‘She is full of sh**’: Cocaine Cassie’s dad Stuart Sainsbury says his family is still hurting

Stuart Sainsbury speaks about having no contact with his daughter for five years – and his hopes for her now she is back on Australian soil.

The devastated father of “Cocaine Cassie” Sainsbury doubts his eldest daughter will contact him during her first visit to Australia since being released from a Colombian prison.

Stuart Sainsbury, 59, told how he had not spoken to his drug smuggling daughter, 27, for more than five years and just before her arrest for smuggling 5.8kg of cocaine in May 2017.

She touched down on Australian soil on Saturday in Sydney for the first time since her arrest.

Mr Sainsbury, a home maintenance worker from Warooka on Yorke Peninsula, said he didn’t want to “trash” his daughter but was still angry about his family “being dragged through the mud”.

He said the last communication he had with his daughter was when she messaged him asking what he was doing for Easter in 2017. He had no idea where she was but he suspected she was already in Bogota.

Stuart Sainsbury shared this photo with his daughter Cassie Sainsbury, then aged 12, in Minlaton in 2007.

“I’ve not spoken to her for five years,” he said at his home 20km west of Yorketown, which he shares with his second wife Michelle, 53 and pet border collie Max.

“It was April 6, 2017. I don’t think she will talk to me … because she is full of sh**. I’ve had no contact with her.

“I am still pretty angry about it. My family was trashed. We share the same surname. I’ve got an elderly mother to protect.

“I don’t know what to say. You smuggle cocaine. You do your time. I guess she’s done her time.

“I don’t expect her to come up here. I don’t expect to see her. You can’t drag someone’s family through the dirt and not expect to be pissed off. If she wants to talk to me, she knows where I am. I’m not going to trash her.”

Cassandra Sainsbury, of Australia, arrives for a court hearing in Bogota, Colombia, in 2017. Picture: AP Photo/Fernando Vergara

A picture from Cassie Sainsbury's Instagram account.

He showed a picture of himself and his daughter taken in 2007, and which now stands in his home office. He had moved to Minlaton to be closer to his elderly parents but when his first marriage ended, Cassie stayed with him.

He said locals had taken her actions badly.

“I don’t think there are too many people around here who have anything nice to say about her,” said Mr Sainsbury, who is now battling poor health.

“I live in a tiny town just trying to make an honest living. I’m not a bikie that everyone says in the beginning and I’m not a drug smuggler.”

A photo from Cassie Sainsbury's Instagram Account

'Cocaine Cassie' Sainsbury and her wife.

Asked about his daughter’s marriage to a 33-year-old computer technician named Tatiana, he said: “If she’s happy then that’s good.

“You only want your kids happy.”

He hoped any television interview would air the truth.

Sainsbury, who grew up in Davoren Park in Adelaide’s north before moving to the Yorke Peninsula, remained tight-lipped at the airport in Sydney when she arrived on Saturday, declining reporters’ questions.

Sainsbury was sentenced to six years over the drug smuggling but was released in 2020, having served half of that sentence.

Her parole conditions required that she stay in Colombia for 27 months following her release from the El Buen Pastor women’s prison.

In May, The Advertiser reported Sainsbury’s homecoming plans, which she shared with followers in a live stream question and answer session with her Instagram followers.