Party girl to prison - inside the Bondi dial-a-dealer bust: Danielle Hogan Pt.1 - I Catch Killers with Gary Jubelin

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
The public has had a long held fascination with detectives.
Detective see aside of life the average persons never exposed her.
I spent thirty four years as a cop. For twenty
five of those years I was catching killers. That's what
I did for a living. I was a homicide detective.
I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys. Instead, I'm taking
the public into the world in which I operated. The

(00:23):
guests I talk to each week have amazing stories from
all sides of the law. The interviews are raw and honest,
just like the people I talk to. Some of the
content and language might be confronting. That's because no one
who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged. Join
me now as I take you into this world. Today,

(00:47):
I spoke to someone who has seen a lot in
her relatively short life. I sat down had a chat
with Danny L. Hogan. She has a complicated story. We
talked about the childhood, growing up in the very posh
Sydney with some knives, and how as a teenager she
was sexually assaulted. She reported the matter to police, but
the court matter just caused her more emotional damage. She

(01:10):
acknowledges that that experience changed her as a person, not
in the best way, but in a reckless and selfish
way that led to her making poor life decisions. She
was living the high life as a party girl, making
money as a member of a large scale drug syndicate
operating out of Bondai. She was arrested, and in hindsight,
the arrest was probably the best thing that could have

(01:30):
happened to her. The media described her as a glamorous
cocaine dealer, which made her an obvious target in prison.
She was sentenced to three years and ten months and
learned a lot about herself during her incarceration. She told
me how she survived in prison and how it forced
her to look critically at her life, and also about

(01:51):
what she's doing now working for Confit, which is a
fitness business run by ex prisoners, and the work that
she's doing with a new business called inside Out. Was
an interesting chat. Daniel Hogan, welcome to our Catch Killers.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
Thank you, thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 (02:07):
Well, it's a pleasure to have you, and I know
you've had well the way I would describe an interesting life.
You've had your highes, you've had your lowers. Did you
ever think and this is a hard question first up,
but I'll you in the deep end that being arrested
by police may have been the best thing that happened to.

Speaker 2 (02:24):
Look until it happened, I never would have thought it
would have been the best thing that happened to me.
But in hindsight, going to jail was literally the best
thing that ever happened to me.

Speaker 1 (02:35):
Yeah, what do you reckon your life could have been
like if you weren't arrested at that stage.

Speaker 2 (02:39):
To be honest, upon reflection recently, I feel like if
I wasn't arrested, if I wasn't persecuted, I would either
be a junkie or I'd be dead.

Speaker 1 (02:50):
OK, so you wouldn't wouldn't have learned your lesson?

Speaker 2 (02:53):
Absolutely not.

Speaker 1 (02:55):
It's funny. I speak to a lot of people, and
you know, sometimes the worst thing that happens to you
in your life can turn around and then be a
positive thing.

Speaker 2 (03:04):
Absolutely, I never really saw it as the worst thing
that ever happened to me. I feel like so much
other shit happened to me prior to that that were
the worst things that ever happened. But this was kind
of like my saving grace. This is my opportunity to
turn things around.

Speaker 1 (03:18):
Okay, And it certainly gives you a time to reflect
when you're seeing in the prison self.

Speaker 2 (03:22):
It gave me a year and a half to reflect,
so I reflected.

Speaker 1 (03:26):
You can look very deep inside yourself when you yeah
locked in a cage. Basically, So how does a girl
from Snives end up in jail? Because if people don't
know Snives, obviously you grew up there. I'm aware of
the area. I describe it as a posh area. A
lot of money there and even people when they pronounce

(03:49):
s knives syntimes.

