Friends fear Schapelle Corby’s latest humiliation could tip the mentally fragile prisoner over the edge. Following a bashing scandal at her Bali prison, Phillip Koch reports that the Aussie is being treated like an exhibit in a zoo.
It was a humiliation even Schapelle Corby did not expect. The filthy cage she has called home for the past five years was opened to the world’s press with no warning, robbing Schapelle of the tiny bit of privacy she was still allowed – and the last shred of dignity she could cling to in one of the world’s worst prisons.
“She feels like a zoo exhibit or a monkey in a cage,” says a fellow prisoner at Kerobokan.
“The only space she has for herself in the whole world right now is her mattress in the cell, and it’s where she hides when the media is invited into the jail. But this time they were allowed right inside to take photos of her and her belongings.”
When the media arrived unannounced, a shocked and very distressed Schapelle leapt up from eating her lunch and scrambled into the bathroom as a guard unlocked her cell door.
She looked like an animal caught in headlights as flashes went off and questions were fired at her, forcing her to take refuge in the grubby toilet cubicle. It must have seemed like an ambush to Schapelle, who’s been desperately trying to maintain her dignity despite the appalling conditions in which she is forced to live.
She came out of hiding about 15 minutes later, turning away from the wall of lenses pointed through her barred windows. Crouching down, she filled a glass with water before splashing it at the cameras. It was her only defence and she kept hurling glasses of water until the snappers finally moved away.
For the mentally ill 32-year-old, who has spent many nights during the last two years hearing imaginary voices and trying to climb the walls of her cell to see if there are spies in the ceiling, this ill-conceived public relations stunt must have been a terrifying ordeal.
The world’s media were invited to the notorious Bali jail because of recent exposès revealing the shocking conditions there.
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