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Speaker 1: Mumma and Mea are bringing you over one hundred hours
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Speaker 1: and most riveting stories from No Filter. This is the
Speaker 1: last special episode of our hot pod summer summer programming
Speaker 1: that I'm going to be bringing you here at No Filter.
Speaker 1: And it's an incredible story, as so many of our
Speaker 1: stories have been, all of them actually over summer. And
Speaker 1: it's an interview with a woman called Mary Perschel who
Speaker 1: has had to grapple with one of the hardest questions
Speaker 1: that life could ever ask you, what do you do
Speaker 1: when your child kills someone? This story is unforgettable. Have
Speaker 1: a listen.
Speaker 2: I got a call from a policeman, which wasn't unusual
Speaker 2: but he said, are you close with your daughter? And
Speaker 2: I said yes, and he said she's been involved in
Speaker 2: the slot with the elderly man there and he's passed away.
Speaker 1: From the mom and mea podcast network. I'm mea Friedman
Speaker 1: and you're listening to no filter coundid conversations that count.
Speaker 1: Mary Poschell picked up the phone one ordinary day in
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen, and she had no idea that her life
Speaker 1: would never be the same after that phone call. It
Speaker 1: was a sunny afternoon in Melbourne when she answered the
Speaker 1: family landline, and on the other end was a police
Speaker 1: officer who informed Mary that her youngest daughter, Anna, who
Speaker 1: was twenty eight at the time, was in custody for
Speaker 1: killing the man that she lived with. You might remember
Speaker 1: the headlines around that time and you might have seen
Speaker 1: pregnant woman killed man for Cigarett Thretes. But for Mary,
Speaker 1: her husband John, and Anna's oldest sister Katie, that pregnant
Speaker 1: woman was their sister and their daughter who they'd spent
Speaker 1: their lives trying desperately to protect. Mary had spent decades
Speaker 1: since Anna was a little girl trying to shield her
Speaker 1: from her demons. At first, it was anarexia and then
Speaker 1: when she recovered from that, it spiraled into other mental
Speaker 1: health issues and later drug use, including marijuana and for
Speaker 1: a time ice. But in one momentary act of rage,
Speaker 1: Anna changed the course of many lives and ended one
Speaker 1: innocent one. It was a shocking and brutal crime. Anna's
Speaker 1: mother is finally ready to talk about what happened in
Speaker 1: the years leading up to her daughter committing murder, and
Speaker 1: also what has happened quite extraordinarily in the years since.
Speaker 1: Here's part one of my interview with Mary Prochelle, and
Speaker 1: next week I'll be speaking to Anna's sister, Katie, who
Speaker 1: has her own incredible story to tell about the surprising
Speaker 1: way Anna's crime changed the course of her life too.
Speaker 1: Here's Mary, tell me about your Gorgeous Girl when she
Speaker 1: was born and when she was little, because she was
Speaker 1: your second daughter. How old was Katie when I was born?
Speaker 2: She was three years and one day old. Because this
Speaker 2: is one of our plans that actually worked out. We
Speaker 2: decided three years would be a good gap, and it
Speaker 2: was an absolutely gorgeous baby. I mean, that's partly why
Speaker 2: I named the book Gorgeous Girl. She was a beautiful
Speaker 2: little kid, and as a little child, she was so enchanting.
Speaker 2: She just lived in her imagination and she loved little
Speaker 2: critters like bugs and worms, and she would spend a
Speaker 2: lot of time out in our backyard or wherever she
Speaker 2: was picking up these little creatures which most of us
Speaker 2: wouldn't even see, but she'd just find them and she'd
Speaker 2: make up these complicated stories. But when she got to
Speaker 2: kinder and she was just doing the same thing to kids,
Speaker 2: they thought that was really weird, and she began to
Speaker 2: not that it really affected her when she was four
Speaker 2: years old, But looking back, I can see that even
Speaker 2: at that time, she was already being set apart from
Speaker 2: the group, and when she got to school it became
Speaker 2: really apparent, and that's when the real pain started. She
Speaker 2: just was so isolated from she couldn't make friends.
Speaker 1: Why do you think she couldn't make friends.
Speaker 2: I think she just didn't not have a conversation, didn't
Speaker 2: know how to relate to other people.
Speaker 1: Was she close to her sister? Was she play with Katie?
Speaker 2: Yeah, but Katie was so different from her. Katie always
Speaker 2: wanted to grow up really fast, be independent, totally into reality.
Speaker 2: Katie never went through that phase where our kids can't
Speaker 2: distinguish reality from fantasy, whereas Anna just stayed in it.
Speaker 2: So it seemed like they were using us apart rather
Speaker 2: than only three years. And I think very quickly Katie
Speaker 2: took on a protective role because we all wanted to
Speaker 2: protect Anna from pain.
Speaker 1: How did she feel about the fact that she couldn't
Speaker 1: make friends?
Speaker 2: She hated it. That was the heartbreaking part. Like if
Speaker 2: she hadn't cared, that wouldn't have been as bad, but she,
Speaker 2: you know, she was just she felt horrible, especially in
Speaker 2: those I don't know if it's I doubt if it
Speaker 2: still happens these days, But in those days, girls used
Speaker 2: to bring actual paper invitations to their birthday parties, and
Speaker 2: she would never get one. You know, she'd come home
Speaker 2: and she'd be heartbroken, and she didn't understand why. She
Speaker 2: didn't understand why people didn't want to play with her
Speaker 2: at lunch or recess.
Speaker 1: Sometimes these things are really easy to see in hindsight.
Speaker 2: That's right, you look back.
Speaker 1: Were there certain things looking back now that were red
Speaker 1: flags to you?
Speaker 2: Oh? Definitely. It's so complicated by you know, the way.