Speaker 2 (03:53):
Look, while I can, I can completely agree with you.
It's a very wealthy, posh kind of area. There is
still such a highlighted crime rate amongst sort of like
norseial area. And that's more or less where I grew
up in. So while my private school principals and teachers
would be very disappointed in me, I feel like, you know,

(04:13):
this was, like we said before, this is probably one
of the best things that actually happened to me. And
it wasn't necessarily a byproduct of my environment or you know,
what I grew up with, because my upbringing was fantastic.
I can't I cannot fault you know, where I grew up,
who I grew up with. However, I feel like things
just started happening to me unfortunately, and from there I

(04:37):
kind of a kind of spiraled, okay.

Speaker 1 (04:39):
And with like I heard you talk in another interview
that you did, and you were saying about and this
is not slamming that all people live at snives, but
quite often where the parents have got their professions and
all that they're not giving the attention to the kids
that perhaps they should be. You're sending your kid to
a private school, therefore, or I must be a good,

(05:01):
good parent and take the eye off the ball a
little bit.

Speaker 2 (05:04):
I can completely agree with that, and I'm really glad
that you raised it because look, I before before moving
to nor Shaw, I was growing up in ride Right,
so kind of like middle class area, really cool. You know,
kids would go door to door on weekends. It was
very much like an open community. And so from there, Look,

(05:28):
my parents did the absolute best they could and broke
their backs to give my sister and myself the best
opportunity and the best lives that they possibly could. And
to them, that meant sending us to the North Shaw,
going to private school, spending all of their finances on,
you know, the finer things, schooling, extracurricular activities, that kind

(05:49):
of thing. And while I can't fault that because to
anyone that would look like, you know, that's what's going
to breed success, Unfortunately it did. And we were, like
I said, we were a middle class family that was
trying to fit into a society where we didn't necessarily belong.
But the craziest thing to me throughout that I think

(06:11):
it was like a five or six year process, was
like we were this average family, you know, grew up
and ride, watched like Saturday morning TV, you know, had
Hash Browns. Everything was so cool, calm and collected. And
I had all of these girls that I was at
school with that had all the wealthy families and you know,
the trips overseas during school holidays. They were envious of

(06:34):
my family and I would literally I would never, for
the life of me understand why at the time, but
now I do, putting it into perspective. Their parents gave
them presents. My family gave me presents. Do you get
what I'm saying.

Speaker 1 (06:49):
I do.

Speaker 2 (06:49):
Yeah. So Mum and Dad were there twenty four seven
for anything that I needed. They were stronger connections exactly
right till this day, they're still there constantly. You know,
we're such a strong family unit. And that's the first
thing that I noticed growing up in the North sure
is that, you know, while the finances were there and
the parents could you know, push them to anything or

(07:12):
take them overseas whatever, they weren't there. They weren't a
family unit. There was no trust, there was no there
was no real connection. So yeah, having some of my
closest friends at such a young age being like, oh,
we love we love your mom, we love your dad, like.

Speaker 1 (07:28):
You know, because there was more family unit.

Speaker 2 (07:32):
For the life of me at the time, I couldn't
understand why. I was like why, bro, Like your your
family's taking you to Hawaii. I'm going to terrible. But
now in retrospect, like, that's that's all I could have
asked for. Like, that's that's all to me growing up
as a child, that's what you need. You need both
parents hands on deck. You need parents that genuinely cared.

(07:52):
Till this day, my dad helps me write resumes, freaking
public talks like helps me do the most, and that
means so much more than you know financial gain.

Speaker 1 (08:02):
And so with what you've been through, and I know
you've You've paid tribute to your family, the support that
you got, the they never abandoned you when you're in trouble,
and the embarrassing the family name, and they still hung
in there with you.

Speaker 2 (08:15):
Oh, you have no idea. We got calls from literally
England from family members over there saying, ah, do you
know that your daughter Danielle was like currently on the
news for selling drugs. So yeah, the look, the embarrassment
didn't stop for many years. But my family always from
day dots saw so much in me, saw so much,

(08:36):
saw my potential, saw that you know, everything that I
was going through, unfortunately was it was horrible, all the
all the years that I encountered of so much bullshit,
but they always knew within them that I was going
to come out on the other end. Yeah, that there
was there was reason behind what I was going through

(08:57):
and that's and that's what I'm living now.

