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- [00:00]
Holly Dean Johns
Wonder plus subscribers can listen to exclusive.
- [00:03]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
Episodes of this Is Actually Happening by.
- [00:05]
Holly Dean Johns
Joining Wonder in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.
- [00:10]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
This Is Actually Happening features real experiences that often include traumatic events. Please consult the Show Notes for specific content warnings on each episode and for more information about support services.
- [00:27]
Whit Misseldine
Hi listeners.
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Narrator/Host
Today's episode is the last new episode before our three week winter break. Over the next three weeks, stay tuned as we rebroadcast some of our older favorite episodes. We'll return with new episodes on Tuesday, January 14th. From all of us at this Is Actually Happening, we wish you safe and happy holidays and we look forward to bringing you fresh new episodes in 2025. But today we bring you the harrowing story of Holly Dean Johns for today's episode what what if you spent seven years in a Thai prison?
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Holly Dean Johns
I felt like my brain was an elastic band that was just getting wound tighter and tighter as each day went on. I felt that I was very, very close to snapping. And that was so scary because I knew that if that happened, I wouldn't be the same anymore. I'd be gone. I wouldn't be me.
- [01:34]
Whit Misseldine
From laundry, I'm Wit Misseldine. You're listening to this is actually happening.
- [01:47]
Narrator/Host
Episode 344, what if you spent seven years in a Thai prison.
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- [03:16]
Holly Dean Johns
My father was a jack of all trades, I guess you could say. He owned a real estate agency at one point. He was a disc jockey on six pr. He was. He was a painter house renovator. My father was very strict, but having said that, I guess that's what parents should be. They should be strict. You know, you should have boundaries as a kid and that's what we had with dad. We couldn't get away with anything. My mother was a very soft woman. My mother grew up in a household of six kids. I don't know what the reason was and my mum actually didn't know either. But she was treated very differently to all her other siblings. She was cast out for some reason. So I guess due to that upbringing, my mother wanted to give all of us kids everything she didn't have. We could get anything out of Mum. She was very giving. She was in the real estate business with my father for a long time. And then she was a stay at home mum. I was born in Melbourne. My parents moved over to Perth, Western Australia when I was a baby with my older brother Craig. So I grew up in Perth. My mother and father started having problems in their marriage, I guess when I was about 11 years old. I remember my dad drinking very heavily. He would get violent with my mother. It was never done in front of us kids. It was always done behind closed doors. But we could hear dad bashing mum. We could hear her crying. This happened very, very often. So when this would happen, we'd stop talking to dad because, you know, we hated him for hurting mum. That would go on for a few days and then everything would just go back to normal like nothing had happened. It was really hard for all us kids. I think I didn't really have much of a childhood. I became very protective of my mother and my siblings. I sort of took over the role as mum, if you like. In a lot of senses. I was the one who sort of tried to shield my brothers and sisters from what was happening. Even though looking back, I couldn't, but I tried to. It was a really hard time. I didn't have friends over after school like a normal teenager would. Only because I never knew what was going to be going on at home. Whether, you know, dad would be in a rage or mum would be crying, he'd be hitting mum. I never knew what it would be like. So I sort of detached myself from my friends a lot of the time. I think I just became numb to what was going on. This type of thing was happening all the time. So I guess I just had to switch off and just sort of live in that moment. It's hard to describe. It became my normal, I guess. My mum and dad ended up separating when I was about 12. Dad went back to Melbourne, which was where he was from. All of us kids had the chance to either go with dad or stay with mum. We all decided to stay with mum. Mum ended up running three escort agencies from the family home. So there were three separate phone lines in our lounge room. Phones would usually start ringing around about six in the evening. These phones would be ringing sometimes till 4, 4, 5 in the morning. So if a job came through, Mum would telephone the appropriate woman for that job. The lady would then go out and do this job and then come to our house to drop off the money to my mother. All of us kids knew what an escort agency was. Everything was very open in our house. So from a young age, we knew what sex was, we knew what the women did for money. And as strange as this may sound, it wasn't shocking to me. And I really don't know why it wasn't shocking, because I guess it should have been, but it just wasn't. It was normal. This was just a part of our life. This was how my mother made money. My mother met a guy called Simon. I was about 14. We all really liked him. We thought he was a really nice guy, could clearly see that he loved my mother and I could see that she loved him. But over the coming months, his facade slowly started to break away and it became apparent that he was a heroin addict. He had been to prison before for heroin offences. Due to this, a few months into their relationship, my mother started using heroin as well. And that was when it was first introduced into our life, when my mother started using heroin again. This is going to sound very strange, but it really wasn't shocking. It was just a progression that came into our life and again, this sort of thing became normal. My mother was very wealthy, so no one was having to commit crimes to get the heroin. So it didn't really make any large impact into our life at all. I didn't notice any real change in my mother's behaviour when she started using heroin. She wasn't getting sick from having withdrawals, because heroin was always there. She had it whenever she wanted it. So I wasn't seeing the other side of heroin addiction. I wasn't seeing that bad side where she would become sick. I only saw the good side of it, I guess you could say when I was about 14 and in high school, I was hanging around with a girl who was my