Speaker 2: I was raised as a very religious person, so we
Speaker 2: in my family we believed that people went on living
Speaker 2: after they were that they had another life afterwards. That
Speaker 2: was very much part of my life growing up because
Speaker 2: my mother was super religious. So when Anna started hearing
Speaker 2: from people from the other side quote, it didn't seem
Speaker 2: like such a big deal to me. But now looking back,
Speaker 2: I think that was probably the early manifestation of auditory hallucinations.
Speaker 2: So she heard voices, I think so, yeah, looking back,
Speaker 2: or she could have. But how old was she then
Speaker 2: when she first started talking about five six seven? Very young?
Speaker 1: And she said to you that they were ghosts. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And did they scare her or comfort her?
Speaker 2: Oh? They scared her a lot, especially as she got older,
Speaker 2: and as most kids begin to grow out of that phase.
Speaker 2: I think if being scared of monsters under the bed,
Speaker 2: they just got worse for her. And you know, she
Speaker 2: would say that there's something whispering in my ear. She
Speaker 2: didn't think of it as being inside her head, so
Speaker 2: she just said, you know, there's often she would say,
Speaker 2: I hear whispering, you know that, And she was really scared.
Speaker 2: Like at the age of twelve and thirteen, she'd say,
Speaker 2: you're so lucky, mom, because you've got dad to sleep
Speaker 2: with and I don't have anyone. Because at that stage,
Speaker 2: Katie had moved out and had her own room and
Speaker 2: after that and it became really really scared of the dark,
Speaker 2: you know, staying alone in her bed. Yeah, I think
Speaker 2: we should have taken more notice of that, but we
Speaker 2: didn't know it at the time.
Speaker 1: As a mother, I think one of the hardest things
Speaker 1: is to see your child suffering. And they say, you're
Speaker 1: only ever as happy as your least happy child. So
Speaker 1: how would you comfort her when she would cry to
Speaker 1: you about not having friends, or being left out at
Speaker 1: school or being scared.
Speaker 2: Just try to make her happy at home. I bought
Speaker 2: her a lot of pets because that made her happy momentarily,
Speaker 2: and actually, looking back now, I also wonder if that
Speaker 2: set her up for addiction, because that kind of instant gratification,
Speaker 2: Like I didn't know what well. We gave her heaps
Speaker 2: of advice like try this, try that with kids, you know,
Speaker 2: smile or go up to them, you know, and ask
Speaker 2: about them. Don't always talk about yourself and what's in
Speaker 2: your head, you know. So we gave her friendship advice
Speaker 2: and we even took her to a course for anxious children.
Speaker 2: But basically, I just like you said, it's so hard
Speaker 2: to see your child in pain, and I just wanted
Speaker 2: to make her feel better, so I just she'd be
Speaker 2: so upset and I'd be sitting beside her bed, which
Speaker 2: I did every night to try and make her feel better.
Speaker 2: After Katie wasn't in there, I'd say, how about we
Speaker 2: go and get another budget at the weekend, or some
Speaker 2: more fish or some more lizards what she loved, and
Speaker 2: she'd be like okay, and that would cheer her up.
Speaker 2: But that wasn't that was such a short term solution.
Speaker 1: Now, sometimes you would make her brownies in the middle
Speaker 1: of the night to do that. I get that it's
Speaker 1: very confronting seeing your child in pain, and you'll do
Speaker 1: anything to try to take that pain away. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I used to say, you know, the heartbreak for them
Speaker 2: is worse than for yourself. And I felt like my
Speaker 2: heart broke for her so many times. It was like
Speaker 2: felt like scar to you. In the end.
Speaker 1: She developed anarex here as a teenager. Yeah, and at
Speaker 1: first you didn't really really lies, did.
Speaker 2: You, no, Because I had this idea that anorexia happened
Speaker 2: with girls we thought in those days who were overweight
Speaker 2: and wanted to change their body image. But she was skinny,
Speaker 2: so I didn't sort of connect that. When she started
Speaker 2: eating less, she said it was because she didn't want
Speaker 2: to get pimples, and she thought eliminating fat from her
Speaker 2: diet would stop her getting a bad complexion. And I
Speaker 2: thought so too at the time, because I've been told
Speaker 2: that as a teenager, if you eat fat, you get pimples.
Speaker 2: And I think so many other things were going on,
Speaker 2: you know, that was the time when she and I
Speaker 2: went back to my when my mother was dying, and
Speaker 2: I think I just didn't pay enough attention to what
Speaker 2: she was eating and until suddenly she was eating practically nothing.
Speaker 1: And what was the what was the tipping point when
Speaker 1: you realized, hang on, she's really sick.
Speaker 2: Well partly because Katie said to me, have you seen
Speaker 2: Anna naked? And I'm like, no, she doesn't let me
Speaker 2: see her naked for a long time. And Katie said,
Speaker 2: she just up and to see her come out of
Speaker 2: the shower, and she said she looks like a skeleton
Speaker 2: mum because she wore a lot of layers. So you
Speaker 2: didn't realize. And then I really looked at her and
Speaker 2: I thought, oh, yeah, she is very skinny. I was
Speaker 2: grieving for my mother at that time. Not to make excuses,
Speaker 2: but you know, there's lots of stuff going on. And
Speaker 2: it wasn't until I really looked at her because she
Speaker 2: was still doing stuff. She was still doing chlarate and
Speaker 2: winning trophies.
Speaker 1: So she was admitted to hospital and connected to a
Speaker 1: heart monitor because her weight was so low. What were
Speaker 1: they worried about?
Speaker 2: It was at night that she was connected. Her heart
Speaker 2: could stop because she was so compromised.
Speaker 1: So deeply malmourished. Yeah, So she emerged from hospital, she
Speaker 1: recovered from anorexia, and she went to UNI and there
Speaker 1: was almost a golden period in Anna's life. Let's tell
Speaker 1: me about those years.
Speaker 2: Well, she went to a senior secondary college in your
Speaker 2: life and twelve and she actually made some friends, which
Speaker 2: is like wonderful and then your heart, Yeah, yeah, I did.
