Disabled mum Linda Marie Robertson sentenced for Wolston Park smuggling attempt

A disabled Ipswich mother has been sentenced after a failed attempt to smuggle a package of drugs into a southeast Queensland prison.

Linda Marie Robertson, 51, seen leaving Ipswich Courthouse after sentencing for attempting to supply drugs within a correctional facility.

A disabled mother of five has been sentenced in court after she ‘chickened out’ of smuggling drugs into a southeast Queensland correctional facility.

Linda Marie Robertson, 51, pleaded guilty in Ipswich Magistrates Court to a single count of supplying a dangerous drug within a correctional facility.

She faced court today over the offending, which occurred in September 2022, after she attempted to smuggle a package of buprenorphine strips to her partner who was incarcerated at the Wolston Park Correctional Centre.

The court heard that Ms Robertson had been ‘compelled’ to take the package in and deliver it to her partner after she was threatened by an unnamed party, when her nerves took over and she reported herself to corrections staff.

The court heard that Ms Robertson attended the facility and while waiting in the visitor waiting area, repeatedly asked to speak with staff, and when approached by a corrections officer, she removed a package from her bra.

She told the officer that she had been pressured by someone to give the package to one of the prisoners, but she would not name who had pressured her to do so.

The court heard that Ms Robertson told officers that she ‘couldn’t go through with it’.

The package inside Ms Robertson’s bra contained ten strips of buprenorphine and naloxone.

Ms Robertson’s barrister, Lara Soldi told the court her client had lived a life marred by domestic violence at the hands of her mother and then husband of 18 years, and had immense pressures in her personal life.

Ms Soldi further told the court that her client was a mother of five children, aged between 22 and 32, each with intellectual disabilities, and was about to become a grandmother for the first time.

The court heard Ms Robertson struggled significantly with osteoarthritis and had been assessed as needing 24-hour care in her home, but that had not yet become available to her and that she was on a waitlist for surgery.

Ms Solid told the court her client would “find jail a good deal harder than others” given her medical condition.

Judge Amanda McDonnell sentenced Ms Robertson to three months imprisonment, wholly suspended.

A conviction was recorded.