best friend at that time. We started smoking pot. So this was pretty much an everyday thing for me. And we'd buy some alcohol, but that's all I ever did. So when I was in high school, my two older brothers became involved in criminal activity. They both started using heroin as well. They both ended up in prison. I visited them every week A lot of these visits were at nighttime. So as a 14 year old kid, you know, I'd be out there sometimes at 10 o' clock at night coming home from a prison visit. So around this time I also started to ask Mum if I could start answering the phones for the business. And my mum said, yeah, I could answer the phones if I wanted to. And every booking that I made, I got $10. Every woman that worked for Mum, everyone was different. Some had big busts, some had small busts, some were blonde, some were brunette. So I had to know everybody's attributes because the men calling would want a specific type of lady. So depending on what the man asked for, I would then delegate that job to a particular woman. It was hard living this life in the fact that I couldn't talk to anybody about it. You know, I couldn't talk about the business, I couldn't talk about. When heroin came into our life, I couldn't talk about anything. I grew up with the sense that what happens in the family home stays in the family home. I met my partner Stephen when I was 15, 16. He was a friend of one of my brothers. He was a heroin addict. I liked Stephen straight away and we were an item. My mother was now a heroin addict. I asked my mother many, many times if I could try it. She always said no. I asked her another time and she said yes, I could try it. So I did. Some people use heroin and get very, very sick. They can't stop vomiting, they just feel really ill. Then the other half of people will use heroin and just feel amazing. And for me, that's what happened. So I loved it after that first snort. I loved the feeling it gave me. As far as my mother was concerned, I'd had a snort of heroin once with her and that was it. Everyone thought that I was just smoking pot, but I was actually a heroin addict and nobody knew. So I was now living a lie. I was using heroin every day. I was stealing it from my mother. And yeah, I was a functioning heroin addict. I was still eating normally. I wasn't dropping large amounts of weight. I looked totally normal. I guess it was a bit of a suppressant for all the bad stuff I'd experienced in my life. And I guess that was sort of a mask, if you will. I think I was about 18 years old when I was talking with my sister. It came out that I was sexually molested when I was a kid by a member of my mother's family. I never told anybody. We were talking one night and she told me that it had happened to her. And then I told her it had happened to me. It was really strange because it was like something clicked and I realised it had happened to me as well. So I'd obviously repressed this memory for years and years and years. When I was 19, 20, Stephen knew a couple that I was introduced to and we became very good friends. They were also heroin addicts. The guy wanted to go to Thailand and get some heroin to bring back to Australia to sell. He didn't know anyone in Thailand to buy heroin from, but he knew that we did. So Stephen went over to Thailand, bought 10 ounces of heroin for them and gave it to them. They then inserted 5 ounces each into their bodies and brought it back to Australia. They didn't know anybody in Australia to sell large amounts to and we did. So I said to them, look, when you get back, I'll come and get the heroin, I'll go and sell it and I'll bring the money back to you. Now, I wasn't making any money in this. It was purely a friend doing a friend a favour. So they got back to Australia, they rang me and they said, oh, we're back. We got through the airport, no problem. We're at such and such hotel if you want to come over. I went over to the hotel room, I got the heroin from them, went to walk towards the lift and all these cops run out at me. The whole thing had been a setup. They'd actually been taken from the airport to the hospital where they were X rayed. The X rays showed up that they had the heroin concealed in their bodies. They then made a deal with the police to do a controlled delivery of the heroin to me in order to get a reduced sentence. So when I was in the hotel room with them, there was a cop hiding in the cupboard with a recording device recording everything that was being said. So I was then arrested, charged with possession of 10 ounces of heroin and conspiracy to import the heroin. After my arrest, when I was sitting in the lock up, I was freaking out. You know, a 20 year old kid, you know, I'd never been to prison. I'd visited many prisons and knew what prison was like, but it was a really, really scary prospect. I knew a lot of people that were in jail there. A lot of the women that I knew in there were associates of mine. We were all in the same circle, we all used drugs. The heroin circle is very small, especially in Perth. Everybody knows everybody. When I was arrested, I got advice from my lawyer in regards to Stephen, because Once I was arrested, he ended up staying in Thailand. My lawyer had said whatever sentence I was looking at, Stephen would get probably three times the amount that I got. So I got a message to Stephen not to come back to Australia because why should two people go to prison instead of just one? So he ended up staying in Thailand on the run. I ended up getting sentenced to 18 years with a non parole period of 5 years. So I had to serve 5 years in prison before being eligible for parole a year into my sentence. My sister was in jail as well with me. At that time she had also become a heroin addict and she was in prison for offences that she'd committed due to her addiction. I was called to the office in the yard one afternoon and told that I had a phone call. I picked up the phone and was told by a family friend that my mother had died of a heroin overdose. Getting told that news, especially while you're in prison, it was devastating. Because my mother, she was everything to us. It didn't matter what any of us did. Mum was always there for us. She had unconditional love for all of us kids, you know, and she was the one person in all of our lives that we could count on. So now knowing that Mum was gone was absolutely devastating. My sister and I had the choice of whether we wanted to go to her actual funeral or whether we wanted to go to the viewing of her body. We both chose to go to the funeral. We were both handcuffed to a prison officer and that's how we went to my mother's funeral. That was a really, really hard time. It was hard knowing that, you know, once I got out of jail, Mum wouldn't be.