Speaker 2: And then she went to UNI to study psychology at
Speaker 2: Swinburne University, and she met this wonderful man, a boy.
Speaker 2: He was a couple of years older than her. He
Speaker 2: wasn't at UNI, but she met him through a pool
Speaker 2: party and they were so in love and that was
Speaker 2: just great. So she moved in with and I'm allowed
Speaker 2: to say this because I've discussed it with the young
Speaker 2: man and his mother. She moved in with them, and
Speaker 2: his mother has this really good business, and yeah, that
Speaker 2: was a great time. But she lived apart from us
Speaker 2: for two or three years, so we didn't really realize
Speaker 2: totally what was going on with her life.
Speaker 1: There's a beautiful photo of her and Andrew in the book,
Speaker 1: and you write that it pains you almost to look
Speaker 1: at it because you can see the potential of which
Speaker 1: way her life could have gone.
Speaker 2: That's right. What were your hopes for her, Duran, Well,
Speaker 2: she I hope she'd get a career and she could
Speaker 2: have actually worked for Andrew's mother's company and been a
Speaker 2: part of that whole family enterprise, which is in medical technology,
Speaker 2: a growth industry. Apart from that, we just hoped she'd
Speaker 2: get a career in psychology. She'd always dreamt of being
Speaker 2: a forensic psychologist. And she's so intelligent and so articulate.
Speaker 2: Her vocabulary is amazing. She only has to hear a
Speaker 2: word and she remembers it. She's got the best vocabulary
Speaker 2: of anyone I know, apart from her father. So we
Speaker 2: thought she would grow up in a step by step
Speaker 2: and and she would become successful. But it didn't happen.
Speaker 1: There were a few signs around that time when she
Speaker 1: was living with Andrew and his mum that perhaps she
Speaker 1: was struggling with what it meant to be an adult.
Speaker 1: What were some of the things that sort of were
Speaker 1: in the back of your mind as concerns.
Speaker 2: Well, she couldn't learn to drive, for one thing, that
Speaker 2: was looking back. I think that's a real insight into
Speaker 2: her mind.
Speaker 1: When you say she couldn't she refused to, or she
Speaker 1: was didn't understand.
Speaker 2: She could operate the car perfectly, and it was a manual,
Speaker 2: she had no trouble with that, But say she would
Speaker 2: come to an intersection. She had such a poor sense
Speaker 2: of where she was in physical skills, Yeah, always, And
Speaker 2: when she tried to drive, she couldn't remember what lane
Speaker 2: to go in if she turned in an intersection. Well,
Speaker 2: she couldn't. She couldn't seem to remember to look at
Speaker 2: the speeder at the same time that she was driving.
Speaker 2: As long as you've got someone, as long as she
Speaker 2: had one of us sitting beside her to help her,
Speaker 2: like watch your speeder, look and watched for that car,
Speaker 2: she never got to the point where we didn't need
Speaker 2: to do that.
Speaker 1: So at home she was kind of buffeted from the
Speaker 1: world by you and to Andrew Andrew's house, and he
Speaker 1: and his mom sort of took care of her, buffeted
Speaker 1: her from the world, and she was you know, she
Speaker 1: did well at UNI, and she completed her degree, which
Speaker 1: is no small thing, and the boundaries of that.
Speaker 2: Clearly suited her exactly.
Speaker 1: And then what happened after UNI.
Speaker 2: Well, Andrew bought them a house, which was great. You know,
Speaker 2: he got a better car. It was all sort of
Speaker 2: progressing in the way that young people's lives do. And
Speaker 2: Andrew loved her so much he wanted her to see
Speaker 2: her succeed, so they got this little house. But once
Speaker 2: she was there, as he said, without the comforts and
Speaker 2: support of Andrew's mother, she just couldn't cope. And I
Speaker 2: didn't realize that she was beginning to drink during the day.
Speaker 2: And we expected her to be applying for jobs or
Speaker 2: looking for courses to progress through the process of becoming
Speaker 2: a forensic psychologist, and she just looked at cat videos.
Speaker 2: So Andrew would be calling her from work saying, you know,
Speaker 2: what are you doing. Yeah, and then she met a
Speaker 2: friend who introduced her to weed. He said, you're drinking
Speaker 2: too much. You'd be better off if you smoked upe.
Speaker 2: So she started that and then she left Andrew's place
Speaker 2: at the end of that year and came back to us,
Speaker 2: and that's when the real generation began.
Speaker 1: Was she being treated for mental health issues during this time, Like,
Speaker 1: after she'd recovered from anorexia, was she still hearing voices?
Speaker 1: Was she on any medication? Had you received any sort
Speaker 1: of diagnosis.
Speaker 2: No, we didn't have a diagnosis beyond anorexia. She wasn't
Speaker 2: outpatient at the Children's until she was eighteen, so she
Speaker 2: was being treated for both. I mean, she was being
Speaker 2: monitored supervised for both her physical health and she had
Speaker 2: a counselor every week. After that. She did take herself
Speaker 2: to a psychiatrist during university, which I didn't know that person,
Speaker 2: but she I thought that was great that she did that,
Speaker 2: and he prescribed as serahqual. She seemed to be able
Speaker 2: to fill those scripts whenever she wanted to, So she
Speaker 2: had a lot of serahkal, Which is.
Speaker 1: What were the symptoms that she was treating, Like, was
Speaker 1: it depression, was it anxiety?
Speaker 2: Was it depression? Anxiety? She didn't talk about voices during
Speaker 2: that time, but once she started smoking up and then
Speaker 2: she went on to synthetic weed.
Speaker 1: Tell me about synthetic weed, because you talk about that
Speaker 1: and then quite you know, in a dark human way,
Speaker 1: how you became involved in buying that for her. Tell
Speaker 1: me about synthetic weed, because I've never heard of it before.
Speaker 2: It's called synthetic weed in the States. They have a
Speaker 2: lot of different names for it, like skunk and K two.
