Debbie Kilroy was first imprisoned at 13 years of age — for skipping school.
I remember getting there and I was in a state of shock. And when I was taken into like this bathroom for induction, I had to take all my clothes off and they showered me and I had to put this nit treatment... that had to stay on your head for three days. So everybody knew that you were a new reception, right? And to be strip searched, like none of that had ever happened to me in my life.Debbie Kilroy
She was in and out of the juvenile detention system through her teens and later landed in an adult women’s prison. Determined to change her path, Debbie studied to become a social worker and then a lawyer, and now helps others like her to find their feet.
Hear from Debbie Kilroy as she debunks the misconceptions society holds about women in prison, and how she overcame the structural barriers that surrounded her.
Hosted by Yumi Stynes, SEEN is a podcast series about the trailblazers who persist and succeed without positive role models in mainstream culture. You’ll hear from the likes of leading tech creative Tea Uglow, activist Tar ang Chawla, academic and writer Dr Amy Thunig, and more as they share their stories of resilience and courage.
Follow SEEN on the SBS Audio website or app, Spotify and Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host: Yumi Stynes
Producers: Mandy Yuan, Laura Brierley Newton, Marcus Costello
Sound Design and Mix: Ravi Gupta
Executive Producer: Kate Montague
Theme Music: Yeo
Art: Evi O Studios
SBS Team: Caroline Gates, Max Gosford, Joel Supple, Micky Grossman
Original concept by: Bernadette Phương Nam Nguyễn
Transcript
(Theme music)
Debbie KILROY: Lift up your breasts, poke out your tongue, uh, your mouth, flick your hair, turn around. If you're lucky, they'll give you your bra back, because that's being dignified.
Yumi STYNES (Voiceover): This is Debbie Kilroy. She's describing the process for when a woman is taken into custody.
KILROY: Then you take the bottom half of your clothes off. Um, if you're menstruating, you've got to take out your tampon or give them a pad.
STYNES (Voiceover): On today's episode of SEEN, we try to understand the experience of one of the most unseen groups of people in the world — women in prison. As you'll hear in today's episode, these are people who are often defined by the "worst day of their life", or in other words, by the crimes they've been convicted of.
In my years of interviewing people, I've never knowingly interviewed a woman who has spent time in prison. I've really grappled with why this is, and I think it's because the stories of prisoners are not valued.
From the day they're sent to jail, they are silenced. And even after release, their criminality sticks to them like a tattoo.
(Theme music fades)
KILROY: We weren't seen. We weren't even known of. So we wanted a voice.
STYNES (Voiceover): Debbie Kilroy has made it her life's work to support this most invisible community. And she can do that, because she's lived it herself.
KILROY: I was sentenced to six years imprisonment and when I walked out the doors of that prison then, Boggo Road it was, um, I, I was gonna say I've never gone back. I haven't gone back in the way that the screws said I would in handcuffs, but I've been back ever since. You know, walking alongside women in all prisons, anywhere.
STYNES (Voiceover): I'm Yumi Stynes, and we start by acknowledging the Traditional Owners of the land on which we record. The Cammeraygal people, Gadigal people, Turbal people, and their Elders past and present.
And a warning, this episode contains some strong language, and references to violence and traumatic events. Listener discretion is advised.
(Sounds of birds, a quiet suburban neighbourhood)
KILROY: I grew up on the north side of otherwise known as Brisbane. Um, so in an area that was a very poor area, so low socioeconomic area.
Back in those days, children who were poor, um, were allowed to go to Catholic schools. That's how they were charitable.
STYNES (Voiceover): Debbie was a feisty little white kid who could see hypocrisy and wasn’t afraid to call it out, even when she was tiny.
(Sounds of a school playground)
KILROY: Um, I hated school. I hated the nuns. They were really abusive and vicious and, uh, I think when I was about five or six, I realised that the world operated in a very different way for girls as it did to boys.
