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Hidden truth of revenge in Bali |
KATHRYN BONELLA -
28 June 2008 -
Daily Telegraph
Despite unflattering claims aired in a new documentary, Schapelle Corby biographer KATHRYN BONELLA defends the family she has come to know so well
There's no doubt this week's broadcast of Schapelle Corby: The Hidden Truth, has done the Corby family no favours in the style stakes. They mainly came across as rough and volatile. But swearing and lack of social style doesn't make them guilty. On the contrary, perhaps their uninhibited performances say more about their innocence.
Why would any family allow their lives to be filmed in microscopic detail while they were enduring living hell, fighting to get Schapelle off death row?
Why did they allow producer Janine Hosking and her many film crews incredible, Big Brother-type access for almost 12 months?
All members of the family were available; every emotional moment was filmed, up close and personal.
Easy. They did it because they had nothing to hide. The family clearly thought that showing intimate details of their battle to prove Schapelle's innocence would also show the world she was innocent. They laid themselves bare, made themselves totally transparent.
And in the months of filming, not one member of the volatile, emotionally fraught family ever once blamed each other or let anything ``slip'' that could implicate Schapelle or their family.
This wasn't because their words and actions were carefully orchestrated as a PR exercise -- on the contrary, wherever it could the documentary cast doubts on the family through other people's sensational words.
And most doubts were cast by two key players who felt they'd been burnt, lawyer Robin Tampoe and white knight Ron Bakir. Bakir arrived on the scene in 2005 with his lawyer Tampoe and his own agenda.
He told a magazine, ``I will only stop when my heart stops. Money didn't come into the equation.''
But behind the scenes things were a little different. Within three weeks of meeting Schapelle and Mercedes, Bakir
had both sisters sign contracts stating they would ``assign irrevocably to Bakir the exclusive rights to the story'' and
that he (Bakir) would get 50per cent of any money Schapelle earned from ``all forms of marketing or media worldwide including
but not limited to, television, radio, motion picture, written media, internet based media, merchandising and public or private
addresses''.
Bakir worked frenetically doing deals; a book deal (which fell through), magazine deals and TV interviews.
It was also Bakir who talked Mercedes and Schapelle into the documentary.
Now he claims the Corbys were ungrateful. The fact is, things went sour after Schapelle's verdict. Bakir and Tampoe had been promising to get Schapelle acquitted, telling her the worst case scenario would be six months in a luxury villa. So when she got 20 years she sacked her team. She wasn't very happy -- their promises had been way off the mark. Things unravelled fast.
It was Bakir behind Jodie Power going to Today Tonight last year to give her sensational $100,000 paid interviews about Mercedes and her mum Rosleigh Rose.
By Power's own admission in court, Bakir asked her if it was OK to give her phone number to his mate Andrew Bourke. Bourke then took the Jodie Power story to Today Tonight, produced the series of top-rating stories and -- icing on the cake -- started dating Anna Coren.
When Bakir gave Power to Bourke to take to Seven, he could not have failed to realise the terrible damage it would do to the Corby family. But he probably didn't imagine the backlash, or think for a moment Mercedes would have the guts to go through with a stressful, costly and humiliating court case.
Now Mercedes' spectacular win against Seven has cost the network at least $5 million (largely in legal fees) and, according to media reports this week, Bourke has left the show.
The latest headline-grabbing comments by Tampoe stating that he made up the baggage handler defence are as ridiculous as they are damaging. Tampoe did fly with the defence of baggage handlers putting the marijuana into Schapelle's bag.
But it didn't come out of thin air. A police statement lodged in a NSW Court says a group of baggage handlers, working at Sydney Airport on the same morning Schapelle travelled to Bali, were paid $300,000 to remove a briefcase containing 9.9kg of cocaine before it reached customs.
The police statement detailed Operation Mocha, a six-month AFP investigation using an informant to unravel a Sydney-based drug syndicate that smuggled 200kg of cocaine into Australia between June and December 2004.
The Federal Government even sent Schapelle's legal team a letter on the eve of her verdict, stating that a number of baggage handlers were being investigated as a result of their investigation. It confirmed the alleged drug running took place the same day Schapelle left Australia for Bali. Several members of this syndicate have since been jailed.
The public frenzy about locking or cling-wrapping bags before a flight was not just vacuous hysteria. And there was more.
An internal airport report, leaked days after Schapelle's 20-year verdict, stated baggage handlers were involved in moving drugs through Sydney International Airport.
Shortly after the Australian government hired Englishman John Wheeler to provide a report on airport security, leading to a $200million investment on upgrades.
Surely Tampoe isn't claiming all this was made up to help his defence, too?
No one knows who put the drugs in Schapelle's bags. Tampoe's defence theory was always that, a theory -- but it was made against a backdrop of massive crime at our airports. Nothing has changed, except nowadays Tampoe hates the Corby family.
There was not one moment in the documentary where anyone could reasonably say, ``Oh yeah they are guilty for sure.''
They laid themselves bare. Surely if one of the family was involved, it would have come out. Mercedes has always said Schapelle should not even be in jail for one day.
She has screamed Schapelle's innocence to the world; she has let cameras into her life, when her family was at its most volatile and vulnerable.
Taking on the might of Channel 7 exposed her to incredible scrutiny. Seven even spent more than a year and almost $1million before stepping foot in court investigating Mercedes' entire world, unturning every stone, using private investigators, talking to extended family members, friends, old school friends. They found nothing. If Mercedes or her family had any skeletons in the closet, there is little doubt Seven would have found them.
The one indisputable fact about the Corbys that anyone who gets to know them can't miss is that they are exceptionally close and care deeply for one another.
Matriarch Ros has tried to give her children everything she didn't have while growing up in and out of orphanages. At times she worked several jobs to pay for ballet classes or the latest fashion accessories. Her children are her entire world.
She is a protective lioness who doesn't mind how ferociously she roars or how that makes her appear if she feels she is helping them.
During the filming of the documentary, Michael Corby Sr was on heavy medication for advanced bone cancer, suffering terrible pain. However, he was in Bali to do whatever he could to help his youngest daughter.
Brother James was a shy, awkward 17-year-old when he was filmed in the documentary.
And Mercedes has upturned her whole life to live in Bali to look after her little sister.
It must now be with a sigh of relief that the Corby family can put the screening of the documentary behind them. Far from wanting to promote it, it was undoubtedly hanging over their heads like a dark cloud ever since the cameras stopped filming them more than two years ago.
They knew Bakir and Tampoe were angry and bitter, and didn't know how it would be cut together.
But as much as questions were left dangling to cast as much of a shadow over the family as possible, it had nothing, despite the microscopic view, to point to anyone in the Corby family being involved in the drugs in Schapelle's bag. Now maybe it's time to give them a break.
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