Popular blogger and radio presenter Constance Hall has written an open letter to convicted drug smuggler Schapelle Corby, who was released on Saturday after serving a sentence of almost 13 years in Bali.
While public commentators have been highly critical of Corby and the media circus surrounding her in the days since her return, Hall offered her support to the 39-year-old, saying she can relate to being “young and living and… paying the consequences”.
In her letter, 33-year-old Hall addressed Corby, saying “you kinda feel like someone I’ve known for over 10 years so”.
“As a 21-year-old who had watched the news about three times in her life, I found my heart bleeding for yours,” she wrote.
Hall said during Corby’s trial, conviction and sentence, she didn’t spend any time wondering whether she was guilty or innocent.
Why?
Because she didn’t care.
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“You see at 21 I had already f**ked up so many times,” she wrote. “I had been on Big Brother and been the first one evicted for generally being a massive f**k up.
“Thankfully so as I later found out I was pregnant to my boyfriend who I had since broken up with.” Hall then had to make a “tough decision” at an abortion clinic.
“But none of my f**k ups cost me 13 years in a Balinese prison,” Hall wrote. “So whether you did it or not, was never my question. Because even if you did, I’d have cried the same amount of tears for you.”
The mum-of-four explained her “favourite uncle” smuggled heroin into Australia in the 1980s, and spent time in Fremantle prison. She’s eternally grateful he was caught here, and not in Thailand, where he could’ve faced a very different fate.