Because there it was this big fig tree in the schoolyard. And it was huge. And the boys were climbing up it one day at lunchtime and so I decided to climb up it and the nuns, you know, they've ripped me out of the tree and I've had to go up the office and get six of the best of the leather strap, for climbing trees.
Girls aren't allowed to climb trees, only boys are allowed to climb trees. It's like... I was also that child that asked “Why, why, why?” So, you know, adults don't like those children. I love those children. It's like I learnt very quickly of how to resist, if you like. And so, you know, if I knew the nuns were coming after me for something, I would pull their veils off their head and they would run the other way because they weren't allowed to show their hair.
STYNES (Voiceover): Debbie was rebellious and spirited, qualities that we want in our girls. But she was often sent to the principal's office, and regularly punished with a leather strap. So it’s no surprise that she started to avoid school altogether.
KILROY: The cops come around again one morning up the back stairs of home and I'm in my school uniform. And I was going to school that day and they go, “You got to come with us.” It's like, “Why? I'm going to school.” But where they took me was to a children's prison for wagging school. So that was my first time I went to prison, um, as a 13 year old in my school uniform.
(Tense music)
STYNES (Voiceover): The place Debbie was sent to was called 'Wilson Youth Hospital'. A remand, assessment, and treatment centre for young people.
KILROY: It was actually called a hospital, right? And it was run by orderlies, nurses… psychiatrists, all that sort of thing. So we were deemed that we had medical issues, basically. Um, but it was a prison.
(Sounds of locked doors opening, prison environment with people talking in the background)
KILROY: I remember getting there and I was in a state of shock. And when I was taken into like this bathroom for induction, I had to take all my clothes off and they showered me and I had to put this nit treatment. It was like, um, kerosene or something on your head, with a plastic cap and that had to stay on your head for 3 days.
So everybody knew that you were like a new reception, right? And to be strip searched, like none of that had ever happened to me in my life. So it was highly traumatising, but I was also in a state of shock. It was like I was above my body, looking down at myself, like, what is happening here? And the deal was, because the social workers convinced my dad to sign me away for 4 weeks to have a psych assessment, and then sort out what could happen, you know, that I would stop wagging school.
STYNES (Voiceover): As a person who wagged a bit of high school when I was young, this kind of punishment seems outrageous.
It also reflects the times, when parents believed in the authority and so-called "wisdom" of those whose job it was to make decisions about children.
KILROY: My parents, you know, were very poor and... uneducated, and so they trusted professionals. So they also engaged with these social workers, right, who made recommendations. So mum and dad believed that it would, um, help me, you know.
And that still happens today and it and it's just a lie. Professionals don't know what's good for us and our families. You know, one thing about my home, we were very poor but in my home there was no violence.
STYNES (Voiceover): Debbie was just 13, and in the years that followed, was in and out of juvenile detention, where her fate was decided by a powerful few.
KILROY: I was deemed uncontrollable, so I'm back in, and it was always up to the psychiatrist who had the power to release you, it wasn't a court. The psychiatrist had to agree, and so I was a resistor, and, uh, I hated authority, um, because of what was happening to me, so they would lock me up in solitary confinement, and sedate me and hold me down, or drag me to the padded cell or whatever it was.
Like, you can't just leave a child locked in a padded cell, or a cell, solitary confinement, and not have interaction- you can't leave anybody. There's so much evidence and research around the world now that actually knows that solitary confinement decomposes your mental health very, very quickly, within 24 hours.
And I used to spend weeks, months in there — alone. You know, as many others do. So every time the cops would take me there, I would resist.
I would resist violently. I would lash out, kick out, throw things.
(Solemn music)
And then one day, um, I was told when I was 14 that the psych wanted to see me, the psychiatrist. So I thought, okay, this is going to be good news or bad news because... It's gonna be, “you're staying or we're going to let you go,” right? And, uh, they let me go up, escorted into old mate's room, and he's told me, um, that, he said, “Your father passed away early hours this morning” (voice breaking).