Speaker 1 (08:59):
So and the importance of having that family support, and
I'm sure you saw it when you're in prison, that
people with support on the outside, what the difference that
can make.

Speaker 2 (09:08):
And that's exactly why I do what I do now.
And the values that I live by and the business
that I've started now, and the reason that I'm with
businesses that I work with now is because every single
day in there was a reminder that I am so
much luckier and so much more fortunate than ninety percent

(09:30):
of the women in there. You know, I would wait
fifteen minutes in line for phone calls in jail, and
I would you'd naturally watch everyone you know that's jumping
on the phones, and half the time they'd have no
one to call, you know, they'd pick up the phone,
some people wouldn't answer, or they're calling friends that they've
known for five minutes. There's no support on the outside.

(09:52):
And so this is why it really gave me the
drive to start what I do now into creating a
support community for women that are going through what they're
going through.

Speaker 1 (10:03):
We want to and I want to talk very deeply
about what happens in a women's prison and how there's
a neglect. And I came to the realization of that
sitting down having people on the podcast, and we always
the perception of jails are filled with men, and we've
all got seen the jail movies and everything else that's
in our head, but we don't often think about women

(10:25):
in prison, and there's a neglect there. But we'll talk
about that later on. And I just want to say
in prison and we'll have a deep dive into it.
You going into prison growing up where you did, with
the media that you had, I reckon you probably had
a tough time when you first went into prison because
it's not an environment that you would have been familiar

(10:46):
with or ever expected yourself to be.

Speaker 2 (10:49):
That's exactly right. Look, the media attention was literally a
sentence in itself. The thing that really upset me the
most about that is all of the headlines, everything that
was put out was so bullshit to the point that
not only was it embarrassing for me. I didn't mind
that because I was the one that commit the crime,

(11:10):
so I was like, fuck it, whatever, I'll wear it.
But the fact that it then created, you know, issues
for my family, it was embarrassing. You know. There were
certain things like, oh, glamorous BONDI influencer, this that the other,
with her spend all the drug money on her designer bags, whatever,
I shop a Kmart like, it's not. They made such

(11:32):
a big deal out of it, to the point where
I even remember the arresting officer, well, one of the
arresting officers as he was putting handcuffs on me, apologized
and said, we're literally going to make an example out
of you, you know, because the media, the news, they're
so sick of seeing let's say, men from western Sydney suburbs,
they're sick of seeing you know, X y Z for

(11:55):
selling drugs.

Speaker 1 (11:57):
Still was knocked in. Then the police right, and then
you in someone that.

Speaker 2 (12:00):
They wanted an you know, above average looking girl from
eastern suburbs. They wanted that. They wanted that clickbait.

Speaker 1 (12:08):
Well, your headlines were glamorously some Suburbs drug dealer arrested.
So yeah, that's going to attract attention. But that would
have put pressure on you going into prison. And also
it's not an environment you'd be for me with I
sit opposite people. I came in contact with people, and
I know people that realized very early in their life

(12:29):
at some point in time, they were going to end
up in prison, so they prepare themselves mentally for it.
That wasn't the case with you. So we will take
you there what it felt like when you're arrested. But
we'll find out a little bit more about about your life.
So growing up, moved from ride Over the Snives competing
with the people in the high income area of Snives.

Speaker 2 (12:50):
Describe your childhood before moving to Noshaw. My childhood was beautiful. Honestly,
I can't faulter it. You know, everyone says trauma derives
from childhood, and this is what has confused me throughout
so many years of my life. I'll sit with counselors, therapist, whatever,
and everyone's saying, no, you're trauma's from childhood. I'm like, no,

(13:12):
it's not. Like. My childhood was awesome. I had such
a loving mom and dad that would go to any
extent to see myself and my sister happy. I was
the best kid ever, and my parents will say that.
Any adult that was around me until fourteen fifteen will say,
you know, she was such a loving, open, outgoing girl.

