Jail life a nightmare
CONSTANTLY crying and wearing the same clothes in which she was arrested, Cassie Sainsbury is at a loss as she tries to navigate her new life in a slum-like Colombian prison.
An American woman who walked free from El Buen Pastor prison yesterday after her own 17-month sentence said she and another older woman had supported Cassie as she navigated life inside Bogota’s biggest women’s jail since her arrest on April 11.
“Because she is so young there are a lot of people trying to take advantage of her,” said the woman, who did not wish to be named.
“Not only that, when she was at the police station they took most of her stuff – all of her clothes, her money.”
The woman said Cassie was hoping for more support from the Australian government after she was informed she would be visited by consular staff only every three months.
“She’s upset because she needs clothes, she needs things,” the woman said.
“She’s just wearing a sweater and pants and a top, the same ones. I offered her something but she said no thank you.”
Cassie is being housed in Patio 5 at El Buen Pastor with several other foreigners including 28 Mexicans and a woman from Holland.
“She is in a cell with one lady,” the woman said of Cassie. “She sleeps on the top bunk. It’s a very small cell.
“The food is terrible, there is not much of it and you could throw the food to the wall and it would come back and hit you.”
The woman said she had advised Cassie to find something to fill her time and that she was planning to start Spanish lessons next week.
But her most pressing problem is finding good legal advice. Cassie has met with several lawyers and most have advised she plead guilty in order to avoid the maximum 25-year sentence she faces for trying to smuggle 6.234kg of cocaine.
“She needs a good lawyer,” the woman said. “One lawyer wants to charge her so much money and she does not really understand everything that is happening.”