Still hurts. Um yep, and I just lost it because they don't give me any information. I'm a 14 year old kid. So the matron comes in and then she starts saying to me, “And you've killed your father, it's your fault. That's why he's died. That's why he died. Someone, you know, so young wouldn't die other than the stresses that you put on him.”
Anyway, and so I've, you know, just flipped it, tipped it, tipped the psych's table over. They've dragged me back to solitary, sedated me again and um, you know the matron comes in at different times telling me how bad I am. “You're that bad you've killed your father” and when you're young and vulnerable like that and you've got adults in power giving you these messages saying that you're bad, so bad that you killed your father you go “Okay!” You believe that script and that's what gets played out that you're bad “So I'll show you how bad.”
STYNES (Voiceover): It's really impossible to comprehend the psychological impact of this experience. At just 14 years old, having been told not only that her father has died, but that she is responsible for his death.
KILROY: Prisons are the most horrific places, darkest places, and especially in solitary confinement when you, especially when you've been told that someone that you love has died and you've got nobody and you're in this dark like, physical literally black place both psychologically and physically in the concrete cell.
(Hopeful music)
STYNES (Voiceover): In this place of despair, Debbie saw the tiniest crack of light...
KILROY: This one nurse, because they were called nurse, Peachy was her nickname. And she came in, I think, I think it was early hours in the morning, it had to be, because she came when nobody knew, right? And ‘cause I was sitting up against the wall, and she, ‘cause I used to spend a lot of time on my back, just kicking the doors.
Like, that was my resistance, the only thing that I could do to get any attention, get human contact, other than when they'd come in, you know, six of these so-called orderlies and haul me down to inject... sedatives into my butt. And she sat and gave me some lollies, um… (voice breaking) which was, um, such kindness in that depth of grief, yeah, as a kid.
And so that gave me the strength to continue to resist and not continue to, um, decompose mentally.
STYNES (Voiceover): That one act of kindness stayed with Debbie. But her time in and out of prison continued.
STYNES: Did it end when you turned 18?
KILROY: Well no, back then, and only ‘til recently, a few years ago, you were an adult at 17. So I was in, um, that kid's prison until I was about to turn 17. What the police did was held back a number of charges, and they arrested me when I turned 17.
STYNES (Voiceover): A tumultuous year followed.
Debbie was granted bail, but couldn't afford to pay it. Her Nana stepped in and laid down her life savings to get her out of prison.
At 17, Debbie was pregnant with her first child, and stuck in an abusive relationship.
What followed were years of violence, a new relationship, having another baby, and eventually a drug trafficking charge.
KILROY: The trafficking charges was because my husband smoked dope. So I figured, well, if I sell dope to my mates, our mates, then he can smoke for free. It doesn't cost us anything.
That constitutes trafficking. Okay, sure. (Laughs) You know what I mean? And it's really interesting now because you can get a prescription, right? To have marijuana. Well, we went to prison for that shit.
STYNES (Voiceover): Debbie's life was thrown into chaos once more. And while she was out on bail, waiting for the trial, something horrible happened.
STYNES: Do you want to talk about, um, losing your finger?
(Laughs) Um... So it was after we'd been arrested.
So I'm out on bail and the way that I'm dealing with this is drinking a lot, you know, like fucking numbing myself with vodka. (Laughs) And I, I came home one night and Joe's asleep and I've woken him up and I'm having a go at him for whatever reason, can't really remember.
STYNES (Voiceover): Joe is Debbie's husband.
KILROY: So he's decided, to throw me into the pool. So he's picked me up and physically picked me up, to take me down the back stairs to throw me into the pool. And I'm going off, and I've grabbed the door frame and my rings got caught on that. And I'm screaming, “My hand's stuck.” And he's just gone “Bullshit.” And pulled me and the angle that my hand was on, and his brute strength just ripped the whole finger off. But I didn't even know, like, got down to the side of the pool and I'm like, in the moonlight, “My fucking fingers gone!” And um, he's like, “FUCK!” And then I'm like, “My finger, where's my fucking finger?!” And he's like- cause your body gets- I'm not, I'm not laughing because it's like, oh my god, I could cry. But it's like, “Fuck!” Anyway, you gotta laugh, otherwise you'd be in the foetal position. That's a prison rule too. Anyway, it's like, make fun of things that are really warped.