(13:33):
From the second that I could speak, I would speak
to anyone about anything, you know. I just had such
a love for life, and I definitely learned that off
my mom and dad. So we'd be sitting at restaurants
and la lah, Like if I was battling, I would
just want to chat because I saw I would see
the innocence in everyone I would see. You know that
the world was actually such an amazing place. I was

(13:53):
so inclusive. So when I moved to these private schools,
I brought that inclusivity with me. You know, I was
seen as like the popular girl, and yet I would
want everyone sitting with us in a massive circle at
lunchtime because all I wanted was for everyone to feel seen,
heard and loved. Right. So that continued until I think

(14:15):
year eight. I was then sexually assaulted, and then at
that point my life completely turned upside down. To stole
your innocence, absolutely, it did so.

Speaker 1 (14:25):
And look at us before we started the podcast when
we're having chat the other day, and you said, it's
all right to talk about it absolutely. How old were
you and what do you care to tell us about
what happened?

Speaker 2 (14:38):
Yeah, so I was fourteen, I think fourteen or fifteen,
So what had basically happened? I was at this at
this point in time, I had moved schools. I was
in year eight, so I was at a performing arts
school doing what I love, which is dancing. So you know,
that innocence was so we was so still very much there,

(14:58):
and I at an under eighteen's event. One night, dancing
away doing what I love. I was with my best
friend whatever else. We met these guys and in my head,
I thought, oh, it's nothing. You know, they're friends. I
was at a co ed school at the time, so
I thought, you know, boys or boys, they're nothing whatever.
So started chatting to this bloke that lied about his

(15:21):
age and wanted to meet me one day at Westfield,
close by to my school. I honestly thought nothing of it.
I thought, you know, this happens every day I go
to school with boys. You know, we can we have
a friendship. Whatever. Anyway, there were several of us there,
and look, push came to shove, and then you know,

(15:43):
as perpetrators do, let's go for a walk, Let's do this,
let's do that. So yeah, I went for a walk
in the park. There was several of us, like I said,
and then you know, I fly started sort of dropping off.
I think everyone started reading the room except for me,
and yeah, I was left to my lonesome with two men.

(16:03):
And from there, yeah, it just turned into my worst nightmare.
And I didn't really understand what had happened until several
days later. So I actually called the my friend that
was actually like there. Several moments before it happened, I

(16:24):
called her and I said, I think I've been raped,
but I can't, like, I don't know, you know, I
was almost frozen to the fact, you know, I've The
amazing thing about my family is that it's also a downfall.
I grew up in a family where the world was
so perfect, everything was so amazing innocence, right, So we

(16:45):
didn't talk about real shit. We didn't talk about when
bad things happen, what do you do? So something bad
had occurred to me, and I didn't know how to
handle it because I didn't know if it was my
fault or if it was actually as bad as what
I thought it was. So I kind of kept it hidden.
And then maybe about I think it was about a

(17:07):
month later, my pe teacher pulled that same girl aside
and said, Danielle's not acting normal. Has something happened? And
my friend at the time broke down into tears and said,
you know, she called me and said XYZ happened. And
then the pea teacher pulled me aside that afternoon and said,
has something happened to you? And I said, oh, I like,

(17:29):
I think so, but I don't know, like maybe I
asked for it. Maybe, And this is the problem, right, I've.

Speaker 1 (17:35):
Seen serious thing about sexual assaults, correct, especially with young
young victims.

