlers alleged to have been involved.’

  There was without question a major crime issue at Sydney airport, otherwise why did the government spend an extra $200 million of taxpayers’ money on upgraded airport security? And why did Sydney Airport Corporation spend $2.8 million on extra surveillance? None of it makes me innocent, but it shows it was not only possible for someone to put drugs in my bag, it was easy.

  I felt, and still do, that the authorities saw me as just a little person, a little sacrifice, only a nuisance for making too much noise. They needed to squash me, shut me up.

  I was a victim of airport crime. But I was stuck in jail for twenty years. My appeals were over, my life was over, my dreams shattered. My belief that life was fair was lost. The only thing keeping me going was my family and their untiring love and devotion to me, their undying optimism and strength.

  Erwin was being optimistic and told me we could apply for an extraordinary appeal. I asked bleakly, ‘Who’s ever had any success with that?’

  ‘The former president’s son!’ Great!

  Now after my hopes of appeal to finally go home have been squashed, so have I.

  My heart feels black, full of holes that leak sadness and sorrow, hope and despair trickling through my veins, weighing me down ever so heavily. I can’t decide if time goes by fast or slowly, it doesn’t matter really, as long as the days keep ending and time doesn’t stop.

  I’m finding it hard to sleep at night and am finding it harder and harder to wake up in the mornings. When I do wake up, I’m drained, don’t want to get dressed, don’t want to move. I push myself to do everything, even clean my teeth, it’s like ‘why bother’. For the past three months, due to ear infections, eye sickness, sinus, I haven’t done any form of exercise.

  I keep it together for my visitors’ sakes, my family’s sakes. I have to keep them, the ones I love so dearly, in the understanding that I’m doing fine, I’m strong, I can wait on a while longer.

  If I’m weak and let depression take a strong hold of my thoughts and body, that would be it. There would be no surviving for me. I realise it in this place, realise it because I feel it, I’m aware of the darkness of depression creeping in to be a part of me. If I’m weak it could quite easily consume me and take over my life.

  I will not allow this to happen. I’m aware it’s trying to dig into me now. I have to protect myself and my family from this. If I allow myself to be consumed, then my family will also be consumed, my dad in particular. He suffers from small bouts of depression due to his cancer. And if I can prevent my dad’s depression by taking hold of my own, then that’s what I must do – a new task for myself.

  Diary entry, 2 February 2006

  20

  Pass the Salt

  WHEN LIFE HANDS YOU A LEMON, ASK FOR THE TEQUILA AND SALT!

  Today is Valentine’s Day. Dad came in early and, how sweet he is, brought me a big bunch of flowers – first time in my life. Merc and Nyeleigh came in a bit later with a cute cuddly companion for me – well, for me and Renae to share – a little puppy, one of the puffball dogs that old people usually have. I named him Stanley. Merc had put a yellow ribbon in his hair and he’s so, so gorgeous. He’s quite content to sit on my lap for hours while I brush his hair.

  Renae and I both showered Stanley, dried him and combed his hair to get him ready for her afternoon visit with Renae’s dad and stepmum.
The guards were OK with Stanley in our block, apart from one who kept sneering. They could see how much this little cuddly companion had changed both our depressed, angry demeanours. It’s truly amazing how much an animal can have a positive effect on people’s lives. I tell you, this puppy is brightening my world. And Renae was in total shock, her world had just caved in massively, but today this puppy here has lit up her face all day.

  Diary entry, 14 February 2006

  The day before Valentine’s, Renae was sentenced to life imprisonment. Her lawyer Anggia, Lily’s sister, had been promising herten years. She was shattered. When she’d returned to Kerobokan, she was lost, in a state of shock. I went into her cell and gaveher a hug. Tears rolled down my cheeks as she told me she didn’t understand, she’d been mentally prepared for twenty years – as the prosecutors had demanded – or anything less.

  Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, the so-called Bali Nine ringleaders, were both sentenced to death on Valentine’s Day, with local newspaper headlines screaming: ‘Valentine is Dead’. I couldn’t imagine how they were feeling. They were so young. Andrew had only turned twenty-two in January, receiving the prosecutors’ request for death on his birthday. Myuran was twenty-five years old.

