Roxy Jacenko opens up in fiery 60 Minutes interview about her husband and breast cancer

A DEFIANT Roxy Jacenko lashed out at her haters in a fiery interview with 60 Minutes last night. She also opened up.

ROXY Jacenko has revealed how she and husband Oliver Curtis “never” spoke about his insider trading history, which saw him receive two years imprisonment, with a minimum 12-month sentence earlier this year.

The PR queen, who appeared in a fiery interview on Channel 9’s 60 Minutes on Sunday night, told journalist Allison Langdon about why she and Curtis didn’t discuss his criminal past, despite his actions now having a huge impact on their young family.

“It happened years and years and years ago, well before my time,” she said to Langdon.

“Look, call me crazy. Some people would wanna know [about their husband’s history], you know, the ins and outs of everything. I haven’t asked.

“He’s got no reason to lie to me. He could tell me the truth ... and irrespective of what the truth is that he says to me, I’m there. No matter what.”

Roxy Jacenko and her husband Oliver Curtis don’t speak about the criminal activity that put him behind bars. Picture: Channel 9.

In 2007, when Curtis was just 21-years-old, he and his schoolfriend John Hartmann conspired to buy and sell stocks using insider tips.

It was well before he met and married Jacenko, but it earnt him a $1.43 million fortune — which he reportedly spent on lavish holidays, cars and real estate.

Mr Hartmann, who plead guilty to the charges, worked with police and gave evidence against Mr Curtis.

In June, after a three-week trial, the jury found Oliver guilty of conspiracy to insider trading.

Roxy Jacenko said she has no reason to ask her husband about his criminal history.

Jacenko, who has been left to raise their two children — Pixie, 5 and Hunter, 2 — on her own while he serves time in Cooma Correction Centre, reflected on the night the law caught up with her husband.

“Papers were served when we were at home and he was waiting for a pizza one evening on a Sunday night,” Jacenko said.

“My question to Ollie was? “Did you do it?” He said, “I didn’t do it and I’m gonna fight it because I didn’t do it.”

Oliver Curtis is serving 12 months behind bars for conspiracy to commit insider trading

36-year-old Jacenko, who was criticised at the time of her husband’s trial for turning the courtroom into a runway for her high fashion looks, admitted that seeing Oliver carted away in handcuffs was the hardest moment of her life.

“Seeing the picture of Ollie with the handcuffs, being led into the prison van, was a very horrible feeling. It was the worst,” Jacenko said,

“It was like the picture you never, ever wanna see. And it’s a picture that I never thought I would see.”

“I remember when I came home the day Ollie was sentenced, when the kids opened the door, they were so excited to see me and I remember I started to cry because all of sudden, there were these two little kids who had no awareness of what was happening,” she added.

“Pixie sort of pats me on the back and she’s like, ‘Oh, Mum, did you have a bad day in the office? Was someone mean to you?’

“And I was like, ‘Very bad day in the office, Pix.’ And I cried and she gave me a little cuddle and, you know, I guess it was at that point I went, ‘OK, you’ve got to pull your s**t together and you’ve got to get on with it.’”

Calling Roxy’s husband a “white-collar thief” who has shown “no remorse” for “stealing” over a million dollars, Langdon questioned how much the mother-of-two had told her children about their father’s whereabouts.

“If you watch a cartoon these days, the baddie always goes to jail. And I don’t want them to think that of their father. I don’t want that to be instilled in their mind,” she said.

“I’ve said he’s in China. I think there’s certain things you choose to tell a child.

“Pixie’s very upset. Every day’s hard with her now. She’s reserved and she cries for her dad. Making a happy birthday video for him ... before they went to bed, was horrible. Absolutely awful. She cried and then she slept in the bed with me. And it’s not a position I ever wanted to be in.”

Jacenko said while she wasn’t able to tell her children about what had happened to their father, she did tell them about her breast cancer — which she discovered just weeks after Oliver was put behind bars.

“When I sat in the doctor’s office and they said, ‘You have cancer,’ it was almost like I knew in my mind so much sh*t has gone wrong this must just be another thing,” she revealed.

“I probably was weak, and that’s why I told her [Pixie]. I don’t know. Maybe I was having a sad day and I told her.

“For me, I needed to tell them. I don’t have anybody else to tell.”

60 Minutes’ cameras followed Roxy as she underwent surgery for the 10mm lump on her left breast at Melbourne’s Epworth Freemasons Hospital.

She decided to ignore the advice of surgeons from Sydney’s St Vincent’s Hospital, who had recommended a full mastectomy.

60 Minutes journalist Allison Langdon watches on as surgeons remove a ‘small mandarin’ size cancer from Roxy Jacenko’s left breast.

Jacenko, whose mother Doreen Davis underwent a mastectomy 10 years ago, said she wasn’t in the headspace to make such a big decision — which is why she opted for the partial surgery.

“Unlike everything else in my life where I’ll go full pelt, it was like this one thing I wanted to do in ... a phased approach, rather than going, ‘OK, well, chop off my boobs,’” she said.

“I think we also have to look at what has transpired in the last sort of six weeks of my life and making such rash and big decisions right now. I don’t think I’m in the headspace to do it.”

Roxy, who went back to work just two days after surgery, has a good prognosis - but there’s a way to go for the businesswoman yet.

According to her specialist, Professor Bruce Mann of Melbourne’s Epworth Freemasons Hospital, Roxy will need radiation and possible chemotherapy and there’s no guarantee that she won’t lose the breast down the track.

Roxy found out she had breast cancer just 3 weeks after her husband was sent to jail.

Since revealing her breast cancer diagnosis in July, Jacenko hasn’t received the support and well wishes one would expect in her situation. Instead, cynics questioned the timing around her cancer announcement — which she labelled “pathetic”.

“Someone wrote on Hunter’s Instagram, ‘How’s your mummy’s fake cancer?’” she said.

“It makes me angry, I mean the reality is you’d have to be sick in the head to think that someone would actually manipulate a timeline on cancer. People die from cancer.”

“If someone I knew was in my position and they had been diagnosed with cancer some three weeks after their husband went to jail, I certainly wouldn’t be having an opinion on, “Is that convenient timing.” You know what I’d say? “What can I do to help them?

“To be honest, I think it’s pathetic, I really do. I think it’s pathetic.”

Watch the full interview with Roxy Jacenko on 60 Minutes here.