Schapelle Corby’s unknown sister Mele Kisina has shunned the limelight – until now. She tells KATHRYN BONELLA why it’s time to speak out about her beloved sibling.
As Mele Kisina sits in her Gold Coast home, she can’t help the tears falling down her cheeks. She’s never spoken publicly about her big sister Schapelle, and it’s emotional. But she’s determined to break her silence if it will help achieve the family’s goal – to bring Schapelle home.
“I just want to bring my sister back. I love her and miss her so much,” says the 21-year-old. “It’s hell. Not one day do I go without thinking about Schapelle and it breaks my heart that she is stuck in that hellhole.”
In pictures: Schapelle Corby’s life behind bars
Mele was just 14 years old when her adored sister, Schapelle Corby, set off in 2004 on what was meant to be a carefree surfing holiday in Bali. She remembers her leaving for the airport early that morning. “I was half asleep, but I can remember her kissing me goodbye, saying, ‘See you in a couple of weeks. Be good for Mum. I love you’,” she says.
Later that day, the family’s world came crashing down around them as they heard the news Schapelle had been detained at Denpasar Airport with 4.2kg of marijuana in her boogie-board bag. “It was crazy. I was blank, just feeling really shocked – mainly because I knew that my sister would never do that,” Mele says. “I kept thinking Schapelle would come home the next day.
I didn’t have a clue how bad it was going to get, or how long this would go on.”
Story by Kathryn Bonella – www.kathrynbonella.com
Being sent home in handcuffs is not a tempting prospect for the broken Aussie.
A mentally fragile Schapelle Corby is refusing to pin her hopes on Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s heartfelt mission to bring her home to serve out her remaining jail time, fearing it will end in heartbreak.
“She’s aware the Australian Government is supporting her on her lucid days, but most days she’s not really with it or fully comprehending what’s going on,” a family friend tells Woman’s Day. “Also, she’s clung to hopes before that were dashed, so she’s still very depressed most of the time and can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel.”
And given all her avenues of appeal have been exhausted, the bid for clemency to Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, lodged in March this year on the grounds of her failing mental health, is her last hope of having her sentence slashed.
If it fails, she will serve at least another seven years. Speaking publicly about Corby’s case for the first time, in a press conference with Julia Gillard last Tuesday, Dr Yudhoyono said he was “quite optimistic” about a prisoner transfer scheme between Australia and Indonesia, which could apply to Schapelle’s case.
But this isn’t cause for celebration for the Corbys, as politicians have talked about prisoner transfer for more than five years and Schapelle has said numerous times she wants to come home a free person.
Despite her time in maximum security, Pauline tells Warren Gibbs Aussie jails are too good for Schapelle.
As former Prisoner C70079, Pauline Hanson knows all too well the harsh realities of life behind bars. Faced with the prospect of three years locked up in the Brisbane Women’s Correctional Centre’s Maximum Security Unit, Pauline admits she was at her lowest ebb.
Yet, although she knows only too well what life behind razor wire and security check-points feels like, she says if convicted drug trafficker Schapelle Corby is truly guilty, she should serve out the rest of her jail time at Bali’s Kerobokan Prison – not at taxpayer’s expense in Australia.
“The fact is, she was convicted on drug charges in Bali and that’s where she must do her time,” says Pauline. “That’s unless, of course, our government is prepared to seek an exchange program with other countries.
“Non-Australian nationals should be deported back to their country if they are convicted of a criminal offence which carries a sentence of 12 months or more to do their time.
“Our jails, especially in Queensland from my experience, are far too soft for convicted murderers, rapists, drug traffickers, paedophiles and now our ever increasing numbers of people smugglers,” she tells Woman’s Day.
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.
As her brother James becomes a dad, Schapelle’s own dream of being a mum is giving her something to live for, her family tells Corby biographer Kathryn Bonella.
Desperately lonely and increasingly despondent, Schapelle Corby plans to make a dramatic last-ditch grab at happiness by having a baby in her Bali jail, according to her mother.
Languishing behind the bars of Indonesia’s infamous Kerobokan prison, Schapelle has always been candid about her desire to have children. But she’s well aware her life-long dream is being slowly eroded as each year of her jail term drags by. Now, on the eve of the fifth anniversary of her sentencing, Schapelle’s mum, Rosleigh Rose, warns that her daughter, 32, will resort to having a baby in prison if her latest plea for clemency falls on deaf ears.
“She is going to have a baby, and she is going to be a good mum,” Rosleigh says.
“If she doesn’t come home this time, she can have one in there … So what?”
If Schapelle falls pregnant in Kerobokan Detention Centre, she would by no means be the first. Given it’s a mixed-sex prison and there’s a long history of guards renting offices for illicit liaisons, pregnancy is not uncommon.
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