- [18:32]
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- [20:10]
Holly Dean Johns
I went to prison when I was 20, served for five years and got out when I was 25. When I was released from jail after doing the five years, I had to do six months of community service and then I was totally free. Even though mum died of a heroin overdose, it didn't change anything for me in the way of wanting to stop. I was still using in jail. I continued to use. When I got out of jail, I didn't want to stop. I was quite happy using heroin. So I got on a plane and went to Thailand to be with Stephen again. And I was going between Thailand and coming back to Australia once or twice a year to see see my family and my friends going over to Thailand. You know you've got the best heroin in the world. It's pure heroin. It's very cheap. So yeah, I was pretty much living a heroin addict's dream. While I was living in Thailand, I was coming back home once or twice a year. So what I thought I should start doing is posting heroin back to myself in Australia so that when I was home, I didn't have to go out and buy heroin on the street. So that's what I started doing. We knew a guy who was also on the run in Thailand. He made money through making false passports, licenses, all that type of thing. So I'd take over 15 grams of heroin to him. He would insert this heroin into a very thin calendar and that was undetectable. So that's what I was doing. I had posted a couple of these calendars back to myself, which had gone fine. There was a point where Stephen decided to do a run himself. He took a kilo of heroin back to Melbourne. He was arrested at Melbourne airport. I received a phone call from Stephen's father. I then decided to wrap things up in Thailand and move to Melbourne so I could be near Stephen and visit him in jail. That was my plan. But I Contacted our friend Bob. I told him what had happened. I asked him to come and pick me up because I had another calendar that I needed to post. He came and picked me up and took me to the post office in Thailand. I went in, posted this calendar and I said, let's go and get something to eat. I got into the passenger seat. As I was about to close my door, all these blokes ran at the car and I actually thought we were being robbed. So I was playing tug of war with my door with this guy and I was telling Bob to floor it, you know, get out of here. But there was nowhere to go. We were boxed up in. I then realised they were police and we were both put into separate cars where we were driven back to the post office. I was ID'd by the guy as the person who posted that calendar. We were both taken to the police lockup in Thailand and we were both charged with heroin offences. I remember going into the women's cell. There were about five people laying down on the floor and they all had their faces covered. The lights were kept on 24 hours a day. They were never turned off, so they would cover their faces to be able to sleep. They told me that you're usually kept in the lock up for two weeks and then transferred to the main prison. The first time we were taken to court, we were both very, very sick. Sitting in the courtroom, dry, reaching. Everything was in Thai. We were told to sign paperwork. I said, no, I'm not signing it because I couldn't read what it said. The cops were becoming very angry. It was very intimidating. But I knew we're in a foreign country and you hear stories of what can happen and I just wasn't prepared to take the chance. The day that we were going to be taken to the prison, we appeared in court. Every time we appeared in court, there was a lot of media. It was always really, really hectic when we came out of the courtroom because Bob had been in jail before. He knew what was going to happen and he said to me, look, it's going to be like nothing you've ever experienced before. There was a large truck out the front with armed guards. We all were counted as we got on and driven to the main prison. I was just looking out the window the whole time, getting my last sort of view of the outside world. We pulled up out the front and we were then taken into the main prison. We were then given prison uniforms, told to make a line and walk up to where one of the screws was standing on a Chair. Now, we had to then open up the sarong that we had on so that the screw could look down onto our bodies and check that we had nothing hidden on our bodies, under our feet, in our mouth. We were then told to make another line in front of a medical room. I was told that we would go in and be internally searched, which I thought would be done by either a nurse or a doctor. When I've walked into this room, it was actually a prisoner doing these internal searches. I couldn't believe it. I knew how many women had just been in before me. So I looked in the bin to see how many gloves were in there and there weren't many gloves. So I realised that she's using the same glove on many women. We were then walked into another area of the prison for people who were on remand and hadn't been sentenced yet. Another prisoner comes out who is referred to as the mother of the house. She then explains what's going to happen next. We were given a small bowl. I actually thought this was to eat from, but she said, no, this is to shower with. You put this bowl into the water and throw it over yourself to shower. She told me to put that and my belongings on the ground and I could get these in the morning. When I came out of the cell, I was then taken up to the first floor and I was standing outside the cell that I would be going into. There was about one hundred and twenty women in there. Everyone was sitting on the ground. You couldn't even see any of the floor. I was then pushed into this cell and I said, does anyone here speak English? One Thai lady put up her hand and said, yeah, I do. So I went and sat with her. She was what they call the mother of the room. She decided who cleaned the room. She was in charge of giving the money coupons