Speaker 2: But it's not actually marijuana. It's a cannabinoid, yeah, sprayed
Speaker 2: onto dried herbs. So just like chemicals. Yeah, it's chemicals
Speaker 2: on dried herbs and.
Speaker 1: To mimic the effect of marijuana.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it's worse. It's quite damaging. They can be
Speaker 2: damaging chemicals. From what I understand, most of them come
Speaker 2: from China, and if the government outlaws one of the chemicals,
Speaker 2: they just changed the composition slightly so that it's it's
Speaker 2: a little bit different. But it's not the same as marijuana,
Speaker 2: even though they call it that. They call it synthetic
Speaker 2: marijuana or synthetic cannabis. People literally, I believe, literally don't
Speaker 2: know what's in it, and it can be. Deaths have
Speaker 2: occurred from it because it can be they spray it
Speaker 2: and like bits of can be more powerful than others,
Speaker 2: and she smoked a lot of that, and she just
Speaker 2: got worse and worse. I can see now during that
Speaker 2: time she became really paranoid. The voices really started to
Speaker 2: scream in her head then.
Speaker 1: Which is something that can happen from particularly around marijuana
Speaker 1: or cannabis or let alone synthetic weed. And you say
Speaker 1: that you're writing the book, that you think that's really
Speaker 1: when her brain sort of broke open, and I think
Speaker 1: the real damage.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think she hadn't always had a propensity for
Speaker 2: mental illness, but I think it was definitely exacerbated by
Speaker 2: the use of drugs, especially synthetic weed, and then later
Speaker 2: when she dabbled with ice. But she was never a
Speaker 2: nice addict, she did use it and it was very damaging.
Speaker 1: What was her behavior like during during these years, I
Speaker 1: mean you must have been terribly worried. You write about
Speaker 1: how she started to ride the trains and meet people.
Speaker 1: How was that playing out? Oh?
Speaker 2: It was terrible. I mean that's when a lot of
Speaker 2: I had to use a lot of my own mental
Speaker 2: health techniques to learn tools. I did go to a
Speaker 2: psychologist from my own mental health and she helped me
Speaker 2: with some tools, Like I said, how can I stop
Speaker 2: and worrying about Anna constantly? You know, it's just taking
Speaker 2: up every minute of yeah, oh, my brain. And she
Speaker 2: said she gave me a good technique. She used to
Speaker 2: just try and limit the worry to one hour a day.
Speaker 2: She'd say, you know, when your brain just goes there,
Speaker 2: just say, look, just choose an hour, which I chose
Speaker 2: three to four in the afternoon because that's my least
Speaker 2: favorite time of the day.
Speaker 1: And what would you do during that hour? You just
Speaker 1: sit down and go okay. Well.
Speaker 2: It just was a good technique because sometimes I forgot
Speaker 2: to worry. And also I had work that I loved.
Speaker 2: I tootored children from grade three up to VCU level.
Speaker 2: So that was a big mental health technique for me
Speaker 2: because I did everything I could possibly think of to
Speaker 2: help Anna. And beyond that, I thought, well, if I
Speaker 2: can't help her, at least I can help the next
Speaker 2: generation in some way.
Speaker 1: During those years, it's like you went slowly from worrying
Speaker 1: about well, what she going to do next, and how
Speaker 1: she going to get a license and how she going
Speaker 1: to get a job, to worrying about her physical safety
Speaker 1: and that she would die how did you get to
Speaker 1: that point?
Speaker 2: Because she well, for one thing, she said she wanted
Speaker 2: to die, A part of her wanted to die. She's
Speaker 2: in early twenties then, so that was really I mean,
Speaker 2: that's a horrible thing for a mother to hear. And
Speaker 2: also she was just so reckless with her life. She
Speaker 2: she looked young, people thought she was a teenager. So
Speaker 2: she get dressed up in these little girly clothes from
Speaker 2: Kmart they barely covered her bottom and got on the
Speaker 2: train in order to meet men because she wanted That
Speaker 2: was her method of getting drugs, basically, and attention. She
Speaker 2: loved attention. So she moves up to some guy on
Speaker 2: the train and he would tell her how beautiful she was,
Speaker 2: and why don't you come home with me and we'll
Speaker 2: have some drugs. And so that's what she would do.
Speaker 2: And we didn't know where she was, and she wouldn't
Speaker 2: answer her phones. We just thought it was a matter
Speaker 2: of time before something happened to her. And also being
Speaker 2: suicidal or having what that I guess they call it
Speaker 2: suicidal ideation. My husband John, who's a very devoted father,
Speaker 2: he'd and very real a man of total realism. He
Speaker 2: thought she was going to jump in front of a train.
Speaker 2: That's what he thought. So you know, we're just worried
Speaker 2: about her lifestyle. And also she would become unconscious a lot,
Speaker 2: which I suppose is really technically oding. You couldn't wake
Speaker 2: her up.
Speaker 1: I love how you just drop that into conversation. You know,
Speaker 1: she just became unconscious a lot. How did she become
Speaker 1: unconscious because she would drink herself into.
Speaker 2: She would take a cocktail of alcohol, synthetic weed and
Speaker 2: the sarahqual which I mentioned before, which is an edgio
Speaker 2: psychotic but also a very powerful sedative. She would take
Speaker 2: that and then she would just pass out, pass out. Literally,
Speaker 2: you couldn't wake her up.
Speaker 1: There's pictures with this odd picture, a heartbreaking picture in
Speaker 1: the book where you say, you know, for months and months,
Speaker 1: I think maybe even years, she would just pass out
Speaker 1: sporadically on the couch and she'd have the cat lying
Speaker 1: on top of her. At least then I imagine she
Speaker 1: was safe under your roof and you could see her. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it must have been more worrying when you didn't know
Speaker 1: where she.