Anyway, so the ambulance comes, they jimmy off the rings because it was so stuck and because also the tendon from out of my arm has come out as well. And so they jimmy that off, put it in a plastic bag with ice and you know, the ambulance officers, they're saying to me, “Oh don't worry, we've had where men's dicks have been cut off and we've sewn them back.”
It's like, “What the fuck? Like, seriously?! It's my finger, not a man's dick! I don't care about a man's dick!” It's like, come on. It's so funny. But I mean, to the point of ridiculous, right?
I get up to the hospital and I've got- in them days you wear those really black, tight, stretchy jeans that you've got to literally pull a peel off and they're going, “We're going to cut your jeans off.”
“Don't cut my fucking jeans off, they're my favourite jeans!” So I'm trying to get my jeans off. Like, you know, it's- oh my god... Anyway, so they operate, realise that they can't sew the finger back on, and um, and I go into, it's like a trauma unit where other people were getting stitches and bandages and like people had lost their arms and their legs and I'm thinking “Oh my god it's just a fucking finger don't worry about it…” cause I always look at the worst case scenario and so then when they unwrapped it and then I could see that it looks like that, I went out the, like the exit door to the stairs.
I didn't go down the lifts. And then I just sat on the top of the stairs and cried… Yeah.
And another time, I bought a drink of something and they gave me change back and I automatically put my hand out to put the change in. And the change fell through-
STYNES: The gap-
KILROY: Like where my finger would be. Yeah, and I burst into tears then as well. So it was quite raw.
Yea, anyway, violence...
(Gentle suspenseful music)
STYNES (Voiceover): Violence, Debbie felt, seemed to follow her. And it wasn't about to end. It was around this time that she was found guilty, and convicted of drug trafficking.
Debbie was going to Boggo Road Gaol. And this time, she was going in as an adult.
STYNES: I'm conscious to not fetishise the experience of what it was like in prison, but I think our listeners- I think people do want to know what it was like on a day to day basis. You know, you said it's violent. We don't really understand what that means in, in real terms. Can you help us understand what, what it's actually like?
KILROY: The whole energy of the place is violent, right? It has that energy of violence. So you're always on your toes, you're always looking out, worried where conflict's happening.
Because the prison facilitates that.
It'll pitch women against women, woman against woman, groups against groups, Aboriginal women against white women. You know, like, that's what they do. And so that's what I mean by violence. So it doesn't mean that someone's getting bashed up every day. It's about that constant energy, oppressive, violent feeling that something's going to happen. You know, when you're in the confines of, you know, 12 plus hours a day in a cell with nothing to do, and just left in your own mind, it becomes very difficult.
And then if you're lucky enough, you may have a visit. These days, a lot of women don't have visits from their family or children anymore since COVID. Everything's done electronically and the prison's happy for that. And also, even before that, women always got less visits than the men's prisons because women support men, but men don't support women, right?
They're usually dumped at the prison gates.
(Gentle suspenseful music)
STYNES (Voiceover): This is the culture of "violence" that you experience inside prison.
But one incident of actual physical violence that made international headlines, ended up changing Boggo Road Gaol forever.
Debbie had a best friend, also named Debbie, who was in a long-running feud with another inmate, whose name was Storm.
(Music fades)
KILROY: The screws knew Storm had the barbecue forks and the sharpening stone in her cell. It was, you could look in the window of the cell and you could see it on her desk. They knew that she had that and they didn't take it off. They just let this play out.
STYNES (Voiceover): In this pressure cooker environment, things came to a head.
KILROY: So, um, Storm, stabbed Debbie, my friend, numerous times, you know, she had her around the throat and in the chest. And I got stabbed twice trying to stop her being stabbed.