out, which were coloured bits of paper which represented a money amount. It was her job also to decide where everybody slept. She said, okay, we'll work out where you're going to sleep. And I said, well, what do you mean there's no space? You can't even see the floor. And she said, no, I'll work it out. So everybody was told to lie on their side. Once everyone was on their side, she then motioned for everybody to move as close as they could to each other. So there was a small space for me to then lay down on my side. That was my first night to life in a Thai prison cell. The next morning came, wake up at five. You fold up what's referred to as your bedding, which is either one or two grey blankets that you have to buy from the shop and a small pillow that you get made illegally. You then lay down on the wooden floor for another half an hour. You then wake up again where the cleaning of the cell starts. At 6 o', clock, all the cells get opened and then I describe it as a stampede. It literally sounds like thousands of horses running down the stairs. At this time, I don't really know what's happening, but I'm told get downstairs as fast as you can, grab your shower things and go to the water tank. There's 2,000 people going to this one tank of water. You stand in front of the tank with your small plastic bowl. There's a trustee at one end who starts a countdown to 10. Once this countdown to 10 is finished, you cannot take more water now because there's 2,000 women going to this one tank. When you're at the front, you have people grabbing onto the back of your pyjama top and pulling you away from the front of the water tank so they can get in and get water. Because once that tank is empty, they don't turn it on again to fill it up. The first time I put my bowl in the water, I pull it out. I can see nits, pubic hair and stones. So I throw that out, put my bowl in again to get another bowl of water. And it's the same sort of thing. The water's filthy, but I realise if I don't use this water, I'm not going to shower. The first day was just mind blowing to me. I just realised this is going to be like nothing I've ever experienced before in my life. And I knew very quickly that I would have to adapt very, very fast, otherwise I wasn't going to survive this. Being Australian, I had the option of applying for what is called a loan. So I was given a three monthly loan from the Australian Embassy. It would equate to roughly $400 every three months. I was lucky in the fact that the lady who spoke English in my cell, she said that I could stay with her and her friends. She would show me the ropes on how life would be. And that suited me and it suited them because I had money so I could help them eat and all that type of thing. So that sort of became my next focus, getting to know people so I could make my life as easy as possible. I quickly found out who was who. I quickly made friends with the people who could help me the most. There were prisoners called Trustees. These were people that had no money and who worked for the prison. So these people had certain areas to dry their clothes. These areas were never stolen from. They had as much water as they wanted to wash clothes. I found out who did this. I became friends with them, and I paid this lady to wash my clothes, hang them in her area where I knew they wouldn't be stolen. So I would become friends with people like this because they made my life that little bit easier. In the cell that I was in that held 120 women, there was one toilet. I didn't use that toilet for about the first month, because while you're sitting on this toilet in the ground in the cell, if people are lining up to use the toilet, they can see everything that's going on. They can see you shitting. So for a month, I just made sure I went to the toilet in the yard before I went upstairs to the cell. And then after a month, I was like, fuck it. I'm going to have to start living like a Thai in every single way because I'm going to be here for probably 20 or 30 years. I just have to not be shy anymore. I've got to leave my dignity at the front gate. And that's what I did. So in the jail, there was a lot of rats, snakes, cockroaches. I got bitten on foot one night while I was asleep. I've woken up in the morning and it looks like I have a golf ball on top of my foot. This was from a centipede. Due to these centipedes being everywhere, a lot of people would sleep with toilet paper pushed into their ears. I had really bad fever, diarrhoea, vomiting for a few days. In the rainy season, the jail would flood. You're not allowed to wear shoes in the buildings, so you'd be walking around all the time barefoot. A lot of the time, this water would be halfway up your legs. You know, there'd be rats in the water, cockroaches. In those first few months, I just wanted to be as numb as possible. I quickly found out who sold heroin in there, and that's what my next 10 months were. Just wanting to be out of my headspace, be as numb as possible. I did have a couple of fights. You're living in a pressure cooker. The tiniest of things can just blow up. You're witnessing things on a daily basis that, that you've never witnessed before. I mean, these guards walk around with batons, and if they feel like it, they just start hitting people. There was an Escape attempt once and once all the people were pulled down from scaling the walls. They were all put into a circle. Their feet were shackled and they were handcuffed. Male officers were brought in from the men's prison. And I watched them with their batons, just bashing these women. They were then made to crawl on their knees hundreds and hundreds of metres. Their knees were bleeding, there was blood on the ground. One woman had a miscarriage. The first few times I saw stuff like that, I just couldn't believe it, you know, I was just horrified. But then after seeing things like this a few times, it becomes normal and it doesn't affect you anymore. You become conditioned to it. A lot of the