Speaker 2 (17:41):
Exactly none that I've ever been through that before, Like
I unfortunately lost my virginity of these people. So in
my mind, I was like, is it their fault? Is
it my fault? I don't know. So anyway, ended up
telling my pe teacher. She told the principal. I got
pulled into the principal's office and while they were so
decent about the ordeal, and we're like, we're here for you,

(18:05):
da da da da, they said, look, we're giving you
the opportunity to go home and tell your family. Otherwise
in the next twenty four hours, like we have to
tell the police, like we have to report this report,
exactly right. So I thought, okay, no, I don't want
that because there was that shame element in the back
of my head still, right, So I went home. Funnily enough,
I actually don't remember this. My family have told me

(18:29):
ever since. So I went home. I think I texted
my older sister and I said, something bad has happened.
You need to come home now. I need to tell you.
And I told her, and then she did the same thing.
She texted my mum and said, something's happened to Danny.
You need to come home. My parents work sort of
like nine to five, so they were like, she said,

(18:51):
you need to come home now, you need, like Danny
has to tell you something. They both came home and
I said, I don't want to tell Dad. And again
that falls back on that whole shame element of like,
I don't want to disappoint my dad. I don't. I
don't want him to. You know, my dad was my
best friend at the time, so it still is. So
I said, you know, I don't want Dad hearing it

(19:13):
about this. So I told Mum what had happened, and
then immediately Mum was like, no, let's call the police.
Da da da DA. Report was made and then yeah,
found ourselves in court.

Speaker 1 (19:24):
How did that play out for you? Because it's traumatic,
isn't it? The way you just described that, I think
you took everyone into that situation you find yourself in.
You don't even know what's happened. That you're young, you're
innocent and earn that's happened, and then the will start turning.
You've spoken to people, obviously it had an impact on you.
Other people noticed, and then you go to the police.

(19:46):
You've got to relay the whole story to the police,
and then the matter goes to court. How was that
whole experience for you?

Speaker 2 (19:54):
And that was honestly, that was the hardest part. So
that was the first time I had faced the digital system,
and honestly, it let me down. So you hear, like, well,
now in my line of work, But prior to that,
you know, I've had so many encounters with friends at
such a young age that have said that they've been
through something similar and I'm like, dude, that's assault, like that,

(20:16):
that's rape, you know. But there's there's so many women
that aren't willing to share their stories or go to
police about it. And I hate to admit it, but
I actually understand why. So at such a young age,
you know, we talk it to the police, the report
was made, we went through the whole sentencing situation. But
because of unfortunately that same friend of mine at the

(20:41):
time lying about where she was and lying about the
day and what had happened, it turned into this entire call.
Although there was CCTV footage and you know, everything was
kind of proven except the initial assault, it turned into,
you know, the the defendant's representatives basically saying to me,

(21:04):
why are you lying about this? Why would you put
that upon someone? Why would you ruin someone's life? Da
da da da da? And I'm fourteen No sorry, I
was fifteen at this point. I don't know how to
handle that. Yeah, you know, so I'm not answering questions
in the way that was deemed necessary. I completely shut down.
I was made out to be a liar and that

(21:25):
broke my heart. So unfortunately, the abuses weren't even charged.
I think at best they received abos.

Speaker 1 (21:34):
When you say charged, they weren't.

Speaker 2 (21:35):
They weren't convicted yet, they weren't convicted. So that was
just such a kick in the mouth to me at
such a young age, because I thought the system that
was supposed to protect me, the one place that I
was so scared and so vulnerable being in, pretty much
turned against me saying that no, you're a liar, No,
this is this, this is that, that's not really what happened.

(21:57):
So in my mind from there, honestly, that just changed
me as a person. That made me feel like, what's
the point of being honest anymore? What's the point of
being vulnerable. What's the point in being this loving person
that just this young girl that loved everyone, that loved life,
because fuck it, look look at what happens when I
am you know. So that that was honestly the turning

(22:19):
point in my life.

Speaker 1 (22:21):
And with that you could recognize that you change, you
change your complete outlook on off one hundred percent.