STYNES (Voiceover): The two women were taken to hospital where Debbie's best friend died.
The experience in hospital was harrowing.
KILROY: You know, they didn't even treat us right in the hospital because we were prisoners. They didn't pull up the side of the bed. She fell off the bed. I was fucking freaked out because I thought that that's why she died. Because of falling out and I did go to the nurses months later and said, “Can you tell me how she died?”
Because I was worried. Because they let her fall out like she was garbage onto the ground. And um, but it's when, when they operated on her because her heart had been stabbed numerous times that once they opened her up, it, the blood, you know, um, you know, the heart couldn't hold the blood obviously because of the stab wounds.
And it wasn't because, well she said to me it wasn't because of the fall, maybe she was lying, I don't know, but I had some comfort in that. Yeah, tragedy all around.
STYNES: Mmm.
STYNES (Voiceover): Losing her best friend was a turning point.
Debbie was still at Boggo Road Gaol, and so was the person who had murdered her best friend.
As part of her punishment, Storm had been put into solitary confinement.
KILROY: And I could hear Storm's screaming. In like, agonised screaming, how I used to when I was in solitary. It was hitting the core of my being, of my experience of solitary confinement. And so then I advocated, I said, “Can you just let her out of the fucking solitary? Like, this is, agonising, you're killing her!” I said, “Just bring her back” like, cause it's- I could empathise with what's going on with her.
(Gentle music)
STYNES (Voiceover): Something had shifted for Debbie, and the murder that initially divided the women at Boggo Road Gaol, had unexpected impact in the following months.
It had become a national, and then an international news story. People who didn't even know a women's prison existed on Boggo Road got involved, and there was a complete overhaul of management.
It brought the community a little closer together.
Those in charge paid more attention to the wellbeing of the women inside, and prisoner-led committees for areas like Health, Recreation, and Lifers and Long Termers were formed.
Debbie became the convenor of the Street Kids Committee, for women who had experienced homelessness in their earlier life.
(Music fades)
KILROY: I was asked to speak, and it was the first time I actually spoke and even made the conscious connection of the children's prison, dad dying, and where I was now. Where I realised, like, “Oh my god, there's gotta be something better than this shit where my friends are getting killed.”
Like, this violence is so out of control that it's now.
Murder and death.
Kill and be killed.
STYNES (Voiceover): Debbie's resolve to do things differently coincided with the prison hiring a new education officer.
KILROY: Gabriel, who was the education officer, she was amazing. So she got all us women all into all different types of training, whether it's TAFE courses and whatever. And so I started doing TAFE courses and, I said to Gabriel, “I want to go to university.”
I still hadn't done year 12, but I'd done other stuff and figured, well, university can't be that hard, can it? Like, seriously, (laughs) so, she's like, “What do you want to do?”
I said, “I think I want to do social work. I want to challenge the social workers about, you know, recommending to my parents that I should be locked up as a 13 year old, and recommending to other parents they should lock up their children in prisons. And use their power as a social work label. So I want to go do that because I want to go play ball in their court, with the qualifications they have.”
Anyway, I wasn't allowed out of the prison because I was high security classification to go over to the University of Queensland for the interview.
So Gabriel went for me and they were not keen to have a prisoner coming from Boggo Road over to UQ. But Gabriel was great. She just flipped their handbook over and said, “Aren't your values la la la la la?”
And they went, “Ah… okay.” So reluctantly, they let me enrol. And it was so funny because the first lecture I went to, I was taken over there. Escorted by a prison officer and, um. The first lecture was about going and experiencing what the people we’re talking about… experience. I'm sitting there thinking, okay, so, you know, go to a DV shelter, go to court. You know, go here, here, children's- whatever, right? All these things, and I'm thinking, “Oh, I've done all those things. I've experienced all those things.”
