THE CORBY CASE

And I suspect some of you will be bored if I go back to the Schapelle Corby case. But I just hope the 92% of Channel Nine viewers who confidently voted her innocent last week took the time to read the Weekend Australian on Saturday.

The headline said:

Meet the Corbys: A Dad with a drug record, a brother in jail, and a former bankrupt who wants fifty per cent of the action. Hello!!!

I have been researching this case and the “innocence” of Schapelle Corby for a long time. I don’t offer an opinion that I think a person is guilty lightly.

And how about the gall of this woman? And, despite what the newsreaders and newspapers say, she is not a girl. She is a 27-year-old adult, worldly, attractive woman.

She was working as a hostess in a Japanese nightclub when she was only 19.

She has made doe-eyed newspaper appeals to Prime Minister Howard to help her. And some newspapers put that on Page One. The latest is a public appeal to the President of Indonesia. The headline “ Dear President, you hold the key.” The plea: “Pardon me for what I did not do”

How could he pardon her when she hasn’t even been convicted yet?

According to the weekend newspaper reports Schapelle cries herself to sleep at night “wondering why this happened to me?”

Maybe, with less tears, she should talk to her father and her brother to get answers to that question. I have received thousands of e-mails – as I said on Friday – attacking me for my opinion about her guilt or innocence. I have also started receiving e-mails from people who say they are not that gullible. And the expose in the Weekend Australian may change some views. Especially about the Indonesian courts which have taken a kicking from racists in Australia who thought their legal system was fine when they convicted the Bali bombers but inadequate and corrupt when it comes to Corby.

The newspaper investigation said: “The evidence stacked against Schapelle Corby is enough to put her on trial anywhere in the world, according to experts, and will almost certainly keep her behind bars in Bali”.

Letters to the Prime Minister. A letter to the Indonesian president. I stay with my premise. This case is only getting the extraordinary publicity here in newspapers and on television is because she is young, white, pretty, Australian and has big boobs. It has nothing to do with her guilt or innocence.

And the evidence against her is pressing.

Monday, May 23, 2005

©Copyright Derryn Hinch 2005