Speaker 2 (22:27):
I went from this girl that was so trusting and
loving and positive to just now, I'm here for myself,
I'm selfish, I'm I'm whatever, it doesn't matter anymore. And
the saddest part of that was I wholeheartedly respected myself.
There's you know, at that fourteen fifteen age. Unfortunately, there's

(22:50):
so many girls that are losing their virginity when you
don't have the maturity to do so. And I held
on to that. I was proud of that. But then
after that had happened, look the way that I see
and in my experience, when people are sexually assaulted, it
goes one of two ways. You either lose or your
self respect or your personal space. You don't give a

(23:12):
shit about your body, who you are as a person,
your identity, or you're completely caged in you don't let
anyone in. You know, you're terrified of life. I've seen this.
I've seen this for the last few years now. I
went the first way I no longer cared I had
in my mind. I was stripped of my identity, my respect,

(23:33):
my everything. So from there I was kindage like I
just I was mad at the world.

Speaker 1 (23:42):
And no respect for yourself and reckless in life choices
and nothing.

Speaker 2 (23:47):
I thought, fuck it if. It's almost as if I
tried so hard for so many years to be this person,
this loving, genuine human being that cared about so much,
cared about everyone else, and I was the problem solver
at school, right. Everyone would come to me when they
had issues, and so as soon as I had an issue,

(24:07):
as soon as something had happened to me, I was going, well,
who's there, what's you know, what's the point anymore? So
it's almost I flipped a complete one eighty. I just
became this entirely different version. My parents literally called me
an alien, like I was, you know, completely.

Speaker 1 (24:25):
At that age too. Like it's such a difficult age
in life.

Speaker 2 (24:28):
Isn't You form your identity.

Speaker 1 (24:30):
And so you have something that happens like that, and
the impact that's had on you, and I can see
the emotion in your face when you talk about it.
How you carry that with you.

Speaker 2 (24:43):
I've definitely dealt with it. I just I'm upset only
because I let one event determine the next ten years
of my life, who I am, how I carry myself,
how I let others treat me. I let one bad
thing determine those next few years.

Speaker 1 (25:02):
So it's almost like low self esteem.

Speaker 2 (25:05):
It was wholeheartedly.

Speaker 1 (25:07):
Are you what you described me?

Speaker 2 (25:08):
I lost everything I was. Teachers and parents and friends
and everyone will testament to this, like I was the
most confident, outgoing, didn't give a shit about what anyone thought.
You know, I hadn't had all these layers of judgment
and pressure and everything responsibility. I had none of this
stuff placed upon me yet. So it's like as soon

(25:30):
as that initial event had happened, it's like everything came
with it. So I turned into this shell of a
human being. And then that it literally related how everyone
was going to treat me for the next few years,
what I allowed for the next few years.

Speaker 1 (25:44):
Describe those years like how reckless, like horrifying.

Speaker 2 (25:49):
I this is where mental health became so alarming to me.
At this point. Before then, depression didn't exist, anxiety didn't exist,
PTSD didn't exist. Nothing. All that existed prior to that
was like confidence, motivation, you know, what you could expect

(26:11):
off of a child innocence, right, So now all that
was there was like constantly trying to prove to other
people that I'm not a victim, that I'm okay. So
it meant putting on a facade. And I was put
through from that initial assault. I was put through four
different schools and that was in the space of two years.

Speaker 1 (26:33):
Is how reckless you became?

Speaker 2 (26:35):
Extremely, extremely I'm not about to blame it on external
forces saying that it was other people. Obviously I was around,
you know, all of these people that had mommy and
daddy's money, but they were also going through shit, you know.
And this is the one thing that I can't stand
about the North Shore is that everyone thinks just because

(26:56):
it's a wealthy area doesn't mean things go on. So
much shit goes on, but everything's pushed down, everything's pushed out,
everything's forgotten about why because oh, they've got money, so
it doesn't matter. Yeah, you know, they can afford counselors,
they can you know, everything is pushed.

Speaker 1 (27:11):
Away, and without being critical on people that can live
in those areas, I think the perception of how others
see them is very important as well, because a lot
of it is a flashing money and look our lives.