Um so I went down to the lecturer, who I still know today, and I said to her, “Um, I'm-”
She said, “Yes, I know who you are.” I was like, “Okay. I just want to say, like, I've experienced the, experienced everything that you've said, except for old woman bedridden, but hopefully I'll get there.”
She said, “You don't have to do this subject. We'll give you the credit points.” So my whole life experience at that point of time was worth five credit points. It's so funny.
STYNES (Voiceover): At university, Debbie's lived experience was recognised as expertise. She had knowledge that no one else had, and this motivated her.
STYNES: And did you complete that social work degree?
KILROY: Yes, I passed and I got the degree and then I thought “Oh well, that was a bit boring.” It wasn't very intellectually challenging for me at all so I said, “All right, the next ball court I want to play in is in the law courts. So I want to do law,” and um, you know, people close to me are saying, “Ahhh… I don't think you should do law.”
“Why?!”
“Um, I don't think you'll get admitted because of your criminal history.”
I said, “Well, that's just another fucking argument, isn't it? At the end of the day, I'm good at arguing like.” I said, if courts want to lock me and others up every day and say you're going to prison for “rehabilitation quote, end quote,” which I don't believe in.
Well, let's go. I actually want to know in the eyes of the law when I'm rehabilitated!
STYNES (Voiceover): Debbie completed her social work degree while on parole, and her Master's Degree in Law after her release.
She went on to become the first convicted drug trafficker to be admitted as an Australian lawyer.
Now Debbie's life's work is to advocate for women in prison, and she understands the systemic issues better than anyone.
KILROY: So if I'm homeless on the street, mentally unwell with a drug addiction, I am going to collide with the cops. There's no doubt about it, right? And the state's not providing me with mental health support, addiction support, housing, nothing. And I'm living in poverty and then if you're Aboriginal or black, there's the whole layer of racism that drives that as well.
STYNES (Voiceover): Debbie’s experience as a white woman in the prison system was horrific, but it's important to note here, that First Nations people, who represent an estimated 3.8% of the Australian population, account for around 34% of all prisoners.
And in NSW, over 50% of imprisoned children are First Nations children. Over 50%!
KILROY: And then you want me to rehabilitate myself in prison. Well, I don't know what I'm supposed to do. Um, because when you release me, I'm homeless still, my mental health's worse. I'm seriously looking for a hit because of all the trauma in prison. And the state takes no responsibility for any of these issues. So rehabilitation is a myth.
(Gentle music)
STYNES (Voiceover): In 1992, Debbie started Sisters Inside, it’s an organisation that runs programs, fundraisers, and camps supporting incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women and children. They provide counselling, education, health support, peer support and legal support.
They also run community awareness campaigns, which is how I first heard of Debbie. The campaign was about how a lot of women are put in jail for unpaid fines. Yes, unpaid fines.
So in the last 12 months, I got a $400 parking fine and it devastated me, but I paid it. It’s really hard to fathom that if I didn't have the money to pay that fine, I could've been jailed. And not for being any more or less criminal than the person who could pay the fine.
Just more poor.
It's a really stark reminder that being poor is punishable. And just how important the work of Sisters Inside is.
(Music fades)
KILROY: We are an abolitionist organisation that exists to dismantle the prison industrial complex.
So we're in all the women's prisons and the girls’ prisons we're in watch houses all the time. We're in courts, everything we do is a, um, a decarceration strategy.
STYNES (Voiceover): When Debbie talks about the Prison Industrial Complex, she's referring to an industry that benefits from sending people to prison. On paper, prisons are meant to rehabilitate. But really, they're incentivised to keep people incarcerated for the profit and gain of people in power. That is the business model.
For Debbie, and Sisters Inside, fighting against this system means fighting equally, for all women.
KILROY: It couldn't be for example all women except for Storm because you murdered my mate, right? That's not what Sisters Inside's about.
So I knew very early on the piece that I had to make peace with Storm.
And I asked, um, one of the women to go get Storm and asked her to come up to the chapel and I went down and she's like, “What the fuck for?!”