  All the rest of the Bali Nine were sentenced to life.

  While they were considering the risk of appeal, I was praying that Erwin could successfully win me the chance to have an extraordinary appeal, as it wasn’t automatic. Hotman had walked away. He’d failed and didn’t like the taste of it, telling the press it was time to make money so he could buy the latest-model Ferrari. There were no hard feelings. He’d tried his best, and I was grateful to him. But ever-faithful Erwin promised to keep on fighting on.

  Meanwhile, I had to keep living in this dump. I’d allowed myself to slip into a black hole for two weeks after my failed appeal, but then it was time to use all my energy to pull myself out. I didn’t want to fall too far and crumble with self-pity. So despite the heaviness around my heart, I grabbed my new purple hand weights from Mum, put on the new sneakers Renae had given me for Christmas and did some lifting, some sit-ups and some skipping. After an hour, I felt a great sense of achievement at dragging my sorry arse off my mattress and putting my visions of exercise into action. I felt pretty good.

  Exercise always helped to lift my spirits. I’d never succumb to the temptation of drugs to blur and numb my pain, like prisoners all around me did. I wouldn’t do that to myself or my family. But I was always shocked to see how quickly prisoners start doing drugs in here, often when they hadn’t ever touched them before. Drugs were so common that when twenty-four females were randomly plucked from their cells one day for drug testing, nineteen came back with positive results. People were quick to lose their way. Some women also turned to other women for sex, sometimes within days of checking in, and often with husbands and children at home.

  The women’s block was full of lesbians who could often be heard having very noisy sex in their cells. If I was out the back, hanging up clothes or lying in my pool, I could usually hear them. When the guards did the cell checks, they regularly found carrots with condoms in the bathrooms. I very rarely had lesbians living in my cell, as usually we’d pay a guard to discreetly move them. All the straight girls would feel timid and uncomfortable if two girls were fooling around or staring while we were getting undressed. I liked to take my top off and sit in my bra because it was so hot and sticky, but the lesbians would overtly sit and stare. Or if we were showering, they’d often put their head over the top of the door to watch. I’d yell, ‘Excuse me!’ But they still did it.

  The sexual activity got so bad in one cell, so loud and fierce, that the guards actually yelled at roll call, ‘Stop eating each other.’ It was unbelievable. My dad half-jokingly asked me one day if I’d ever be tempted. I can speak for now and until the end of time . . . that will never happen. I will not have any kind of sex in this dirty and disgusting place.

  But Kerobokan is a seedy, sex-crazed little world. Merc and I were completely shocked when we first saw all the sex going on around us during a visit. It was not subtle; it was as blatant as a porn channel. I often saw girls giving oral sex, then coming up, wiping their mouths and checking their faces in a little mirror. Women were often sitting awkwardly on a guy’s lap, thrusting away, sometimes with small children nearby – who may well have been conceived in this romantic way.

  In the beginning, Merc and I didn’t believe they were actually having sex. We saw couples sitting close in weird and ridiculous positions but thought maybe they’d just really missed each other. We’d be sitting there asking each other, ‘Do you think they’re doing it?’ ‘No, they couldn’t.’ ‘I think they are . . .’ It wasn’t just naivety, as the girls seemed to always have their jeans done up. But I soon discovered that it didn’t matter.

  I was sitting in my cell one day, people-watching, when the sex mystery was obscenely solved. It was gross. A girl was squatting at the entrance to the women’s block, with her knees apart, waiting to be called to a visit. It was full exposure. I copped an eyeful. She wasn’t wearing underpants, and in the crotch of her jeans was a trap door hanging wide open. She was unbuttoned and well prepared for her visit. It turned out the sewing lady did big business cutting trap doors. Disgusting!

  Merc now refuses to sit on the stain-covered straw mats in the visiting hall.