foreigners were in a position where, because the jail knew that we had embassies who would visit us once a month, I think that made us a little bit off limits. But the Thai people, they had nobody. They were fair game, which was really sad. There were punishments that I saw, you know, where people were made to stand in the sun holding bowls of water over their head for hours and hours and hours, made to do crazy amounts of exercise. One punishment that I witnessed many, many, many times was when you'd come back from court, if there were women that had been given bail, their family would be out the front waiting for them to come out. And the guards would make them strip naked and run around the tank area nine times before they were allowed to leave the prison. And I'd say to these women, what are you doing? Like, say no. But they were too scared to say no. You hear of people having a light bulb moment, and that's actually what happened to me. I got up one morning, walked outside to the yard, sat down on the filthy ground, just looking around at my surroundings and looking around at the people and just realising what my life was and what it was going to be for a very, very long time. And it was in that moment that I thought, fuck, look what you've done to yourself. Look where you are. Your life's gone. You know, my choices have impacted my family, my friends, but most of all me. I didn't know how long I would be serving at that stage, but I knew it would be for sure in excess of 20 years. I knew that. And it was just in that moment where I was like, you know what? I'm done. I'm never ever using heroin or any other drug ever again in my life. I was just done. I'd had enough. Heroin had literally ruined my life and I've never looked back. Being in that jail made Me realise so many things. Earlier on in my life, I may have had judgments on people, but being in there, I realised, who am I to judge people? We don't know people's stories. We don't know how they've been brought up. We don't know the chances they've had or the chances they haven't had. I realised that I could be one of these people one day. I could not have a home. I could be hungry. Nobody's immune to anything. Doesn't matter who you are or how much money you have. That was a huge realisation for me. There was one morning when all the cells were unlocked. As I'm walking down the landing, I can see so many people standing outside one of the cells and I can hear somebody screaming, help. Then as I got closer, I realised it was my friend. So I've pushed through this crowd, I've looked in and there's a lady that's hung herself. My friend is holding onto her legs, trying to hold her up, so the strain is coming off her neck. Not one person would walk into that cell. Even the guards were standing at the front. So I've pushed past everybody gone in, and I'm trying to loosen the cord around her neck and I can't get it off. So my friend's still trying to hold her up. I'm yelling out to somebody, go and get scissors or a knife, as somebody has gone to get something. I've managed to loosen up her neck and we were able to get her down. She was rushed over to the hospital section and I was told later that day that she was fine. So I don't know whether she was relieved I helped her, Whether she was pissed off I helped her, I have no idea. But that experience affected me dramatically. As soon as I got her down and she was gone, I was just shaking. I guess I was in shock, you know, that was a common thing as well, people committing suicide. But I'd never seen it before. I'd never seen somebody hang themself.
- [39:45]
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- [41:11]
Holly Dean Johns
There was one woman that I became very close with, Ong. She was one of the trustees that I first met who I paid to do my washing. We became the best of friends very, very fast. Many years later, I was living in a different section of the prison to Ong, and I get a message that she's been transferred into the section I lived in, into what was called the sick room. So I went over to this room this day and I said, what are you doing here? And she said, oh, I've got TB now. Tuberculosis was very rampant in the prison. A couple of her other friends lived in that section as well. And obviously we all loved her. So we went to see see her, made sure she had food, water to drink, toiletries, everything. As time went on, we began to realise that something wasn't right. I went there to see her one day and her neck, I'll never forget it, she looked like a cobra snake. Her neck was about 5 times its normal size. It was really bizarre. So over time, she started to decline and it got to a point where she couldn't even eat anymore. Now, this was called the sick cell, which meant that anybody who was contagious with anything or who were dying, that was the cell they were in. Nobody was allowed into this cell. Not even the guards went in. There was one bed in there and the only time a person gets to lay in that bed is when they're nearly dead. I went to see Ong one day and she was lying on the filthy floor in there. She can't talk, she can't move. When I first got to the jail, I made sure I had vaccinations against every possible thing I could get. So I Said to the boss in that room, I said, look out for the guards. I'm coming in. So I've gone in, I've laid down on the floor with her, and she was just crying. She was grabbing me, telling me to help her. And I knew what she meant. She wanted me to kill her. Ong was laying on the bed and she had grabbed my arm and she wouldn't let it go. And she was so strong, I couldn't get her fingers off me. She's yelling my name over and over. Holly. Holly, help me. Help me, please help me. And I'm telling her, stop yelling. The screws are going to come. I'll get caught here. Stop. And I've uncurled her fingers off me and I've gone out of the cell. That day still haunts me. It's like it's just happened. That was so traumatising for me, my friend asking me to kill her because