'I JUST HAVE TO GET MY CHILD'

 The mother of a South African girl jailed in Thailand speaks to YOU from Asia about her struggle to secure her daughter's freedom

-  ROXANNE MOONEYS

T WAS the first time she'd seen her daughter in three years but she couldn't hug her or even hold her hand - a glass partition separated them and a prison guard watched their every move.

Yet as heartbreaking as it was, Lynn Blignaut drew some comfort from the fact her daughter, Ashley, looked healthy and seemed in good spirits despite the circumstances.

Ashley (23) made international headlines when she was found guilty of possessing drugs with the intent to distribute them in Thailand on 18 August 2021 and sentenced to life in prison.

The young woman maintains she didn't know what was in the package, which she says she received on a friend's behalf in October 2020. It had contained 250g MDMA, also known as ecstasy.

In August this year, Ashley's sentence was reduced by the appeal court to 33 years and four months - but for her and her mom, it's still a lifetime.

Lynn, who lives in George in the Western Cape, is battling to come to terms with the fact that her daughter is in jail in a far-off country, so she flew to Thailand to see if there was anything she could do to free her child.

She's been seeing Ashley twice a week for 15 minutes in the Nakhon Si Thammarat Prison in southern Thailand. These precious visits take place in a room that's only 7m by 3m in dimension, and mom and daughter are on either side of a wall-to-wall glass partition.

"I honestly can't recall everything that happened when I first saw her, but it was very, very emotional for the both of us," Lynn tells YOU.

She and Ashley start each visit by praying together. Lynn says faith is the one thing that's kept her going since the nightmare started.

"When I visited Ashley on the Friday following the [reduced] sentencing, she was very down. But she later wrote me a note to say her mood had improved after we prayed."