  It didn’t take long for the sight of public sex to become familiar, but I will never get used to it – it makes me feel awkward and uncomfortable, especially when my dad or mum comes to visit. We’ve all had to learn to put blinkers on and focus on each other.

  But it doesn’t always work. Sometimes it is impossible to shut out what is going on. One afternoon, a husband and wife, sitting just a metre across from me, used their little baby to try to hide what they were doing. They held the baby strategically while she was masturbating him. But it didn’t hide her hand thrusting up and down or the look on his face. It was sick. It was surely child abuse.

  Some male prisoners used prostitutes for quick sex during a visit, despite having girlfriends or wives. Sometimes they’d have sex with the prostitute in the morning, then with their wife in the afternoon. Male and female prisoners also often got together.

  I’ve seen and heard so many twists of sexual betrayal in here that it makes the soap operas I watched at home seem dull. There was one prisoner who was doing a long sentence for drugs, whose wife came in daily; she did everything for him, including fight for his freedom. His thanks to her was to regularly have sex with female prisoners behind the visiting hall. The devoted wife had no idea.

  One female prisoner stole another one’s husband. We were all completely shocked, as we thought this girl was a lesbian. She was the girl who used to stroke my arms as we queued for water, before she scratched them. The married woman, who used to invite this girl to visits with her husband, had no clue of the fires she was lighting. It was a bitter betrayal. The husband stopped calling his wife to visits, so he and this girl could enjoy sex. The wife heard all the gory details from the gossip girls. This girl was freed first and ran off with the husband. The wife never saw him again.

  If there is a betrayal, it’s impossible to do anything about it from in here. I’ve seen the pain of several women who’ve found out their husbands were cheating or had simply vanished, no doubt with another woman. One morning, such a betrayal almost ended in a suicide. A female prisoner called home, only to hear another woman answer the phone. She went crazy but could do nothing, so she lashed out at herself, overdosing on her medication. She had AIDS. She was in very bad shape, but she survived.

  The most sickly, grotesque sexual scene I’ve witnessed was when I walked in on a female guard sitting on the cement floor of my cell, kissing – full tongue kissing – and fondling a new attractive female prisoner. The look on my face stopped them quickly. I was so disgusted and had to ask the girl why . . . why would she do such a thing? She wasn’t poor, she had food to eat, visitors coming to see he
r – including her boyfriend. Why would she possibly need to sell herself short like that? The answer was: ‘She lets me use her hand phone.’ And the guard herself is married with three daughters.

  They kissed in our cell a few more times but, knowing I didn’t approve, soon moved their kissing and canoodling out the back. This guard was one of the more friendly ones, often helping me on occasions. When I didn’t have a hose to fill my pool, she took me for a walk to the kitchen to get one. Another day, I was standing at the door watching some of the Western guys play tennis. She could see the sadness and desperation on my face, so she took my hand, walked me to the tennis court and let me watch for five minutes. One of the guys gave me his racquet and I had a couple of shots. I’m not good at tennis, but it didn’t matter . . . I had fun. When the precious five minutes were up, she took me back to the block. I really hoped this guard would help me to play more tennis. She didn’t.

  But despite being helpful, she always made me feel very uncomfortable – always way too touchy-feely. One day she actually pulled me down onto her knee while she sat at the guards’ table, and cupped my breasts. I leapt up quickly, but as it was early days I was pretty timid and didn’t get angry. She soon learnt I wasn’t bisexual, though it didn’t stop her trying to get close, sitting on my mattress and often asking me to sit beside her. I found it very unsettling.

  Unsurprisingly, women regularly fall pregnant in here, often using the stomach-massage technique to abort. But when they choose to have the baby, women are allowed to live with it in Kerobokan for the first two years – at least that’s what the prison rulebook states. Only twice since I’ve been here have women brought their newborns back to Hotel K, both very briefly. One girl brought hers in for a single day before releasing it to her family to nurture. She did it for the baby’s sake, as this place isn’t exactly baby-friendly. But she’s had a haunted look in her eyes ever since. The other woman had her baby live here for just two weeks before she was freed. I was shocked to see her washing it under the putrid brown tap water.