she's in that much pa. I ended up finding out that she had aids. Now, finding out she had AIDS just broke our hearts because she'd lied to us, obviously thinking that if we knew the truth, maybe we wouldn't want to be a friend or have anything to do with her. That was horrible. And I said to our other friends, I said, look, don't let her know that we know, because she obviously doesn't want us to know. A few days later, our friend came to see me after we got unlocked in the morning, and she said, I've just gone to see Ong. She died last night. Do you want to come and see her? And I said, yes. We stood at the back of the cell where the bars were and you could see in, and Ong was on the bed. I said, I don't care whether we're allowed in or not, I'm going in. So we both went in. She pulled the blanket off Ong's face and. And Ong had died with a smile on her face. She'd gone peacefully. So that afternoon, it was time for everyone to go up to the cells. I stood at the bars and I could see down onto where the pickup truck had come to pick Ong up and take her out. She was in a bag two guys had hurt. One was on one end, the other was on the other end. As they were walking towards the pickup truck, they dropped her. They then picked her up again. Once they got to the truck, they both swung her in the air about three or four times to get some momentum, and then they threw her onto the back of the truck like A sack of potatoes, just like she was nothing. That was the last I saw of Ong. That was probably the most traumatic and heartbreaking thing I dealt with in all the time there. I was called to the embassy room late one afternoon, which is very strange, unless it's bad news. My embassy was there to tell me that my father had died of a heart attack. Obviously, I was extremely upset, started crying. It was made harder by the fact that since I'd been arrested and jailed in Thailand, I had never seen my dad. He didn't want to come and visit me because it would have been too hard for him to leave me, not being able to take me with him. I totally understood that. But that was really hard for me, knowing that I'd never see him again. I didn't only not have Mum, but I didn't have dad either. It took three and a half years for me to be sentenced. I was first sentenced to 31 years, which is a long time, but for me it wasn't as devastating as it could have been. The Australian government had a transfer treaty with Thailand. So what that means is if somebody gets a numbered sentence, which I was so 31 years, I had to do a minimum of four years before I could apply to transfer back to Australia. Now, if you got life or higher, you had to serve a minimum of eight years. So the day of my sentencing, I had no idea that any of my family knew I was being sentenced that day. So when I'm being led up to the courtroom, I can hear people calling my name and I'm looking around and then I spot my younger brother and sister, which was amazing. I was so happy. So when the sentence got handed down, my sister just started uncontrollably crying and I said, don't cry. I said, this is good news. And she said, how is this good news? You just got 31 years. So I explained that after four years, which I was nearly at anyway, I could apply to transfer home and I could be home in six months. So for me, I was happy. Unfortunately, it didn't quite work out the way I thought it would. I made my application. Once I hit four years, months go by, years go by, I'm not getting any results back. And in this time I'm watching many Americans apply to transfer back to America and they're home in six months. So I'm asking my embassy all the time, like, what's going on? And they're like, we don't know. So, you know, after a while I just got sick of asking about it and A few years later, the boss from the embassy came and he said, I've got news about the transfer you've been denied. And I thought he was joking, so I start laughing and I said, yeah, right. And he said, no, Holly, I'm serious. He said, they've knocked you back. And I said, for what reason? And he said that you'd be likely to reoffend if you were brought home. And I said, well, I'm an Australian citizen. Isn't that enough to want to bring me home? And he said, well, obviously not. And I said, well, what do I do now? And he said, honestly, Holly, I can't tell you. He said, this has never happened before to anybody. So, yeah, then it became an issue of waiting many more years until the decision was turned around. And that was only because I had a lot of support from Stephen's parents, friends of mine, and they just were non stop in the fight to get me home. I'd never felt so helpless and hopeless. I was looking around on a daily basis at the women around me and the women who had been there for as long as I had. You'd look into their eyes and there was no light anymore. There was no hope anymore. You were looking at a blank stare. And I was really scared that that was going to become me. I felt like my brain was an elastic band that was just getting wound tighter and tighter as each day went on. I felt that I was very, very close to. To snapping. And that was so scary because I knew that if that happened, I wouldn't be the same anymore. I'd be gone. I wouldn't be me. There were many, many women in the prison that had snapped and were crazy. There were two women that stick out in my mind that they were that far gone, that when they would come out of the cell in the morning, they would be chained, chained like a dog all day to a staircase until it was time to be locked up again at five in the evening. The people that have mental issues are treated like animals. It's very sad. So I'd been in jail in Thailand more than seven years when I was told by the embassy that my application to return home had been granted. I don't think I've been as happy as I was that day ever in my life. Just to know that my time there was coming to an end soon was just overwhelming. It was bittersweet as well, though, because in the time I'd been