SCHAPELLE CORBY by Kathryn Bonella©

My connection to Schapelle began on a Monday morning in October 2004. Sixty Minutes producers were gathered for the weekly meeting to discuss stories. “Maybe we should do something on that girl caught with drugs in Bali?” I suggested, after reading it in the newspapers on the weekend. “Ok, make a few calls,” the boss told me. From that moment Schapelle Corby and her story became a much greater part of my life than I could have imagined.

I first met Schapelle a few weeks after her arrest. Liz Hayes and I flew to Bali to do a story with Schapelle and her family for Sixty Minutes. Schapelle was being kept in a small concrete cell at the police station, and was brought up to the offices for our meeting, late on a Sunday afternoon – strategically timed to minimize the number of police about. She’d been crying in her cell for the past 24-hours but she wanted to speak to 60 Minutes to tell her side of the story. She was lucid and direct. She pleaded her innocence.

We flew back to Bali six months later - in May 2005 - to cover Schapelle’s verdict and sentencing. With the entire several hours of court broadcast live on three Australians networks, the place was like a circus. But centre stage was a girl who’d just had a huge hole punched out of her life; twenty years jail. At that point though, Schapelle did not believe it. She was sure she’d win an appeal. She had to believe that.

She was still hopeful and positive when I moved to Bali six months later to start working with her on her biography “My Story”. But she was struggling with daily life. It was at this point that I began to see the hell she was dealing with inside Kerobokan Jail. She was living in a filthy cell with 14 others - many who didn’t know anything about hygiene. They’d menstruate directly on the floor, or keep using the squat toilet even when it was blocked and spewing sewerage across the floor. Schapelle said inmates squelched around barefoot in the shit. She was locked up at 4.30pm each day. It was a waking nightmare.

During the days, Schapelle and I would sit for hours – during the twice daily visits – doing interviews for her book. She was candid, answered anything I put to her and often told her stories with wit and humour, making me laugh. Her book is now selling across Europe, the UK and in the USA. Last month it was released in Spain.  Foreign readers who’ve never heard of Schapelle Corby  (which is why we re-titled the book “No More Tomorrows” for overseas sales) are often moved to tears by her story. Many have written to my website saying they were shocked, and cried reading the book and now want to help. When the facts of Schapelle’s case are read, it is impossible not to feel sorry for this young Australian traveler.  

It was when I moved back to Bali in January last year to start work on the second book “Hotel Kerobokan” – an expose of the jail written from 100s of interviews with inmates and guards - that I got a full blown picture of “Hotel Kerobokan” as Schapelle and I nicknamed it in her book.

It’s a dark underworld of drugs, sex, murders, overdoses, violence and filth. It’s a place most of us would refuse to keep our dog.

When prisoners first arrive, it doesn't seem so bad. As they walk to their cell, passing prisoners lazing under palm trees, groomed gardens, a Hindu temple and a tennis court, the place resembles a cheap Balinese hotel. But things turn when they go beyond this facade.

The women are taken through a steel door to the cramped, dirty and primitive Block W, where they stay cooped up day and night in cells with up to 15 others. For the men it's more dire initially. They do a stint in an initiation cell, crushed so tightly with up to 25 others that they sleep sitting up or with their legs scissored through the bars. Like any hotel, those with cash can buy a room upgrade. The price used to be about $100, until an American surfer, frantic to avoid any time in an initiation cell, slipped the guards $900 and pushed up the cost. Corruption by guards is rife.

Kerobokan has been home to hundreds of inmates from across the world, usually doing time for drugs, and locals. It’s massively overcrowded and there’s no segregation in the mix of up to 1000 prisoners. Psychopaths, serial killers and pedophiles live alongside petty thieves, card sharks and tourists caught with a couple of ecstasy pills in a Kuta nightclub.

Schapelle has witnessed many horrors in Hotel K. She’s seen a prisoner hanging by a noose, a used sanitary pad draped over her toothbrush, women miscarrying in her cell, suicides and regular vicious bashings. But all long term prisoners have no choice but to try to make a life within the jail. One young Italian inmate serving 15 years got married in the jail. Some women conceive and give birth. Life goes on. Schapelle has talked of her hopes of opening a beauty salon, she makes bead bracelets, and paints her cellmates’ toe nails. Finding something to do is vital. But most of the westerners resort to using drugs and booze to blot out the world – most of it brought inside by corrupt guards.

For all the women, it’s harder to find something to do. The tennis court and grassy sports area are off limits to females. They spent their days cooped up in the women’s section unless they need to collect mail or have a visit. Schapelle’s devoted sister Mercedes regularly visits, as do friends and other relatives. The visits and strong support are her lifeline.  

This is Schapelle’s sixth Christmas in Kerobokan. Three years ago she wrote that her soul was fading; she often didn’t recognize the blue eyes that stared back at her in the mirror. This reflection’s now changed indescribably. Once so against suicide, she has slashed her wrists twice in the past two years. I saw her in hospital frantically climbing on chairs to try to cover non-existent spy holes in the walls. She’s slipped into a world of her own visions to escape hellish jail life. It’s the only way she can cope. The reality is just too hard.  ©2009

(www.kathrynbonella.com)

Welcome to Hotel Kerobokan,

the ironic nickname for Kerobokan Jail, Bali’s most notorious prison. It is a dark and bizarre under- world of sex, drugs, violence and squalor which has been home to a procession of infamous and the tragic. The Bali Bombers, Gold Coast Beautician Schapelle Corby and the Bali Nine among many others.

In Hotel K’s filthy and disease ridden cells, a United Nations of prisoners- Aussies, americans, Germans, Brazilians, French, English, Scottish, Mexicans, Italians, Balinese and others - live crushed together in misery.

Hotel Kerobokan is the shocking inside story of the jail and its inmates, revealing a world of wild ‘sex’ nights organised by corrupt guards for prisoners who have the money to pay.

Written by Kathryn Bonella, co-author of Schapelle Corby’s best selling autobiography and backed up by hundreds of interviews with prisoners, past and present, the truth about Hotel Kerobokan explodes off the page.

Hotel Kerobokan

is available from all good book stores or direct from http://www.kathrynbonella.com

Cell toilet in men's block, shared by up to fifteen inmates, doubling as their kitchen.