Kiwi's Balijail hell I'M IN SO MUCH PAIN

After nine years in a notorious Indonesian prison, accused drug smuggler Tony de Malmanche is chronically ill and seeking justice

- Carmen Lichi

Kiwi grandfather Antony de Malmanche’s thoughts often drift thousands of kilometres

from his sweaty, cramped cell at Bali’s infamous Kerobokan jail to his homeland of Aotearoa. But while there are happy memories – of friends, family, being on the water and catching fresh kaimoana – there are also fl ashes of pure darkness.

Now in his ninth year of a 15-year sentence, the 61-year-old Whanganui man will often have flashbacks to his traumatic past at Lake Alice Hospital in the Manawatū, where, from the ages of eight to 11, he was one of dozens of children and young adults institutionalised after being deemed a “problem” by social services – and systematically abused.

“I can still smell the paraldehyde,” Tony tells Woman’s Day via the prison phone, recalling how he tried to escape the hospital several times, which resulted in him being administered with the toxic sedative. “There was a charge nurse who used to give me injections – a nasty little man whose eyes seemed to glow red with pure evil.”

Tony awaits updates from the Royal Commission Inquiry into Lake Alice with great interest – desperate, like so many others, for justice to be served. Of particular interest is a court date in August, when staff member John Richard Corkran, aka “Dempsey”, is due to stand trial after police charged him in 2021 with seven counts of wilful ill treatment of a child.