Kylie Moore-Gilbert: From ‘childless divorcee with a criminal record’ to motherhood and a mission

As recently as 18 months ago, Dr Kylie Moore-Gilbert described herself as “a childless divorcee with a criminal record”: unemployed and with a backstory that was kryptonite in both dating and job interviews.

She was not long back in Australia after surviving the trauma of 804 days in two of Iran’s most notorious jails, where she had been sentenced to 10 years on trumped-up charges of espionage after attending a conference.

Former Middle Eastern studies academic, Kylie Moore-Gilbert, is adjusting to life in Melbourne’s urban north as a new mother and activist.Credit: Luis Enrique Ascui

She survived in prison, she has said, by virtually erasing herself and “wholly detaching … from once-cherished dreams and aspirations”, forgetting her past life entirely.

After finally making it home as part of a prisoner swap in November 2020, she learned while still in quarantine that her husband had moved on and was in a relationship with her academic colleague.

“How do you wake up from that afterwards?” Moore-Gilbert wondered of the ordeal in a column for this masthead in August 2022.

Today, as she sits in the buzzing Preston lunch spot Pausa Pranzo, looking immaculate in a sky-blue linen shirt and hair so well-behaved it defies the ridiculous humidity, she is sharing her answer.

Moore-Gilbert in Iran, where she was invited to travel for a conference, but was grabbed at the airport on her way home.

Moore-Gilbert has “woken up” in a more spectacular way than perhaps anyone who followed her story could have imagined. She has a new partner, comedian Sami Shah, whom she met via online dating.

She is in a blended family with his teenage daughter, Anya, and has a new baby, a new job, a Churchill Fellowship, and a new lobby group to fight for other Australians wrongfully thrown into foreign jails.

She has formed the Australian Wrongful and Arbitrary Detention Alliance with two other high-profile Australian ex-political prisoners, journalist Cheng Lei and economist Sean Turnell, as her partners, and plans to turn up the heat on the federal government.

“I feel that I have unfinished business,” says Moore-Gilbert, 36. “And I can really see a way that I can try to make things better for others who sadly in the future will go through what I went through, or are right now going through it.”

Moore-Gilbert and her partner Sami Shah in April 2023, while she was pregnant with Leah.Credit: Josh Robenstone

For starters, she wants a structured rehabilitation program for Australians returning from stints in foreign jails, including proper medical and psychological support, having had to figure out both on her own.

“When I came back, I had no support at all. Part of that might have been because of COVID, but I was put in quarantine for two weeks and then just told, ‘Go on your way, you’re free now, bye-bye’,” she says, her measured tones nigh on drowned out by the happy buzz of locals grabbing pasta and Italian sandwiches in the lunch rush.

“I was told, ‘Go to your GP if you want a medical check’, but I was stuck in NSW because of the border closure and couldn’t even get to my GP.”

With such weighty issues on the menu, Moore-Gilbert does not seem terribly bothered about what we choose to eat. She picked this popular community hub because it’s one of the few she has had time to visit since moving from her beloved weatherboard home in Belgrave, on the city’s hilly fringe, to the inner north, to be closer to where Anya’s mother lives.

Sardinian culurgiones fritti at Pausa Pranzo in Preston.Credit: Luis Enrique Ascui

Pausa Pranzo is a low-fuss, Sardinian-influenced cafe started by Italian-born Mauro Sanna, who wanted to create a paninoteca with a similar vibe to those he enjoyed while studying at university in Florence.

Since we’re interviewing and eating, rather than order from the large selection of panini, she makes the pragmatic choice of easy-to-navigate share plates: antipasto for two, crispy fried calamari, a rocket and parmesan salad, and the Sardinian specialty, culurgiones fritti.

The latter are delightful pasta packets stuffed with potato, pecorino and mint, which manage to be both crunchy and pillowy.

While these are being whipped up, Moore-Gilbert describes in matter-of-fact terms how endless thinking time in prison allowed her to filter through all that had happened in her life, and winnow her focus down to what really has meaning for her.

‘It’s a funny thing, stepmum – the label – would make me feel very old as well. I’m just happy to be her friend.’

Dr Kylie Moore-Gilbert

“You spend a lot of time in prison alone thinking about things, ruminating and going over things again and again, all the mistakes you’ve ever made in life. All that second-guessing of yourself, and insecurities come out – but that’s a good thing in a way too,” she says.

“I’m still processing everything, of course, but it really sharpened my understanding of the fact a lot of the stuff we busy our minds with on a day-to-day basis is pointless and not of any importance to the way we live our lives, and that we really should focus on what matters.”

“And for me, family matters. [I realised] I really wanted to have a family, and to experience family life … that’s why having my daughter was such a big deal.”