Speaker 2: Was well exactly because she was off with some guy
Speaker 2: and she was unconscious in his bed. You know, she
Speaker 2: could she could easily well, I thought she could easily
Speaker 2: just stop breathing because I did ask a doctor. I said,
Speaker 2: without combination of sarah qul and alcohol and weed, could
Speaker 2: could that kill her? And the doctor said yes, it
Speaker 2: couldn't repress respiration to the point where she'll stop breathing.
Speaker 2: And you literally couldn't wake her up. You know, you'd
Speaker 2: shake her and yell in her ear, she wouldn't wake up.
Speaker 2: So I don't know if that qualifies as an od
Speaker 2: but she was definitely unconscious.
Speaker 1: Now, the sort of the situation you describe, it sounds
Speaker 1: like she was sort of very passive, but then things
Speaker 1: took a turn. Tell me about the time in the
Speaker 1: kitchen where she grabbed a knife and you saw her
Speaker 1: violence for the first time.
Speaker 2: Well, it was when her dad confronted her. By that time,
Speaker 2: she was She didn't leave the house because she decided
Speaker 2: that she wanted to get better. So she made this
Speaker 2: packed with herself that she was going to give up weed,
Speaker 2: synthetic weed. So she did. She gave up those. But
Speaker 2: then to compensate to keep the demons from screaming in
Speaker 2: her head, she had to drink so much alcohol that
Speaker 2: it was ridiculous and one day her dad just said,
Speaker 2: you're not drinking anymore, and he took the beer and
Speaker 2: threw it out or something, and she just got so
Speaker 2: angry with him that she grabbed the butcher knife. Thank goodness,
Speaker 2: she was wearing a big puffy jacket and he was
Speaker 2: right beside her. She just picked it up and aimed
Speaker 2: at chardia chest and he grabbed it and she was
Speaker 2: like trying to to use it to stab herself, and
Speaker 2: he was like holding it back and it took all
Speaker 2: his strength because once she gets angry, she's really strong,
Speaker 2: this little, tiny, skinny girl. And yeah, I didn't know
Speaker 2: what to do, and they were and he wouldn't go
Speaker 2: and she wouldn't so they she was screaming her head off.
Speaker 2: So I rang her doctor, who I really trusted, and
Speaker 2: I said, doctor deb what should I do? Listen to
Speaker 2: this and she goes, you got to call the police, Mary,
Speaker 2: and I said, but I don't want to because there's
Speaker 2: been too many incidences of the police. You know what
Speaker 2: can happen if you call it the police for a
Speaker 2: mentally ill person. But in the end I did.
Speaker 1: Of police shooting to lead help people.
Speaker 2: But in the end they came in It was great.
Speaker 1: In the end. Tell me about the policewoman that came, Well,
Speaker 1: there was a policeman and a police woman, but they
Speaker 1: came in and by that time, as soon as Anna
Speaker 1: heard the car, she immediately settled down and became a
Speaker 1: good little girl.
Speaker 2: But the police said, you know, you did exactly the
Speaker 2: right thing.
Speaker 1: Mary.
Speaker 2: You should have called you needed to call us. And
Speaker 2: she said she had a background of psychology, the police woman,
Speaker 2: and she said, this girl needs to be in a
Speaker 2: hospital long term, and then she needs to rehab. And
Speaker 2: she said, well, we'll take her to the Northern Hospital
Speaker 2: and they'll put her in the psych ward and she
Speaker 2: can be under the adult mental health protection And I
Speaker 2: remember still remembered her. She said to me, if she's
Speaker 2: medicated well, gets into good nutrition and sleep, she can
Speaker 2: have a lot of good days. And that just sounded
Speaker 2: like magic to my ears.
Speaker 1: Oh really, because I just thought, oh, my goodness, good days.
Speaker 1: How low is the bar? That's how low it had
Speaker 1: got to right where good a few good days sounded
Speaker 1: like yeah, Nirvana to you.
Speaker 2: So we took her in our car with the police
Speaker 2: behind us, and I was sitting in the back seat
Speaker 2: with her and the police woman said, you know, just
Speaker 2: give me a call if anything happens. And here we go,
Speaker 2: going seventy kilometers an hour at Pascal of our road
Speaker 2: and tries to jump out of the car, and so
Speaker 2: then we go, E are you so the car the
Speaker 2: police car pulls up and says you have to get
Speaker 2: out and come with us now. And later the police
Speaker 2: woman said to me, I knew that would happen. But
Speaker 2: when we got to the hospital, they just even though
Speaker 2: she was admitted, taken in by the police, and I
Speaker 2: assume they said she needs to be in the psych word.
Speaker 2: All they did was a lot or sober up that day,
Speaker 2: and at the end of the day this was one
Speaker 2: of the worst moments of my life. They said, well,
Speaker 2: she's sober enough and I'll take her home.
Speaker 1: But she tried to kill herself twice in the space
Speaker 1: of just a couple of hours with the knife and
Speaker 1: then by jumping out of the car.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it was horrible. I was just that the
Speaker 2: gatekeeper who we got to seat while I call her
Speaker 2: the gatekeeper, she said, you know, she doesn't qualify to
Speaker 2: go into the psych ward. She doesn't meet the criteria.
Speaker 1: She's not sick enough.
Speaker 2: I guess, so and I was just like, I was
Speaker 2: just devastated because we were exhausted. It's not like this
Speaker 2: girl slept at night. Usually, you know, we'd be up
Speaker 2: in the middle of the night trying to keep her
Speaker 2: from doing whatever she planned to do to herself or
Speaker 2: run off or yeah, I just just a few days
Speaker 2: in the psych ward would be great, just to give
Speaker 2: us a rest, just to give give us some respite.
Speaker 2: But she just said take her home, and that was horrible.
Speaker 2: I remember saying to what, We're just going to take
Speaker 2: her home to die?
Speaker 1: And what do they say?
Speaker 2: Bye?
Speaker 1: Is that when you first really became aware of the
Speaker 1: deficiencies in the public health system for dealing with people
Speaker 1: who had mental illness?