there, I had formed very firm friendships with many people. So even though I was extremely happy for myself to be Going home, I was extremely sad for the people that I'd be leaving behind. So even though I was happy, I tried to play it down, I guess, because I didn't want to shove my happiness in other people's faces. So the day of my release came. Two prison officers from Western Australia were sent over to escort me home and we got on the plane. Getting on that plane was when I actually felt that I was going home. It actually felt real. The plane landed, I was escorted off and taken to Bandyout women's prison in Western Australia. I was put into a unit called the Crisis Care Unit. Now, this is usually a unit where vulnerable people go. And I was told I'd be put in this unit. So I was able to adjust to a Western diet again. I was so happy. I think I was on, like, a real natural high, you know, I was able to use the telephone, which was unbelievable. You know, I could ring anybody I wanted to. You know, I could watch tv, could watch whatever I wanted. I could have a shower. Just little things like that that people take for granted. You know, when I first got there, they make you have a shower and put Life shampoo in your hair and turning on that hot water. It was just. It was amazing. I hadn't had a normal shower for seven and a half years. The first person I phoned was Stephen, which was just totally unreal to hear his voice after so long and be able to catch up on what had been happening in all the time I'd been away. So, yeah, that first day was just a whirlwind of emotions. The day after I arrived, I was going to have my first visit, which was with Stephen, and he brought my younger sister Amy up. It was a two hour visit. Once the second hour came around, Amy left so Stephen and I could have the last hour together. In that last hour, it was very emotional for me, and I absolutely have no idea why, but I started crying uncontrollably. You know, I was thinking that Stephen would be thinking I was crazy, I'd lost the plot. And I was saying to him, you know, I don't know why I'm crying. I'm fine, I'm okay. And he said, it's all right, Holly. If you didn't have a cry, I'd be worried. You know, you're safe now, it's okay. And that was the first time in a lot of years that I was actually able to release everything that had been suppressed down into my body and my mind. A couple of weeks later, I went back into mainstream where I knew quite a lot of people from the first time I was in jail, when I was 20, a lot of the same people were still there. You know, these people were heroin addicts as well. You know, they'd do their sentence, get out, start using heroin again, reoffend, and they just stayed on this merry go round for years and years and years, which was really, really sad. I began to realise that I was lucky that I was able to be strong enough in my resolve to stop using heroin and never go back. But for a lot of these women, it wasn't as easy as that. You know, I was very fortunate in the fact that I had very good support, you know, I had good family, I had very good friends. But for a lot of these other women, they don't have anybody. So when they're released, they're going out into a world where they have no money, they might have no housing. That was a really hard thing to see, you know, because, you know, most of these women, they're good people. When I was transferred back to Bandy Up Women's prison in Western Australia, I knew what I wanted to do with my life, and that was to help people who had been in a similar situation to what I had been or they knew people in that position. So what I did was I used the education system to my advantage. I studied community services, I got a diploma in youth work, I did computer skills so that when I was released, I would have the skills to be able to go and do what I'm passionate about, and that is about helping people. You know, I went to rehab many times when I was younger and I couldn't relate to anybody there because there were people who'd been to university and they'd read books about addiction. They really couldn't relate to me. So I knew that having lived experience is such a bonus in wanting to do the sort of work I want to do, because people can relate to me and I can relate to them. I was released in December 2012, which was, again, one of the most happiest days of my life. There was TV cameras across the road from the prison, so I was on the news all day and all night. At that time, Stephen was in prison and he was due out a week after I got out, which was great. I actually thought it would be hard for me to reintegrate back into society, but it actually wasn't. I actually walked back into life like I'd never left. A week later, Stephen got out and our lives started again together. It was like we'd Never been away from each other, but it was always like that with us. So, yeah, it was good to be back together again and, you know, getting on with life. He also had stopped using heroin many years before when he was arrested in Melbourne. So we were both getting out to knowing each other on this new level of being totally clean. Life went on, you know, pretty much as it normally would. Then about four years later, after being out, I woke up one morning and just started crying uncontrollably. I was very shocked. I didn't know what was going on. It freaked me out. I didn't want to go out of the house, I didn't want to talk to people on the phone, I didn't want to see anybody. You know, I'd be driving down the street and just start crying my eyes out and not knowing why. I started thinking about things I hadn't thought of in years. You know, I didn't really have a normal childhood. I had to grow up very fast. I was a 14 year old kid living as a 20 year old, you know, sort of like the mother, you know, looking after my younger brother and sister, getting them up for school, making lunch. A lot of stuff just started coming up that I'd been suppressing, coming out in ways that