“The conditions are not good; there are fights”
people. There is very little room, like the size of a bathroom. It had two beds, and a third bed which I set up [each night]. I slept on the only available space on the floor; the space where you can walk in the day is where I set up my bed at night. I didn’t eat for the first little while. You go through a period of disbelief, it’s like the steps of grief, the loss of your freedom.
There is something like a canteen in each patio so you can buy your essentials, like toilet paper. Foreigners that had good embassies received help from their embassies for these things.
Each day started early. If you want breakfast you get up at 2.30 AM for 3 AM breakfast [it is believed breakfast begins so early due to the large prison population]. You wait for the door to be open, you get breakfast, you go back to bed. We went to the kitchen with our dishes to receive our breakfast, lunch and dinner from a window. I’d wake up at 2 AM to shower and beat the line—there was a horribly long line at 6.30 AM. The water was really cold, colder at 2 AM— like ice. If you don’t shower every day you have problems with the other women. When you have 500 women in one patio the gossip is really horrible. You become the outcast. At 7 AM they would do the count and check everyone was where they were supposed to be.
They don’t let you take photos inside the prison because the conditions are horrible. On my level there was a big hole [in the ceiling] you could climb through. When it finally collapsed they had to transfer all the women to other the side of the prison. The conditions are not good. It’s not safe.
There are fights in the prison. I heard a fight from another patio, which was really horrible. It was actually guards who were hitting inmates. I didn’t understand what a prisoner was saying but I can only imagine —“I didn’t do it! I didn’t do it!” Something along those lines. I don’t know what the women did to deserve that.
I heard of relationships, but it wasn’t displayed. It was secretive because you’re not
—Tabitha Ritchie
allowed. I had a bisexual friend so she had a girlfriend. One Saturday a month there were conjugal visits. It was quite funny because all the women who didn’t have partners would sit in the hallway and watch all the [visiting] men come in. There was also one Sunday a month where the partners of gay women were given permission to come in.
Some of the guards were nice, other guards were not. I made a mistake one time. I was walking by patio two and three and one of the women asked me to pass a pair of pants to the other patio. Because I was a nice person I did it. This is a way they use to pass drugs. I didn’t know that. I got searched and reprimanded for that. You learn really quickly what not to do.
During the day there was the possibility of working in the kitchen, bakery, landscaping, garbage, laundry or to teach in the school. I started learning Spanish. There was also a library where I did a lot of reading. My days were spent reading and studying and trying to talk to people. You kind of look for who you fit in with the most, because you’re going to be spending a lot of time with them. I tried to do my best to help if any of them wanted to learn English.
In the evening, you waited for your dinner in the patio. Then, after 7 PM, they closed the doors. You could visit whichever cell, whoever was in your patio, or spend your time in the kitchen/laundry/bathroom and talk. Guards want you to sleep at 8 PM, most sleep at 10. I went to bed at 8.30 as I was too tired from my days trying to learn Spanish.
I didn’t have any visitors. My mum couldn’t afford to visit me. My brother couldn’t afford to bring my children.
When I was released [on house arrest] I was happy, but I was a bit scared because I didn’t know the family I was moving in with.
I see my children, who live in Ontario, every night on Skype, but that’s different from seeing them in person. My sons are bigger now, older; one son only knows me through the internet.
I think I’ve recovered fairly well, I haven’t lost too much of my personality but I have learnt a lot of valuable lessons the hard way. I don’t trust the intentions of people. The first year I knew him, I didn’t trust my now fiancé—it was really hard to share things with him.
I’ve tried to better my life from what I learnt. I took what was a negative and tried to turn it into a positive: I buckled down to learn Spanish, knowing that this could help me when I return, for jobs and whatnot.
My advice to Cassie Sainsbury is just to take the time to evaluate what has happened and move forward, step by step, hour by hour, little by little. The process here in Colombia is different than it would be in Australia. Because they see your situation as your problem—if you can’t prove exactly that these drugs are not yours, they’re yours. So accept it and move forward.
For me, the drugs were on me. They believed me but I still got four years because it was on me. In accepting this, I was able to move on and accept a good plea bargain. You need a good lawyer.
I believe it is very possible that Cassie did this unwittingly but just as everyone said to me at the time of my arrest, it’s also very possible that she did it. But I believe it is possible she is innocent because of what happened to me. I didn’t think I would be coming to Colombia to be forced to take drugs home.