Speaker 2: Well, I think that sort of hope that I had
Speaker 2: when the police woman talked to me and the crash
Speaker 2: into like, well, she's our responsibility. It was just like
Speaker 2: a terrible feeling because we didn't know what to do
Speaker 2: with her. And I had tried everything. I mean, I'm
Speaker 2: an educated person. I've got heaps of skills as a
Speaker 2: journalist and an educator, and I had dreams of material
Speaker 2: about what might help her, and I tried to get
Speaker 2: her into various programs, but if a person doesn't want
Speaker 2: to participate themselves and they're an adult.
Speaker 1: What can you do? Yeah, you know, her behavior sort
Speaker 1: of escalated after this, and you talk about taking her
Speaker 1: to McDonald's and she wanted a couple of meals and
Speaker 1: what happened then.
Speaker 2: Well, that was one of the scariest bits of her life.
Speaker 2: When she had met up. She'd met a guy on
Speaker 2: the train who introduced her to Ice, which she really liked,
Speaker 2: but he was abusing her and she called me up.
Speaker 2: This is is previous to the McDonald's incident. You know,
Speaker 2: she was saying, you know, this guy's got me captive
Speaker 2: and what can I do? And oh, I can't remember
Speaker 2: the exact sequence of events, but she escaped from him
Speaker 2: and came home. But then you know, she sobers up
Speaker 2: and she's feeling like, oh that Ice was pretty good,
Speaker 2: and he's on the phone saying and I'm really sorry
Speaker 2: and come back and I'll I'll be really nice to
Speaker 2: you this time.
Speaker 1: And she had cigarette burns all over yeah from him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and well several cigarette burns. Anyway, So me and
Speaker 2: Katie and John and Tom that's Katie's partner, were desperately
Speaker 2: trying to keep her from going. I rang the police
Speaker 2: and I said, can I keep her here? You know,
Speaker 2: I was in tears. I was desperate, like she's going
Speaker 2: to run off and go with this person who's going
Speaker 2: to abuse her, kill her maybe, And they said, well
Speaker 2: you can't, you can't detain her. That's a song. So
Speaker 2: she I saw her going down the drive and I
Speaker 2: ran after her, saying, you know, what are you doing.
Speaker 2: I'm going for a walk, she says. So I went
Speaker 2: with her, and that's when she went to McDonald's and
Speaker 2: ordered to like meals with all this stuff, and then
Speaker 2: she sat down and she just spread it all over
Speaker 2: the table. She just took the the burgers out, you know,
Speaker 2: and took them apart, you know, and just put and
Speaker 2: sprinkled the chips all over them. So it was just
Speaker 2: a huge mess. And then she left. So she and
Speaker 2: then I was like, for a minute, I was trying
Speaker 2: to clean up the mess, thinking she said she was
Speaker 2: going to go out and get us going out for
Speaker 2: a smoke. But after like a couple of seconds of
Speaker 2: trying to clean up, I thought, oh, I have to
Speaker 2: go after her. So I went out and she was gone.
Speaker 2: She hadn't gone out for a smoke she'd gone to
Speaker 2: the train to go meet with this guy, and she
Speaker 2: knew that I would. That would give her a couple
Speaker 2: of minutes delay to get out, because she knew that
Speaker 2: I dried to clean up the mess.
Speaker 1: Were you and Katie, your eldest daughter and your husband?
Speaker 1: Were you ever scared for your own lives?
Speaker 2: I wasn't personally, but looking back, I think maybe we
Speaker 2: should have been, because she got to that point where
Speaker 2: she thought that John and I were not her parents anymore.
Speaker 2: She thought we were too evil twins, doppelgangers, whatever you
Speaker 2: call that phenomenon where a person thinks that the person
Speaker 2: that their loved one still looks like their loved one,
Speaker 2: but it's not really them anymore. So she was in psychasis,
Speaker 2: that's what she thought about us, and she would ring hers.
Speaker 2: I mean, I remember one night at midnight, and I
Speaker 2: hate being woken up at the night. Katie knows this,
Speaker 2: but Katie rang me and she was crying and she said,
Speaker 2: you know, Anna's totally crazy. She thinks you're somebody else.
Speaker 2: And apparently she'd been saying to Katie, Katie, listen to me.
Speaker 2: They are not who we think they are anymore. You
Speaker 2: gotta listen to me, Katie, Mom and Dad aren't who
Speaker 2: you think they are. They just you know, Mums pretends
Speaker 2: that she's this really nice person. But you know, so, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's the point she'd got to.
Speaker 1: So through all of this, how do you go on
Speaker 1: living a life because life goes on and you've got
Speaker 1: another daughter, and she has a partner, and you and
Speaker 1: your husband have a marriage, and yet you are in
Speaker 1: this constant state of crisis.
Speaker 2: Well, in the end, we just we just couldn't when
Speaker 2: And it just came to her head one weekend when
Speaker 2: we had she was supposed to go and she'd gone
Speaker 2: into detoc several times for ten days at a time.
Speaker 2: She was scheduled to go into another round of detocs.
Speaker 2: And because she had so few friendships girls, that's how
Speaker 2: she used detocs. Actually, she would go in and that's
Speaker 2: how she would meet some friends, so called friends. The
Speaker 2: best thing they did was give us ten days of respite.
Speaker 2: That was like such a great holiday. But anyway, she
Speaker 2: was going to go in for ten days of and
Speaker 2: then she was supposed to go into a program called Catalysts,
Speaker 2: which is six weeks of rehabilitation.
Speaker 1: That's a private program that you pay for.
Speaker 2: No, it's the government. Well it's the government one. Yeah,
Speaker 2: But she took herself off that weekend because she had
Speaker 2: learned that if you get really, really blattile before you
Speaker 2: go into detox, then they give you the maximum amount
Speaker 2: of value when you arrive. So she went off with
Speaker 2: this guy and she just disappeared and we didn't know
Speaker 2: where she was, and that was really disappointing because we
Speaker 2: wanted her to get into detox and this rehab program.