So she come up hesitantly and I said, “Look here Storm, we got to sort our shit out. If we're going to have this organisation for all of us, we, you and me got to sort this out.” You know, um and so over weeks and months and years, we spent long times meeting in that chapel- ourselves!
Screws didn't do this. The system had nothing to do with this. I did this, Storm did this. And even, cause even the women, the lifers and long termers, they're saying to me, “Are you fucking crazy? Like, what are you doing?!” Cause they were highly traumatised too. They were there when Debbie was murdered, right? And they're like, “You have lost your mind.”
It's like, “Nuh! Sisters Inside's got to be for all of us. It can't be based on what we've done.” Like, we can't be judged. We're so much more than the worst thing we've ever done. And which means I've got to do the work. I've got to heal. And I've got to heal the relationship with Storm. Build a relationship with Storm to allow her to move forward too. And so we did all that work. And to understand. To hear about Storm's life and the violence that was perpetrated against her was just so horrific! So Storm became part of Sisters Inside.
She's still part of Sisters Inside today. I advocated for her with the parole board to release her, um, on parole. And, you know, we've been mates ever since and still are.
STYNES (Voiceover): Sisters Inside's advocacy work has had a huge impact. In recent years, they raised over one $1.3 million dollars to stop First Nations women from being imprisoned for the non-payment of fines. Wins like these are motivating, but there's still a lot of work to be done to prevent women and children from being incarcerated for relatively small crimes.
KILROY: You know, the top ten offences that women are in prison for are really low level. Breaches of bail, fail to appear in court, drug possession, um, stealing. Like, they're not serious offences. And when you tell people that, they're like, “Oh my god, we shouldn't be locking women up for that.” Exactly! But we do, and we allow it to happen because how it's presented by politicians and through the media is that, well, we're the unknown.
We're not seen by anybody.
STYNES (Voiceover): To address this invisibility, Debbie does a lot of public speaking.
KILROY: One of the things that I do when I go and speak to people is. Because I can see them struggle, right? You know how you pick up the energy in the audience, and people, when you're speaking to people, wherever you are, the people listening to you?
And I go, I've been in prison, and I tell them that story, and I stand there, and then I go, and I'm a social worker, and they're like “...”, and I'm a lawyer, and they're like “...”, and you can see them like, “What the fuck is going on?” They can't comprehend this, right? And, and they can't reconcile it because we have only been seen and described as a criminal, right?
Never as a social worker, a lawyer or many other things. Like there's women that have been criminalised in prison are so many different things other than the worst thing they've ever done by going to prison. We are so much more than that, but we are not afforded to be seen as that.
And that's the problem.
STYNES (Voiceover): By being seen in this way, Debbie has created a new narrative that has inspired other women like her to engage with education, and other tools of empowerment to help them rebuild their lives after prison.
KILROY: Many talk to me and many have started law degrees and many other degrees. Because they've seen me like, move through and carve through, you know, the white middle class privilege. They're doing such amazing things. So many of them, you know, I, I've admitted women's admissions to be lawyers.
Um, I've been at graduations. Um, women, uh, formerly incarcerated are academics working in amazing jobs, being social workers, for example, being, and being abolitionists.
(Theme music)
Living life to the fullest without any state intervention and that's what's most important.
STYNES (Voiceover): This has been SEEN, hosted by me, Yumi Stynes, and produced by Audiocraft in collaboration with SBS.
If you liked this episode, please like and share it with the people around you who you think will love it, because every share helps our show to grow.
From Audiocraft, Season 2 of SEEN was produced by Mandy Yuan and Laura Brierley Newton. Tape sync by Dylan Prins. Sound design and mix is done by Ravi Gupta, and Executive Producer, Kate Montague.
The SBS team are Caroline Gates, Joel Supple, Max Gosford and Micky Grossman.
Our podcast artwork is created by Evi-O Studios.
And music is by Yeo.
SEEN's original concept was by Bernadette Phương Nam Nguyễn.
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