- Holly’s heroin addiction saw her imprisoned in Thailand’s notorious prison – the ‘Bangkok Hilton’ – and sentenced to 31 years behind bars.
- Inside, she managed to beat her addiction and was reunited with the love of her life on her release.
- Now Holly’s turned her life around and is helping others to beat addiction.
Here Holly Deane-Johns, 53, Perth, WA, tells her story in her own words.
Staring at the crowded, filthy cell packed with women, I shuddered. You could barely see the floor, it was covered by more than a hundred bodies.
I was locked in Bangkok’s toughest women’s jail, Lard Yao Women’s Correctional Institution, nicknamed the Bangkok Hilton.
How the hell have I wound up here? I wondered.
Brought up in Perth with a younger brother and sister, Mark and Amy, and two older brothers, Craig and Grant, I’d lived a privileged life.
‘How the hell have I wound up here? I wondered.’
My mum, Lorraine, ran an escort agency, wore expensive dresses and drove beautiful cars. My dad, Damien, was great but strict.
My parents divorced when I was 12.
Mum met a boyfriend named Simon, who brought drugs into our lives. Mum became addicted to heroin, and drugs started to seem normal.
I first tried heroin aged 15, and became an addict. A year later, I fell in love with Craig’s mate Stephen, then 24. I knew instantly he was my soulmate. Sadly, he spiralled into addiction, too.
Out of control, I served five years in Bandyup Women’s Prison in Perth for drugs offences, aged 20.
While I was there Mum died from a heroin overdose, which left me devastated.
After getting out of prison, I moved to Thailand with Stephen.
Still addicts, we trafficked drugs back to Australia.
I knew my illegal activities could end in prison, and even a death penalty, if I was caught.
But sadly my craving for heroin was too strong.
Stephen was arrested at Melbourne Airport in 2000 for importing a kilo of heroin from Bangkok.
And that August, aged 29, I was arrested after posting a calendar with 15 grams of heroin in it to Australia. Police found another 15 grams back at my flat.
‘You’re going to get the death sentence,’ a Thai cop said.
Arriving in the cell, the mare-hong – mother of the room– motioned me to where I’d sleep on the cold wooden floor in a line with other women.
Lying down, I was jammed between two women. When someone turned over, the whole line turned. I gagged on the stench of sweat and urine.
Seeing weathered faces, some my grandmother’s age, shocked me.
There was just one squat toilet between 2000 women. When they had their period the Thai ladies, who’d never seen tampons, used menstrual pads and stuffed toilet paper between their buttocks to prevent leakage at night.
The food was disgusting and, as the weeks passed, I became skin and bones from terrible diarrhoea.
Despite being locked up, drugs still found their way into the jail. I scored drugs and snorted them to numb the pain.
An Australian embassy worker called Yvonne visited regularly to give me, and the few other Aussies, our own money from before we were jailed and messages from Australia.
Heroin has destroyed my life. It destroyed Mum’s life. But I’m alive and I want to survive
After 10 months I woke up one morning and it was like a lightbulb switched on.
Heroin has destroyed my life. It destroyed Mum’s life. But I’m alive and I want to survive this, I thought.
It wasn’t easy, but I stopped using and was determined I’d never go back to it.
Talking to a Thai inmate called Aong, who’d also been jailed for drugs, she explained she was from a very poor family. Heartbreakingly, she never had any visitors. She and I became best friends.
Women with children under three could keep the kids with them. But it was no life for a child.
Other kids visited their mothers from orphanages. Watching them sob as they left broke my heart.
As my head began to itch one day I groaned realising I’d picked up lice. Some nights I woke with flying cockroaches on my face. One night a centipede bit my foot, and it swelled up like the size of a golf ball.
After three years on remand, in July 2003, I was sentenced to 31 years in jail. Knowing I’d done wrong, I was just relieved it meant I could apply for a transfer to Australia in the future.
In prison, sickness and death were never far away.
Sadly Aong became very sick with AIDS in 2007.
‘I love you,’ I told her.
It broke my heart into pieces when she died. She was only in her early 30s.
I learned not to hope for early release. Once I was told I’d been given a royal pardon, but it wasn’t to be.
Meanwhile, Stephen’s parents, Gail and John, and other supporters were lobbying to have me moved to Australia.
A few months after Aong died, consular officers visited. ‘You’re going to be transferred to Perth,’ they told me.
Saying goodbye to my fellow cell mates after years together – some of them I knew would die in prison – was hard.
Transferred to Bandyup Women’s Prison, WA, I was shown to my own cell and felt so relieved I wanted to cry.
When Stephen visited – also clean of drugs – I threw my arms around him.
‘Holly, you’re safe now,’ he said as I cried.
Now, I want to open people’s eyes to the dangers of drugs.
I spent my time studying for a diploma in youth work and began writing.
Released in 2012, aged 41, the joy of being free with Stephen was overwhelming, but I lived with chronic PTSD.
Sadly in 2022 Stephen was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer. Given nine months to live, my soulmate lost his battle on August 15 last year, aged 59. Grieving, I began volunteering and finished writing my book Holly’s Hell.
Now, I want to open people’s eyes to the dangers of drugs. I’ve been clean for 24 years, but as well as Mum I lost my brother Craig and sister Amy to drugs too.
I’ve been doing talks warning about drugs as well as motivational speaking. I’m hoping to speak in businesses, schools and prisons.
If I’d been warned off when I was younger, maybe my life would have been very different.
Please don’t ever do drugs.
As told to Lisa Brookman ‘Holly’s Hell – Seven Years in a Thai Prison’ is available online