Speaker 2 (27:23):
Perfect exactly And in turn, to be honest, like that's
exactly what happened to me. Everyone was seeing this and
it says it in those freakin' headlines on the media,
like everyone looked in as this Danielle party girl, live
this lavish life, whatever else. So I almost got to

(27:44):
that point where I thought that that was my identity,
so I wouldn't settle for anything less than meaning everyone
saw me as this fun, outgoing girl years before, so
I had to maintain that by any means, and that
meant taking drugs, that meant doing whatever I could to
get back into that headspace so that everyone saw me
as this fun, outgoing life of the party, not this victim,

(28:07):
not this girl that needed help.

Speaker 1 (28:09):
That's what you were chasing, Yeah yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:11):
And honestly I was chasing it until literally the day
before I went to jail.

Speaker 1 (28:16):
Yeah yeah. Yeah. Relationships, you were in a relationship or
a long term relationship after this.

Speaker 2 (28:23):
Occurred, or I was so prior, well just after my assault,
maybe several months after that. Yeah, I obviously had the young,
fun relationships whatever else, and then I was just too
much for these people, for these poor these poor young boys.

(28:45):
And then I had look unfortunately, like upon reflection over
these last few years, I realize now all I was
looking for was a protector, yep, right, So I went
looking for that, and of course the first one I
found was someone that was involved with Biki gangs, was
someone that, like the word protected to me meant someone

(29:05):
that was obviously involved in the crime life, but would
you know, protect me or his name by any means.
I was looking for that really rough exteria that you know,
uh kind of thing. I'd never had that in my
life before. And so I fell into what appeared to
be a normal relationship sort of at the age sixteen seventeen,

(29:28):
and it brought eight nine years of domestic violence, like
serious drug inducee, just interesting choices, you know, the worst
of the worst. And it wasn't a consistent I think
it was nine years. I think it wasn't a consistent
nine years. It was on and off. But that relationship
is what actually taught me the definition of domestic violence

(29:51):
and narcissism. You know, it was scary, something that I
don't think I've personally dealt with fully yet, but thing
that has definitely driven me to be the person that
I am now, the relationships that I want to have
and what I want to do for a career and
help the women that I want to help, is because

(30:12):
battling those years. You do not recognize it when you're
in it. You know, there were so many instances that
from the outsiding and I had family, I had friends
reaching out and I couldn't talk to them. I had,
I had phones taken away from me, I had I
was kidnapped. Majority of the time.

Speaker 1 (30:31):
It falls into this coercive control. Yeah, legislation has started
to come into play now for coersive control because it's
hard to define something when well, you're choosing to be
in this relationship and that's a toxic relationship that you
keep going back. But there's more to it, isn't there.

Speaker 2 (30:47):
There's a lot of layers to it, and that's the
hardest part. It's like, what do you determine its choice? Though?
When you're led to believe for years on end that
you're nothing, that you're this more that you're never going
to amount to that you're nothing better than that relationship.
So else, no one else outside of that relationship is
ever going to love you again. So immediately you start

(31:09):
to believe that I fell into this relationship, and the
second that I was vulnerable with this person about my
past and about what had happened to me, I received, Oh,
so you've been raped. Well, no one else is going
to love you again. If you've been raped, that means
you're dirty, horrible, It's disgusting, And the saddest part is

(31:30):
that it is so common, Like in the work that
I do now, I hear it constantly, this coercive control.
It's such a rising matter at the moment, and it's because,
to be honest, social media more than anything, in terms
of Snapchat, for example, so your partner being able to
see where you are twenty four seven and that being normalized,

(31:53):
why should it matter where I am? But the fact
that it's just like a feature on Snapchat, that it's
one of those things to do.

Speaker 1 (32:00):
There's a lot of ways to control people that weren't
readily available a couple of decades ago. Isn't he absolutely
just with the mobile phone before I'm going out. I'll
see when I get home. But now the phone can
ring at any time. Where are you correcte, who's that
in the background?

