JAMES RICKETSON - FROM PRISONER TO HERO

WHILE LANGUISHING IN PRISON, THE AUSSIE DEVISED A PLAN TO HELP SOME OF THE WORLD’S POOREST PEOPLE

- Michael Crooks

Of the more than 450 days he spent in a hellish foreign jail, James Ricketson can pinpoint his darkest moment. Lying on the prison floor late one steamy night, in a jail so crowded that inmates sleep entangled with each other on the cell floor, Ricketson couldn’t fall asleep.

“I had lice, and all sorts of things creeping and crawling over my body,” he recalls. “I had sores on my legs, and I was scratching. I remember thinking, ‘If I don’t wake up tomorrow morning, it won’t bother me at all.’”

From that nightmare, a dream was born. Ricketson, an Australian documentary filmmaker who spent 15 months in Cambodia’s notorious Prey Sar prison for “espionage” in 2017, devoted his time in jail to launching a charity for a cause he has held dear for decades. Ricketson set up Family by Family, a charity to help impoverished Cambodians, who spend their lives scavenging on – and living alongside – rubbish dumps.

Says Ricketson, 71, “When I knew I was getting my 15 minutes of fame, I thought, ‘Why don’t I turn that media attention into raising some money for a family?’”