Abused and used as a strip search dummy: Katheen Folbigg’s prison hell revealed

Kathleen Folbigg’s friends, who have supported her since the very first day she was taken into custody, have revealed graphic details of the fear, humiliation and isolation she experienced behind bars.

She was called a rock spider, taunted with the names of her dead babies, told she would be raped with a barbed-wire-covered broom stick and beaten to a pulp after inmates staged a brawl just to distract the “screws”.

But arguably the most disturbing thing that happened to Kathleen Folbigg during her 20 years behind bars was being used as a “dummy” for strip searches — made to stand naked while new recruits were taught how to search her for hidden drugs.

Ms Folbigg’s friends, who have supported her since the very first day she was taken into custody, have revealed graphic details of her fear, humiliation and isolation.

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The hell ride that lasted two decades has taken its toll on them too, physically, financially and emotionally.

Tracy Chapman, who has literally put her life on hold to make her “mantra” a reality.

“What I have always said is ‘this is not your story Kath, we will get you out’, not really ever knowing how the hell we were going to do that but I believed it,” Ms Chapman told The Sunday Telegraph.

Kathleen Folbigg, finally at home after 20 years in jail, is trying to build a new life for herself. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

For Ms Chapman the memories of the horror blur. Often she felt helpless.

She remembers clearly though, the brutal bashing just three years ago, shortly after Ms Folbigg was moved to Clarence Correctional Centre near Grafton.

“There were rumblings about a group of new ‘rock spiders’ arriving at Clarence, and inmates in Secure Area 1 were stirring up trouble, saying they wanted to kill the rock spiders,” Ms Chapman recalls.

“I was worried. She was coming into a new prison, she wasn’t feeling well after multiple days of stress, and there were these dangerous grumblings. It was incredibly tense.”

The simmering tension reached breaking point a few days later.

“There had been rumblings all morning. Kath said it didn’t feel right. She was scared, and so were the others.”

Then, chaos erupted. A staged fight broke out among inmates, drawing all the guards away. With security distracted, Ms Folbigg and the new arrivals were left vulnerable.

“Kath told all the new girls with her to run,” Chapman recalls. “One young girl was so terrified she cried and wet herself.

“Kath said, ‘Run, go to your room and close your door.’ She was the last one up the stairs, but before she could lock herself in, a group of women assaulted her in her cell.”

Kathleen Folbigg in jail.

She was bashed while behind bars.

With the guards still occupied downstairs, Folbigg had no one to protect her.

“She told me, she put her hands over her head, dropped to the floor, and curled up in a ball, but they just kept hitting her and hitting her,’” Ms Chapman recalls.

“I could hardly believe it.”

Eventually, the guards intervened and the attackers were pulled off. But the damage was done.

The next time Ms Chapman spoke to Folbigg via AVL — Covid restrictions prevented in-person visits — she saw the bruises, a black eye, and her swollen face.

The beating was brutal, but what haunted Chapman most was the fear that her friend’s heart condition hadn’t been properly monitored.

Under high-stress conditions, Ms Folbigg’s heart was particularly vulnerable.

“That night, after I heard about the attack, I rang the prison over and over until someone finally answered late in the evening,” Ms Chapman says.

“I begged them to do hourly welfare checks on Kath, and I even threatened to go to the Minister if they didn’t.”

Her determination worked, and the prison promised to ensure Ms Folbigg’s wellbeing that night.

But the nightmare wasn’t over.

Kathleen adjusting to her new-found freedom with best friend Tracy Chapman and lawyer Rhanee Rego soon after her release. Picture: Tim Hunter

Even after Ms Folbigg was moved to Secure Area 2, away from her attackers, one of the perpetrators was able to stalk her.

Assigned to rubbish duties, the woman lurked outside Ms Folbigg’s cell, sparking fresh waves of fear.

“It was terrifying,” Ms Chapman says. “This woman was supposed to be kept away from Kath, yet she was there, watching her, lurking near her door.”

Megan Donegan shudders at the memory of her letters and phone calls from Ms Folbigg detailing the threats over the years — but the one that sticks out was her genuine fear of being raped with a broomstick wrapped in barbed wire.

“They called her a rock spider and that’s what happened to murderers and rapists in jail, that was the typical thing,” Ms Donegan said.

“That was really early on and she was very scared.”

Another friend recalls that when Ms Folbigg first entered the prison system in 2001 she was put in a unit called “mum Shirley unit”.

“It was for the mentally unwell,” the friend, who asked not to be named, said.

“That was for the criminally insane. People in there were constantly screaming and talking to themselves.

Kathleen Folbigg with old high school friends (from left) Megan Donegan, Billi-Jo Buckley and Tracy Chapman.

“It terrified Kath. To a 35-year-old woman who had never even had contact with the police before, she was now in a unit with a woman ready to kill her over an apple.

She had to put a lounge between her and the woman to stop her from killing her. Putting her in this unit was all done apparently for her own protection.”

Those closest to Ms Folbigg are most distressed about the experiences that chipped away at her self worth — her dignity.

Being asked to “volunteer” to help teach new officers how to strip search inmates was certainly on that list of degrading experiences.

“This required her to strip completely naked in front of a group of people and was instructed what to do,” her friend said.

“It was like she was a dummy being demonstrated on. But she knew she had to comply because there would be repercussions. She basically totally mentally detached every time she had to do this.”

The best friends know their own recollections are just the tip of the iceberg of what Ms Folbigg has endured and likely shared in her 100-page statement to Premier Chris Minns in her appeal for compensation.

Ms Donegan believes the $20 million figure already floated should be “just the starting point for discussion” knowing full well her best friend tried to shield her from so much of the horror she was living while locked up, wrongly convicted of killing her four babies.

Kathleen Folbigg is pleading with Premier Chris Minns to compensate her for the years she has been locked up after her wrongful conviction. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

“We copped it just for supporting her so it is impossible to imagine what she really went through in jail with some of the roughest,” she said.

“This was a woman who had never needed to enter a police station previously.”

Ms Chapman isn’t mincing her words. She’s calling on the government to not only compensate Ms Folbigg for her 20 years of wrongful imprisonment but to overhaul the system that let it happen in the first place.

“Kath deserves the world for what she’s been through, but people don’t see the ripple effects,” Chapman says. “The cost to the advocates … it’s not just about the money, it’s about the thousands, upon thousands of hours spent fighting for justice.

“It’s cost me my career. The system messed up monumentally, and while Kath is the one at the centre of it, we’re all victims of this wrongful conviction.”

Folbigg, who was wrongfully labelled Australia’s worst female serial killer, was pardoned last year. But Chapman argues that the fallout goes far beyond the prison walls.

“There’s been no formal apology, which is just appalling,” she says.

“We’ll always be there for Kath, but the system needs fixing. There must be a Criminal Cases Review Commission. It’s not right that advocates like me bear the financial and emotional stress for years because the system can’t admit its own failures.”

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Originally published as Abused and used as a strip search dummy: Katheen Folbigg’s prison hell revealed