Remember Schapelle Corby?

Oh how we cared four years ago when she was sentenced. My office was crowded with all my magazine staff so we could watch the verdict live on TV. Tears were shed. Threats were made to boycott Bali. And then we all forgot. We stopped caring. As if because she wasn’t on the front page crying every day anymore, because the narrative of her drama had played out and there were no new plot points (pregnancy? suicide attempt? what will it take?), she disappeared from our consciousness….

Tracey Spicer wrote a passionate editorial today:

IT IS time to
bring Schapelle Corby back home. Pictures of the 31-year-old lying on
the floor of Denpasar’s police hospital, dishevelled and pathetically
clutching a teddy bear, have torn at the nation’s heart.

Corby’s
wide-eyed stare, apparent paranoia and even her tiny, twisted pigtails
are obvious signs of a rapidly deepening depression. Sigmund Freud called it regression: In her mind, Corby is once again
a little girl, reliving the halcyon days before the horror of her
conviction. Veteran Bali correspondent Cindy Wockner, who visited Corby in
Kerobokan prison last week, said she was “shocked by how she looked,
how disoriented and spaced-out she was”.

According to Corby’s cellmates, she isn’t sleeping at night, forgets to take her medication and can’t look after herself. Dazed and confused, she wanders from room to room of the hospital, carefully guided by her beloved mother Rosleigh Rose.

As a mother myself, that image is utterly heartbreaking. I look at my daughter and wonder about her coming life journey; what choices she will make; what she might be forced to endure. You see, like Lindy Chamberlain, Corby will be vilified or deified
for decades to come, reduced to dinner party debate and barbecue banter
for the chattering classes.

What matters now is the life of a desperate young woman. Imagine if she were your sister. Or your daughter. Or your closest friend. Make no mistake – Corby is on the precipice. A crime which would
have garnered a short period of humane treatment in an Australian jail
has left her rotting in a foreign hell hole.

Her psychiatrist Dr Danny Tong says that, while Corby’s condition is improving, she is “very depressed”. He wants her moved to a hospice in the secluded hill town of Bangli in order to receive proper treatment. It’s unlikely this will happen.

So, she waits, cuddling her teddy, her head resting in her Mum’s lap, trying to remember why she wants to stay alive.