Fischer: ‘How I ended up in a homeless shelter for two years’

KATE Fischer says she went from being engaged to billionaire James Packer to living in a homeless shelter for two years.

IT’S no secret that Kate Fischer’s life now is vastly different to it was at the height of her ‘90s fame.

She’s changed her name, embraced religion, taken on a new role working in an aged care facility and lives a life far removed from the glitz and glamour of her former incarnation as a top model, socialite and fiance to billionaire businessman James Packer.

But in a startling new interview withThe Australian Women’s Weekly, Malkah reveals just how difficult life was during her post-fame years. By 2011, she was living in a ‘rooming house’ for homeless and vulnerable women, having been sent there by the Sacred Heart Mission.

Malkah now keeps in touch with her followers via a public Facebook page.

It was a shocking fall from grace for a woman who was rumoured to have received a $10 million payout when she split with one of Australia’s richest men in 1998.

Today, Malkah reveals she was actually given a more modest $250,000 payout along with the Bondi apartment she and Packer had shared, which she later sold.

The money didn’t last, though. Following the dissolution of their high-profile engagement, Malkah fled to Los Angeles and fell in love again. In 2011, a businessman she had been dating for two years offered to invest her savings — but the money disappeared. She discovered he embezzled it all, and also had a wife and child he’d never told her about.

Heartbroken and relatively penniless, she returned to Australia and settled in Melbourne — where she found herself living in the boarding house, sharing a kitchen with 36 other women.

With her fiance Packer in 1998.

“We’re just faded flowers,” Malkah says of the women she lived with, all single and over 35.

“We’re not what society deems exciting anymore. We’re washed up and no one cares.”

Her room was tiny, with a fridge by her bed and cigarette burns on the sofas. She admits now that when she first arrived she stayed in her room for three days and cried, shocked at the turn her life had taken.

Malkah’s mother Pru Goward is the NSW Minister for Mental Health, but she says she never felt she could ask her family for help during this difficult time.

“I would’ve give them the satisfaction of lording it over me,” she told the mag.

Malkah claims that her parents were far from upset when they did find out about her living situation.

Fischer in 2000 in the Bondi apartment she and Packer had shared. Picture: Steve Morenos

“I think they kind of felt like, ‘Well, it’s about time — you were a princess in an ivory tower for so many years’. I think they were quite happy.”

Malkah reveals that there has been a deep rift between she and her mother, with the pair only seeing each other for the first time in eight years only recently. While she praises her mother’s political career, she also tells the magazine “that’s where all [Goward’s] love has gone.”

Now, Malkah lives a modest life, earning $23 an hour working night shifts at an aged care facility. She said she hoped going public about her darkest days would help other vulnerable women to know that they’re not alone.

“If my experiences can help someone, then that’s really what God wants from us — just to share ourselves a little bit,” she said.

Malkah revealed she and mum Pru Goward — pictured together here in 2006 — didn’t see each other for eight years.

Read the full interview in the January 2017 edition of The Australian Women’s Weekly, out now.