MY WARNING TO CASSIE
In 2013, Canadian Tabitha Ritchie was busted smuggling cocaine out of Colombia. This is her story
In the aftermath of South Australian Cassie Sainsbury’s drug arrest in Colombia, Canadian Tabitha Ritchie tells her story of life in El Buen Pastor jail.
Convicted drug mule Tabitha Ritchie has some advice for Cassie Sainsbury. In 2013, the Canadian mother of two was arrested at Bogotá’s international airport with 2kg of cocaine hidden inside a prosthetic pregnant belly. Within days, she was locked up in Colombia’s El Buen Pastor prison. As she pleaded her innocence, claiming she had been forced to smuggle the drugs by men who had raped her and threatened her life (see box), the 28-year-old quickly realised a jail term was inevitable. “Cassie is going to have to understand that because the drugs were in her possession, not a lot can be done to prove they weren’t hers,” says Ritchie of the South Australian 22-year-old who was arrested at the same airport on April 12 after 5.8kg of cocaine was allegedly found in her luggage. “If she gets a decent plea bargain, take it.”
Which is exactly what Ritchie did. In 2014, after eight months in Buen Pastor, the universityeducated social worker pleaded guilty and was released under house arrest in May 2014. For the next two years, she lived with families in apartments in poor and dangerous South Bogotá until she was granted parole in June 2016. She is now engaged to Oscar, 24, whom she met in one of the homes, and they have a 3-month-old daughter. When Ritchie’s parole ends on Sept. 10, she plans to return to her home city of London, Ontario, where
her two boys (now aged 12 and 6) from a previous relationship live with her mother.
Here, Ritchie describes to WHO her daily life in the overcrowded, sometimes violent prison where Sainsbury, who claims she didn’t know the drugs were in her luggage, is now incarcerated.
For the first seven days of my arrest I was in a different jail, before I was transferred to Buen Pastor. My first hours were scary because I was with 16 men. I had police officers in the room with us but that didn’t make me feel safe. I just didn’t talk with anyone. And all you can think about is what happened: one minute you’re free, the next minute you’re not.
Cassie Sainsbury got transferred to Buen Pastor faster than I did. I wasn’t transferred for a week because they were doing a lot of investigating. And I had to go to the hospital because I was really ill—i barely ate for three weeks and couldn’t eat anything or keep anything down. On my first court appearance, the prosecution asked for me to be remanded into custody at Buen Pastor. I was transferred with another woman. I was more scared than I was with the 16 men. You wait to be processed, your fingerprints are taken, your picture is taken. They found a guard who could barely speak English and they ask you questions, how much you weigh and so on.
They do a search of all your things, your clothes; if you have hoodies they cut your hoods off. I had contact lenses—they took my contacts’ case and threw it in the garbage. They put you through a metal detector. We talked to a group of guards and they asked us about our professions, our education level. All I remember is telling them I studied at university so they put me in patio five, which is for professionals [Sainsbury is also in patio five]. Patio four is for pregnant women—children can stay with their mother for up to three years. Patio two and three are for repeat offenders. Patio nine is for dangerous offenders. Patio five had 500 women, three to four women per cell. The patio is so loud you can lose your hearing.
You can only enter with a certain amount of clothes: three or four pants, three or four shirts, your undergarments and one jacket.
Everyone was waiting for me to arrive. Some prisoners had seen me on TV and anyone who had a television would tell people. So I didn’t realise that I was the talk of the town. They were looking for me.
My cell was really small and you’re sharing it with two or three other
—Tabitha Ritchie