Speaker 2: And when she rang us in the middle of the
Speaker 2: night saying, send two hundred dollars to my account immediately
Speaker 2: or someone's going to stab me, and we just said, well,
Speaker 2: I said, you know, what do you want that for?
Speaker 2: And John said, no, we're not going to do that.
Speaker 2: And then this person rang us, so we don't know
Speaker 2: who it is, you know, abusing us and carrying on
Speaker 2: and accusing us of terrible things which I don't even
Speaker 2: want to go into the details of. But it just
Speaker 2: became too much and John said, that's it. She's not
Speaker 2: coming back. And also she had guys you know, that
Speaker 2: she was insisting that we have at the house, and
Speaker 2: it just really came to the breaking point. And I
Speaker 2: was so relieved when he said that because I couldn't
Speaker 2: have sat up myself. But when he said it, I thought,
Speaker 2: thank god. I mean to think that I could get
Speaker 2: to that point with my own daughter, but I'd reached
Speaker 2: compassion fatigue by that stage.
Speaker 1: Tell me about Black Sunday.
Speaker 2: Well, I got a call from a policeman, which wasn't unusual,
Speaker 2: but yeah, he said, he said, are you close with
Speaker 2: your daughter? And I said yes, And he said, you
Speaker 2: realize she was living with some men and I said yes,
Speaker 2: and he said the elderly man has She's been involved
Speaker 2: in an assault with the elderly man there and he's
Speaker 2: passed away, and my mind just like went to pieces.
Speaker 2: Then I was just screaming, and john came in and
Speaker 2: said what's wrong, and I said, you know, she's she's killed. Johnny.
Speaker 1: He was the man who one of the men that
Speaker 1: she was living with in his house. He was much
Speaker 1: older than her, and he was troubled in his own way,
Speaker 1: but was a kind person who tried to take care
Speaker 1: of her. His family don't want you to talk about
Speaker 1: too much about him, so we'll sort of skip to
Speaker 1: the next part. When did you next see your daughter
Speaker 1: after that?
Speaker 2: Well, it took about two weeks for me to be
Speaker 2: able to communicate with her at all, apart from the
Speaker 2: one phone call that you are allowed to make. That
Speaker 2: that is true from the television shows. She was allowed
Speaker 2: to make one phone call to me. She chose to
Speaker 2: make it to me. What did she say, Well, she said,
Speaker 2: they've charged me with murder. And I already knew from
Speaker 2: the policeman several hours before, basically that she had done this.
Speaker 2: I didn't even know how it had happened at that
Speaker 2: time at that stage, but through the hours of the day,
Speaker 2: I went next door to my neighbor because it took
Speaker 2: Katie a while to get there because she lived three
Speaker 2: and a half hours away at that time. So I
Speaker 2: just went to my next door neighbor that I was
Speaker 2: extremely close to, which is great, and just talked to
Speaker 2: her the whole time. And she knew Anna really well
Speaker 2: from the time she was born, so that was great.
Speaker 2: And so I got the call while I was with
Speaker 2: my friend next door, and I just said I still
Speaker 2: love you and you can have a future. And that
Speaker 2: doesn't mean that I'm not Yeah, that it's not a
Speaker 2: terrible thing that she did, and it's the you know,
Speaker 2: it's a horrible thing that I have to put in
Speaker 2: a different part of my mind. But I also had
Speaker 2: my daughter to that I still loved, so I wanted
Speaker 2: to tell her that and to because I was afraid
Speaker 2: she'd kill herself then, because I thought she'd be so
Speaker 2: sorry for what she did.
Speaker 1: And was she.
Speaker 2: Yes, she's and we haven't talked much about it at all.
Speaker 2: We keep that separate. But she did say to me
Speaker 2: at one stage, I felt like I was possessed and
Speaker 2: she was just so sick at that stage. Yeah, she
Speaker 2: was very unwell mentally when it happened.
Speaker 1: She was sentenced to seventeen years from jail with thirteen
Speaker 1: years non parole, and she's served two of those years.
Speaker 2: Coming up to three. In November, it'll be three years,
Speaker 2: so she has ten before her earliest release date.
Speaker 1: How she doing in jail great.
Speaker 2: I mean, she still has some problems because she's still Anna,
Speaker 2: but she's better than she ever has been in her
Speaker 2: since she started Kindred because she's got what we wanted,
Speaker 2: good nutrition, sleep, medication given to her at certain times
Speaker 2: of the day, and as she said in one of
Speaker 2: her letters to me, and I'm not lonely without all
Speaker 2: the adult responsibilities to think of, like she's got. She
Speaker 2: doesn't have to think of housing, she doesn't even have
Speaker 2: to think of getting her scripts or her worrying about
Speaker 2: her essential link payments. So she's got time to concentrate
Speaker 2: on human relationships, which she really needed to learn about.
Speaker 2: And sometimes she makes mistakes and pays the consequences. But
Speaker 2: she's really well liked at the prison, and she has
Speaker 2: formed some really nice friendships. She likes helping the new
Speaker 2: girls coming in. She calls them her crack babies because
Speaker 2: they're only eighteen years old, some of them when they
Speaker 2: come in, and they really like being looked after Biana.
Speaker 2: She makes them sandwiches and tells them jokes.
Speaker 1: So she's found purpose.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and yeah, she's doing very well though. How's her
Speaker 2: mental health much better? Partly because of the routines, the
Speaker 2: regular medication. And she told me that it took a
Speaker 2: year for her mind to clear, even though you know,
Speaker 2: she was still good during that first year, she said,
Speaker 2: for her mind to really become clear and feel like
Speaker 2: she's totally mentally healthy, it took a year. But yeah,
Speaker 2: she's good now.
Speaker 1: And what's your relationship like with her now? Do you
Speaker 1: feel less scared for her?