were very destructive. I'd have feelings of wanting to get into my car, drive as fast as I could into a brick wall. I just wanted to hurt myself. Thankfully, I didn't act on those urges, but they were there and they were really, really real. It was a scary thing to be going through because I'd never experienced anything like that before and I actually thought I was losing my mind. I realised that I needed to go and see a doctor. So I went and saw my childhood doctor and he said, you've got depression and you've got severe post traumatic stress. He said, I'm not surprised if this is happening to you. And until he actually said that to me, I had never even considered that that could be the reason why I was going through all this stuff. So he put me on medication. It sort of levelled me out. The medication that I'm on is helping me and I'll need to be on this for the rest of my life, which I'm fine with. The medication was one way of doing it, but I knew that I needed more. So I researched some counsellors, found one that I thought would be a good fit, met with her and saw her for quite a long time, which was very beneficial to me. I realised I needed to talk about pretty much everything you know, my life, you know, the trauma I'd suffered as a kid, the abuse I'd seen at the hands of my father, with my mum, you know, my mother trying to kill herself on many occasions. You know, I was just living in such a dysfunctional family and a dysfunctional world. Looking back later, when I'm clean and being able to reflect with a straight mind, I wasn't okay. And the life I'd been living wasn't okay. It was very abnormal and very soul destroying. But at the time I didn't feel any of that, I didn't think any of that. And I guess I didn't know how to process any of these things. So I was masking, I just put it down as deep as I could into myself. So that was another reason, I suppose, why I used heroin all the time I'd been in prison. You're in survival mode all the time. There's never a time to sort of calm yourself down and be able to look back on things. So, yeah, that was a really huge thing for me, being able to do that and get the really intense counselling that I needed to be able to get past all that stuff. Pretty much my whole life, the way I've lived and been brought up, I haven't been able to be an open book. I've really had to keep everything to myself and not talk about things to anybody. Growing up like that was normal for me, but you know, later on in life when I reflect and look back, that is such an unhealthy way to live. Having to live like that all my life and then suddenly come to a place where I want to talk about my stuff, I want to unpack my baggage. That was a huge relief for me, being able to get it out. And even to this day, I don't keep things to myself. I do talk about my stuff because I realise it's healthy to talk about your stuff. That's how you resolve things. So a few years ago, my older brother Craig, who had been in and out of jail due to heroin addiction since he was 18, he got out of prison one day about four years ago, he overdosed the same night on heroin and he died. I was his next of kin, so the police came to tell me what had happened. So as well as losing a mother to heroin addiction, I lost my older brother. And about two years ago, I was informed by the police again because I was next of kin, that my younger sister Amy had died of a drug overdose as well. So, you know, my life hasn't just been about my addiction, my imprisonment. My story hasn't sort of ended when I've got out of jail and moved on with my life. I've been out for quite a few years now and life's just opened up so much for me. I really have a strong sense now of who I am, what I want for my future and what I can offer people. I've done talks at rehab centres. The feedback I get is just so rewarding. I'm giving people the motivation to realise that, look, if I can do it, you can too. You know, I say to them, I used to be you and look at me now. I don't think you can get any better than somebody who's had lived experience to tell their story and be able to help others. This is what I want to do with my life now, nothing else. I just want to really motivate people to change their life. Foreign.
- [63:56]
Narrator/Host
Featured Holly Dean Johns she has spent a total of 17 years in prisons in Australia and Thailand for drug crimes. She's been drug free since 2001. Holly is a qualified youth worker and counselor who has suffered from severe ptsd. She shares her story to help others overcome addictions and trauma. You can reach out to Holly or find out more about her and her work in the show. Notes.
- [64:27]
Whit Misseldine
From Wondery. You're listening to this Is Actually Happening. If you love what we do, please rate and review the show. You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music or on the Wondery app to listen ad free and get access to the entire back cast catalog. In the episode notes you'll find some links and offers from our sponsors. By supporting them, you help us bring you our show for free. I'm your host Whit Misseldine. Today's episode was co produced by me, Andrew Waits and Aviva Lipkowicz with special thanks to the this Is Actually Happening team including Ellen Westburn. The intro music features the song Illibi by Tipper. You can join the community on the this Is Actually Happening discussion group on Facebook or follow Follow us on Instagram Actually Happening on the show's website thisisactually happening.com you can find out more about the podcast. Contact us with any questions, submit your own story or visit the store where you can find this Is Actually Happening designs on stickers, T shirts, wall art, hoodies and more. That's thisisactually happening.com and finally, if you'd like to become an ongoing supporter of what we do, go to patreon.com happening even 2 to $5 a month goes a long way to support our vision. Thank you for listening.
- [65:46]
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