She sits in a prison, thousands of kilometres away from her family and friends. She doesn’t speak the language and doesn’t think much of the food that’s served up to her.
Her only crime was to try and bring drugs into a foreign country to make a bit of money and now she is stuck in a foreign jail for what must seem like an eternity.
How could you not feel sympathy for her? Easy. Her name isn’t Schapelle Corby.
It’s Thialal Toure, a woman from Senegal, who last year tried to smuggle a kilo of cocaine into Sydney under her wig and in her bra.
The drugs were worth about about $500,000 on the street but to her it was worth only about $17,000, money she says she needed to pay off debts and to pay for her sick daughter.
Luckily for her she was caught when she arrived in Australia, and not as she passed through Hong Kong where she may never again have seen the light of day.
And although she’ll be out and homeward bound before Corby is even half way through her sentence, her diabetic daughter is growing up in Paris without her mother.
She is just one of scores of other foreigners in Australian jails, many on drugs charges, who we expect to serve the time imposed by our courts before being booted out of the country.
There are about 200 or so Aussies, give or take the odd travel insurance rorter or bar mat thief, in prisons around the world. For the most part, they remain anonymous, doing the time other foreign courts have imposed on them before being returned home.
But it’s different with Schapelle. The beautician from Brissie who is a bit sad, a bit mad, a bit innocent and, perhaps most importantly, a bit pretty is a different case.
The ``Bring Schapelle Home’’ campaign seems to rest solely on the idea that she’s a damsel in distress who needs rescuing.
Those who can look after themselves are left to do just that. Renae Lawrence, the Bali Nine drug trafficker, has sucked up the 20 year sentence she’s been given appears to have taken the approach to be a model prisoner and get every remission she can.
If only she were a prisoner who looked like a model she’d be on t-shirts with Corby.
It’s hard not to feel sorry for Corby. She cuts a pathetic figure and images of her looking dishevelled and clutching a teddy bear are certainly moving.
A report, paid for by the Corby family and New Idea, by leading Australian psychiatrist associate professor Jonathan Phillips, paints a disturbing picture of a woman who is losing her already slippery grip on reality.
He attests that she’s not bunging on and that without proper medical treatment her condition will worsen ``with the risk of calamity’‘.
Dr Phillips believes she should be transferred as a prisoner to Australia and treated in a secure hospital setting or at least go to a psychiatric facility in Bali.
She may not be putting it on but you can bet every other Aussie would soon start licking the windows if that’s all it took to get a get out of jail free card.
There is no doubt Corby is paying a very heavy price for a crime that would barely have rated mention had she been caught on the way out of the country.
But what about the ``calamity’’ facing Scott Rush, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran. Those three young Australian men, members of the Bali Nine, await execution for their role in attempting to smuggle heroin into Indonesia.
I would rather see the government focus its efforts on having their lives spared than pander to more stunts by a desperate family.
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