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UK woman Rachel Dougall describes year-long ordeal in Bali's Kerobokan Prison

Rachel Dougall

Rachel Dougall of Britain waits inside a holding cell before her sentencing at a court in Denpasar on Indonesia's resort island of Bali on December 20, 2012. Source: AFP

A BRITISH woman has described her ordeal in Bali's notorious Kerobokan Prison, the same jail where convicted Australian drug smuggler Schapelle Corby and the Bali Nine are serving time.

Rachel Dougall said she suffered savaged beatings within days of beginning a year-long sentence for drug-related crimes.

Dougall, 40, told the Daily Mail that she had a nervous breakdown after being locked up with drug addicts, HIV-positive inmates and sexually aggressive lesbians in a tiny cell at the prison, nicknamed "Hotel K".

"Most of the women were on drugs virtually every day," she said. "If you had money the guards would get you anything you wanted. Inmates in the men’s prison next door even paid prostitutes for overnight visits."

The women’s unit of Kerobokan where Dougall was locked up also houses Corby, who was sentenced to 20 years in 2005 after she was caught trying to smuggle 4.2 kilos of cannabis into the country in her boogie-board bag. She has always maintained her innocence.

According to friends and family, Corby’s experience in the prison has led to her developing a mental illness. Since a judge ruled her sentence cut to 15 years, leading to the possibility of parole, she is reportedly doing much better. She is due to get out 2017.

Also held there are the so-called Bali Nine. The eight men and one woman were convicted in 2005 of attempting to traffic 8.3 kilos of heroin from Bali to Australia. Two of them, Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan, still face death sentences and have appealed to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono for clemency.

Corby in cell

Schapelle Corby in her cell at Kerobokan Prison, Bali.

Dougall was arrested after fellow Briton Lindsay Sandiford was caught at Bali’s airport on flight from Bangkok carrying a suitcase full of cocaine on May 19 last year.

The 57-year-old grandmother’s case made headlines after the judge ordered she be put to death via a firing squad.

Following her arrest Sandiford told police she had been forced to move the drugs after threats were made to her family by a drugs cartel. She implicated Dougall and two other men, one of them Dougall’s partner, 44-year-old Julian Ponder, as her accomplices.

The other three were handed lesser sentences. Sandiford’s case has led to widespread outrage about Indonesia’s harsh sentencing regime.

However, Dougall claimed to the Mail that Sandiford was "pure evil" and "not the innocent she would like people to believe".

"Everyone thinks she's this poor naive granny, but she's not. She doesn't deserve any sympathy; I've been told by many people in Bali and Britain that she's been bringing drugs into the country for 25 years."


Kerobokan jail in Bali. Picture: Lukman