Ex-drug smuggler Simone Starr finds love with former prison guard
Simone Starr’s bad choices in life have seen her featured many times in The Sunday Telegraph. But now she’s turned her life around and found love — with her former prison guard.
Police & Courts
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It’s an unlikely story of redemption — a former Penthouse Pet and international drug trafficker has found love and a new life with a female prison guard.
Simone Starr led a glamorous, fast-paced life as a budding model and rare female figure in Sydney’s underworld in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Her former boyfriend, body builder Brett Boyd, was almost killed in 1998 when a parcel bomb sent to Ms Starr’s Belrose home exploded.
Ms Starr, also known as Simone Farrow or Simone Cheung, then left Australia for the United States.
In 2009 she was charged for trafficking methamphetamine hidden in bath salts consignments from the US to Australia.
Handed a minimum 6½-year jail sentence, Ms Starr maintained her tough-girl exterior in prison — until she met a corrections officer named Britt Young.
Ms Young’s background could not have been more different.
Growing up in the northwest of Sydney, she was drawn to career choices with structure and discipline. After high school she joined the military for six years.
Then she left and joined NSW Corrective Services, juggling that job with shifts as a retained firefighter.
The pair were chalk and cheese.
Yet, when their paths crossed inside Dillwaynia women’s prison in 2017, they found solace in each other.
Ms Young remembers Ms Starr, a once-aspiring pop singer, crying one day after an intensive rehabilitation and counselling program.
“I’d had a bit of a breakdown,” Ms Starr said.
“It was very confronting. I didn’t listen to no one then, I was a ratbag back in the day and she took the time out to give me time.
“Someone gave a damn and I am not used to that.”
Almost every day for three weeks, Ms Young checked in on Ms Starr, who described it as a “mentor” situation.
There was no romantic spark, they both stress, but they clearly left a lasting impression.
“She helped me open my eyes and realise that I needed to have a little bit more respect for myself,” Ms Starr said.
“And that there was still time to turn my life around.”
Then Ms Young, 28, was moved to the Metropolitan Remand and Reception Centre at Silverwater and the couple didn’t see each other again.
With a couple years left on her sentence, Ms Starr “stuck my nose in a few books”.
She said after meeting Ms Young, she was motivated to finish Years 11 and 12 in jail and then enrol in university.
Ms Starr worked in a factory and got some dirt under her nails.
“I had never done hard work like that and realised: ‘Hey, I don’t need to sell myself for money’,” said Ms Starr, who claimed in court her mother introduced her to prostitution when she was a teenager.
Released on parole in 2019, Ms Starr settled in the eastern suburbs. She said she hadn’t spoken to Ms Young for more than two years but wanted to thank her for the impact she had.
Ms Starr, who will feature in the TV show Banged Up Abroad next year, found her on Facebook and sent her a message.
“I went on Facebook and said: ‘You might not want to respond but I wanted to thank you. You were the catalyst for change and who I am today’,” Ms Starr said.
“Three days later she replied — but it wasn’t appropriate for us to keep talking (as ex-prisoner and serving guard).”
As an afterthought, Ms Starr put her number at the bottom of her message in case Ms Young’s circumstances ever changed.
Soon they did. In 2019, Ms Young drove to Silverwater jail with her prison uniform on the back seat and handed in her resignation.
“Something was like: ‘You need to give this thing a go’,” Ms Young said of Ms Starr.
“The only way you can do that is to resign before you do.”
She remembers driving to the jail that day, bracing herself for the life-changing move she was about to make and thinking: ‘I’m really doing this’.
Ms Starr was waiting to meet her afterwards in a cafe nearby. The pair say they haven’t spent a day apart since.
Their backgrounds are so different, but Ms Young said she felt like she could relate to some “trials and tribulations” in Ms Starr’s life.
“I was brought up and taught that you don’t judge a book by its cover,” Ms Young said.
“When you go to be a corrections officer, you’re a mentor and a role model as well.
“But then you get in there and you’re told ‘don’t talk to that inmate, stay away from those inmates’.
“Being brought up like I was, I thought it didn’t make sense to me. Isn’t part of the idea with jail about rehabilitation?”
There was a bit of hype surrounding Ms Starr in jail, but Ms Young “couldn’t figure out what the big deal was”.
“The day I spoke to her properly I knew she was looking at me and thinking ‘this screw is genuine and sincere’.”
Asked how her family took news of her relationship, Ms Young chuckled.
“Mum is old school and a tough-love mum. She had her own opinions originally and asked if they were the best choices,” she said.
“But Dad and Simone clicked from the get-go.”
The pair are now living together in Sydney.
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