Speaker 2: Yes, it's great. Now that she's in prison, I still
Speaker 2: worry about when she gets out, and I hope that.
Speaker 2: Actually Katie and I both want to become involved in
Speaker 2: advocacy because I think it's so important just for supports
Speaker 2: around prisoners in general. But we intend to concentrate on
Speaker 2: women having support when they get out. I mean we
Speaker 2: have literally I've literally seen women on the side of
Speaker 2: the road outside the prison who've just been released. I mean,
Speaker 2: what hoped? How can they cope, especially if they've been
Speaker 2: in for a few years and there's a as you
Speaker 2: would know, a high rate of people going back in,
Speaker 2: and sometimes that's because it's better inside than outside for them.
Speaker 1: Is she I imagine because of the nature of her crime,
Speaker 1: she's in a maximum security prison.
Speaker 2: Yeah. There's only one prison basically in Victoria, and that's
Speaker 2: a maximum security one. There's a minimum security at Tean Gower,
Speaker 2: but from my understanding, that's fairly small and it's designed
Speaker 2: for people either at the end of their sentence or
Speaker 2: I think that's basically what it is, but I don't
Speaker 2: know for sure. I'm not an expert on that, but yeah,
Speaker 2: it's a maximum security prison.
Speaker 1: How often do you visit her and what are those
Speaker 1: visits like.
Speaker 2: We look forward to them. I visit her. This is
Speaker 2: a typical week. I visit her on Friday for two
Speaker 2: hours and just just me and her. Sometimes I take
Speaker 2: a friend along, but often it's just her and me,
Speaker 2: and the hours go really quickly. We just sit really
Speaker 2: close to each other in this cafe and hold hands
Speaker 2: and talk about our week. I go through my week
Speaker 2: and she tells me about hers. Then on Saturday afternoon,
Speaker 2: usually John goes out and either me or Katie goes
Speaker 2: with him, and we take all of your little boy
Speaker 2: and he plays with the other kids, and we go
Speaker 2: in the playground and you know, shoot baskets and eat cakes.
Speaker 2: And then on Sunday afternoon there's a program for children
Speaker 2: to be dropped off and spend some time alone with
Speaker 2: their mothers, so Olli participates in that's as well.
Speaker 1: So when you talk about how she's doing well on
Speaker 1: the inside and the boundaries that are in place, the
Speaker 1: fact that she has no access to drugs and alcohol,
Speaker 1: the fact that she's relieved of a lot of the
Speaker 1: responsibilities that go with living in the world, is this
Speaker 1: the kind of care that you dreamed that she could
Speaker 1: get on the outside without having to commit a horrible crime.
Speaker 2: Yes, I guess that's the point I should make, is
Speaker 2: that it was a terrible way for her to receive help.
Speaker 2: I mean, she a good man with his life, and
Speaker 2: one of the things we'd like to do is get
Speaker 2: a conversation started around what do we do now that
Speaker 2: there's no institutions for mentally ill people. I mean, there
Speaker 2: are places for them in psych wards. But Anna I believe,
Speaker 2: and she believes this now we've discussed it together. She
Speaker 2: needed to be contained, She needed to be in a
Speaker 2: place where she couldn't work out of I mean we
Speaker 2: could have. We chose not to pay thousands of dollars
Speaker 2: to put her into private rehab, but even if we
Speaker 2: had done that, she could have walked out the second
Speaker 2: day she was there, or the second week. So the
Speaker 2: thing about prison is that it's involuntary, and we actually
Speaker 2: believe that some people need the same kind of conditions
Speaker 2: on the outside before they commit a crime. And I
Speaker 2: know it's a very vexed issue. You know, how do
Speaker 2: you virtually put someone here?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like committing someone. The idea of having someone
Speaker 1: involuntarily committed big because once they're over eighteen, the responsibility
Speaker 1: is on the family, and yet you have no power.
Speaker 1: Do you have no say in what happens to that person?
Speaker 1: You just have to clean up the pieces.
Speaker 2: That's right. And we so wish that that could have
Speaker 2: happened before she committed a crime. And she's not the
Speaker 2: only young woman like that out at the prison. So please,
Speaker 2: let's think about that as a society. Let's not have
Speaker 2: the prison be the place that mops up these people
Speaker 2: with mental illnesses after they've committed a crime. Let's do
Speaker 2: something about it before.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to No Filter. You can buy
Speaker 1: Mary's book, It's called Gorgeous Girl, at any good bookstore
Speaker 1: or at Apple dot co forward slash Mama Maya and
Speaker 1: Mary once it made known that all proceeds of the
Speaker 1: book are going to a charity that helps women in trauma.
Speaker 1: And keep your ears out too for next week's conversation
Speaker 1: where I talk to Anna's older sister, Mary's other daughter Katie,
Speaker 1: whose life was changed in her own extraordinary way by
Speaker 1: her sister's crime. And if you want to read an
Speaker 1: extract of Mary's book, head to Mamamea dot com dot au. Now,
Speaker 1: if you're searching for something else to listen to, can
Speaker 1: I highly recommend checking out Jesse stephens interview with Jermaine
Speaker 1: Grea about consent and rape. It wasn't going to be
Speaker 1: my narrative that I was a rappee. I hadn't become
Speaker 1: a career rape. Parts of it are pretty heavy going,
Speaker 1: but Jermaine Greer is an extraordinary icon of her generation,
Speaker 1: an important voice in feminism, and it was just so
Speaker 1: brilliant to listen to her speaking to a young woman,
Speaker 1: a millennial woman, who had a lot of questions. So
Speaker 1: you can find that in the No Filter feed as well.
Speaker 1: This podcast was produced by Eliza Ratliffe. I am Maya
Speaker 1: Friedman and I'll see you on the homepage mamameya dot
Speaker 1: com dot au. If you're looking for something else to
Speaker 1: listen to, like and follow all of our Mamamea podcasts
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