|
|
 |
| |
Terry Donaldson went from drug smuggler to prisoners’ campaigner |
Hell is a jail in Barbados
Former drug smuggler Terry Donaldson talks to Dan Carrier about his life as a heroin addict
TERRY Donaldson was banged up in a prison in the West Indies, where murder, rape, and taking vast quantities of the hardest and most addictive street drugs were every day occurrences; and all done with the knowledge and approval of the police and prison authorities.
Terry, who has lived for many years in Camden Town and ran a stall in the market, served three years in a notorious prison in Barbados for drug smuggling – a spell that nearly ended in his death when a riot reduced his cell block to smoking ruins and soldiers fired indiscriminately at rampaging prisoners in an attempt to halt the violence.
Having served his term and flown back to Camden Town in an attempt to free himself from 50 years of drug taking, Terry has written a book about his experiences.
It is a sad story of a wasted life, of brushes with authority as he tried to make a quick buck to fund his many drug addictions.
During those first days in Glendairy Prison in Barbados the enormity of his situation became obvious. He said: “It was like finding yourself in the middle of a Crimea War battlefield.
“The cell blocks were like a scene from Dante’s Inferno when he looks at all the condemned souls and all the suffering taking place. Yet what really caught the eye was the way in which everybody amidst this chaos seemed to be going about their business, as if they were beyond caring and it was just another day in the office.”
Terry had spent 30 years making money as a tarot card reader at Camden Lock market, while also committing cheque fraud to fuel his drug binges and trips to Holland, Turkey and India, smuggling what he could from A to B for quick cash.
Terry does not want the reader to subscribe to the view that he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Instead, he takes you back through his past, trying to find the key moments in his life that eventually led to his incarceration.
Terry believes in the concept of gateway drugs – that one soft drug leads to harder substances. But rather than consider the fact that he smoked cannabis as the entry point into a life that spiralled into crack and heroin abuse, he goes even further back, beyond the first teenage toke of a cigarette.
“Next door to my school in Wood Green was the Barratt’s sweet factory”, he recalls. “They would open the air vents and this sugary scent would flow over the playground.
“Sugar was a start: the effect it has on your head, the head rush, is a type of drug, and one I loved as a kid.”
It was in London in 2002 that he became involved with a scam from which he nearly never recovered.
He had been living with a girlfriend, Lucy, and the pair were heavily addicted to crack, spending around £60,000 in just six months. Lucy had turned to prostitution to fund their habit, and would bring home men who would then have sex with her while he waited next door.
Then one of their dealers suggested Terry make himself a quick £5,000 by flying to the Caribbean and bringing back a suitcase full of cocaine.
Terry explained: “I was fed up sitting around while Lucy went out and dragged guys in off the street, bonked them on our bed and then smoked up the proceeds with me.
“I had had a guy offer me £1,000 to run his ex-wife over in a car in front of her children. I didn’t trust him. Right after the hit I was to drive the car to a car crusher place where all the evidence would be made to disappear – probably meaning me too.”
Terry said he felt trapped and the idea of doing a drug run seemed a soft option.
“My drug addled reasoning was that if it worked out I would be £5,000 better off. If it didn’t and I got busted, at least I’d have a chance to get off the gear and start afresh.”
He spent a week waiting in a hotel, smoking crack and heroin bought with the £500 of spending money the smuggling gang had given him, and then collected a suitcase of drugs and headed to catch a flight back to London.
He was arrested at the airport, charged, pleaded guilty and sentenced. He was sent to the notorious Glendairy prison and only returned to London after serving three years.
He now campaigns to ensure the plight of British nationals in prisons abroad is publicised, and this was one of the reasons behind writing his warts-and-all book.
Terry said: “The most important thing was to tell the story of how people are being completely brutalised by a prison system.
“They have no recourse to any kind of justice, and no one is speaking up for them. They have no representatives working for them, and the unofficial policy of the British government seems to be just not to help any one in prison in Barbados at all.”
Terry continued: “They would allow prison officers to sit in the meetings we had with diplomats and embassy staff, and if we spoke out against our treatment there would be serious repercussions.
“Horrific things would happen: I know of a fellow British inmate who was raped by another prisoner when he spoke out.
“Her Majesty’s Prison Inspectorate are supposed to visit Barbados’s prisons. They were simply not allowed in some wings of the prison I was in because it was deemed ‘too dangerous’, yet rather than this be something to set off alarm bells, they just ignored those sections.”
His journey started in the school playground and has now taken him to the Houses of Parliament, where he lobbies ministers on behalf of prisoners abroad.
He said: “After what I experienced, I couldn’t rest if I didn’t do all I could to make sure others abroad are not forgotten.”
|
 |
|
|
|