Today, she’s feeling the kind of sleep deprivation familiar to any new mother whose teething baby has an enduring love of overnight feeds, but Moore-Gibert is hardly complaining. “It’s such a wonderful bonding experience that I don’t mind.”

The antipasto for two at Pausa Pranzo in Preston.Credit: Luis Enrique Ascui

She is also enjoying her bond with Anya, from the first of Shah’s two previous marriages. The fast transition from solo household to a family of four sounds to have been happy, and Moore-Gilbert describes Anya as a friend.

“Stepmother is, sort of, pejorative these days. And also, she’s turning 15 next year and going into year 10, so I’m not taking on a mothering role with her. She has a mother,” she says.

“You can see how a toddler might look at a stepmother as a sort of parent, but Anya is so much older that she doesn’t need parenting from me. It’s a funny thing, stepmum – the label – would make me feel very old as well. I’m just happy to be her friend.”

Moore-Gilbert ordered a simple lunch of antipasto, calamari, salad and culurgiones fritti.Credit: Luis Enrique Ascui

As we chat, former ABC radio breakfast host Shah is working at their rented home nearby, and Anya is there babysitting Leah. Life has swung so far back in the direction she thought she would take before being derailed by imprisonment – a “comfortable middle-class existence” – that Moore-Gilbert says she needs to remind herself not to slip too far away from the insight she gained through solitude.

“Often I forget that lesson [about what is important, and what is not], and I have to catch myself,” she says.

“Instead of getting riled about the traffic on Punt Road, I have to tell myself, think about what your friends in prison to this day are going through. You get sucked back into the perspective of this world [life in Australia] really quickly.

“I had this sharpened focus on what matters, and now I get sucked back into worrying about being sleep-deprived and not being able to function properly, and getting worked up about things that people might say to you that are not consequential.

“I need to constantly remind myself, and pull myself back and say: that’s background noise, who cares about that stuff, it doesn’t matter.”

The “background noise” philosophy was put to the test last month, when Moore-Gilbert agreed to speak at a Melbourne vigil for Israeli women and girls who were subjected to horrific sexual violence at the hands of Hamas militants on October 7.

She was approached to speak by a group of Jewish feminists, “in light of my experience as someone who was hostage to a group that funds and trains Hamas”. She decided to do so because she believes there has not been enough support shown for women who were raped and killed.

“I know my captors in the Revolutionary Guard will be celebrating this in the most vile fashion … It just shook me to the core,” says Moore-Gilbert, a survivor of physical abuse in jail.

A screenshot from Iranian TV shows Moore-Gilbert waiting at an airport in Tehran before being returned to Australia.Credit: Iranian State Television

She is disappointed not to have seen more public statements of outrage about sexual violence and the assault of Israeli women.

“The silence of some prominent feminist organisations … has disappointed me.”

Speaking at the vigil was “a risky move”, but, “I’m glad I did it and don’t take it back. I knew I’d get a lot of hate and vitriol, I’m trying to avoid looking at that stuff though; I’ve basically left Twitter [X].”

Moore-Gilbert is furious that there have been calls among her former captors to make October 7 a national holiday, “to commemorate this great victory of the mass rape and slaughter and torture of 1200 Israeli people”.

She feels compelled to speak out against the people for whom she still feels a cold rage, even though she believes people attached to them may still be watching her.

“They [the Iranian regime] are monitoring me, and they have hacked me before, in the first year I was out. I think I’ve been surveilled and monitored at a couple of events,” says Moore-Gilbert. “I have to be careful about which countries I visit in the developing world.”

She feels safe while in Australia, and has only ventured out of the country once since her return, to attend a writer’s festival in Bali to speak about her book, The Unchanged Sky.

Pausa Pranzo receipt for lunch chosen by Kylie Moore-Gilbert.

But Moore-Gilbert will need to travel relatively widely later this year to research how other countries handle hostage diplomacy, as part of a Churchill Fellowship she won in late 2023. Canada and the US are making efforts to improve the handling of such cases, and in the UK there is heavy NGO action to try to do so too.

Alongside this work, and mothering, she will advocate with Cheng and Turnell for more action here to support those whose lives are shunted off-course by foreign regimes, and for policies that “disincentivise the business model” of hostage-taking in countries including Iran, Russia, China, Venezuela and North Korea.

She plans to use this research as part of her new posting at Macquarie University, in which Moore-Gilbert and other academics will examine how policy change could enhance Australia’s responses to cases of wrongful detention, and punishment of perpetrators.

“Maybe no one will ever listen to me, and it’s a fool’s errand, but I feel like I owe it to myself and others to try.”

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