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Former Miss SA semi-finalist: jailed with a death sentence and now free

Written by Tashi from the blog Tashi's TV on 11 Aug 2016
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I Am Woman returned to SABC3 last week for Season 3 - on Thursdays at 21h00 - and tonight's episode looks like a must-see because it's a heeeeeeectic story about a woman who's been through the unimaginable.

It's an interview with Vanessa Goosen, a former Miss South Africa semi-finalist who was sentenced to death in Thailand after she was accused of drug trafficking.

She was 21 at the time - and pregnant - and was adamant that she knew nothing about the drugs she had in her baggage. She was caught carrying 1.7kg of heroin in the covers of an engineering book that her boyfriend's friend asked her to take home from Thailand.

She said that she had no idea that it was in the books and I definitely believe her because you'd have to be insane to smuggle drugs through Thailand, especially when you're pregnant. Her boyfriend and his friend obviously knew this and would never have done it themselves.

Vanessa was arrested and jailed in the Lard Yao maximum security women’s prison in Bangkok where she was given a given a death sentence which later changed to a sentence of life in jail.

She had her baby behind bars and then, three years later her baby was taken away from her. So extreme and intense. This is a pic of her at the time...


After 16 years and a half years in hell she was given a king's pardon and eventually released.

Today she's 44 and back home in South Africa where she's become an anti-drugs campaigner, educator and motivational speaker.

Tonight's interview will be about it all - her imprisonment, how she made it out alive and sane and the transformations within her as a result.

I keep imagining what that moment must have felt like for her - when they found the drugs on her. The terror and panic and fury she must have felt. Hopefully the show will ask her about the boyfriend and his friend because between them they're murderers!!

According to the show, the episode focuses on what it means to be TRULY free.
 

Shows in this post: I Am Woman - Leap of Faith

Channels in this post: SABC3



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