Speaker 2 (32:13):
Exactly? This whole thing of being like being able to
reach people twenty four seven and that being normalized, that's
not normal. You know. I've I remember being that friend
that I'm out to dinner with my girlfriends and I'm constantly,
you know, looking at my phone as if to be like,
I'm terrified for what message is going to come through

(32:34):
in sixty seconds.

Speaker 1 (32:35):
There's invariably one in the group lot that isn't it.
You can see the person that's having a good time,
and then the phone goes, and they're looking at the phone.

Speaker 2 (32:41):
And they're trying their best because while they can't acknowledge
that they're actually in a domestic boent relationship, they're trying
their best to step out of that normality and hang
out with their friends. But you don't. You do not
recognize when you're in it. You recognize that, oh, I'm
in a relationship, and well he might love me so
much more than than I'm so passionate case it contacts

(33:07):
me twenty four to seven. No, that's control, that's control.
I'm in a fantastic relationship now and we live together.
We'll go like two days without speaking, but that's normality.

Speaker 1 (33:18):
It's creepy from both sexes too. But and it's not
the physical violence that can come into play with men
being the perpetrators on women. But we've all got friends
as in the blokes that you know, that friend that's
always in trouble with the wife or the partner if
they're out and getting the phone calls where are you?
What time are you going to be home?

Speaker 2 (33:38):
And that's a sad reality. Like unfortunately, I'd say my generation,
to be honest, I'm going to take blame. I feel
like we've somehow taken social media and turned it into
this thing of like women in particular of you know,
forever comparing themselves to other women online or not normalizing
the fact that like male and female relationships can actually

(34:01):
exists on a platonic level. So this whole obsession over
females of to their partners of when you're getting home,
why did you follow her? Da da da da da,
Like there's no trust element anymore.

Speaker 1 (34:13):
And the type of relationship you're talking about too. And
we talked about low self esteem after what happened to
you when you're sexually assaulted, that makes you vulnerable too,
And if you've got the wrong person they can exploit that.
Then it's almost like they've got the radar for exploiting
the vulnerability.

Speaker 2 (34:29):
That's exactly what it is. And I feel like I
learned the definition, and it's such an overplayed definition at
the moment in terms of narcissistic behavior. And I met
a narcissist at such a young age, and I could
never put a name or a label to it. But
any male that can make you feel so any male

(34:49):
or female, any human that can make you feel so
loved and then in the same regard, make you feel
so small to anyone else, that's narcissistic traits. And it's
so is because you then start to believe that this
person is your be all and end all. So the
saddest reality, right was I almost well I did. I

(35:10):
lost my entire identity through that socual assault and then
through those weird awkward years, you know, fourteen, fifteen sixteen,
I'm trying to figure out who the fuck you are?

Speaker 1 (35:20):
I was.

Speaker 2 (35:21):
I was trying to rebuild that, and I unfortunately met
this man and he told me that everything that I
thought was great about myself was wrong. You know, I
had to dress a certain way. My outgoingness, for example,
was wrong. I was an immediate flirt, you know, just
because I was a confident girl. So I was led

(35:42):
to believe that all of these, all of these things
that were so positive in my mind, and that all
of my values I were made to believe were wrong.

Speaker 1 (35:52):
That that can be a mind fuck for you.

Speaker 2 (35:54):
Oh, I did, and I did for eight ten years.
You know, everyone was forever going, Danny, what's wrong with you?
You can because I would. It wasn't a consecutive nine years.
It was we would date for several months, something would happen.
He would bash me, or he'd get hooked on drugs.
I'd get hooked on other drugs, and then I would

(36:14):
wake up to myself and have these realizations that no,
this is not my life. Like I'd pull away, I'd
return back to my family home. I'd have all of
my friends say, this isn't you like you know that
your life path is so much bigger than this, you know.
And I would move forward, and I would progress, and
just as I would get to that sweet spot, that
really positive point in my life. He would come back

(36:37):
every time of I'm so proud of you and you're
such an amazing woman, and you know, I see where
you're going with life. I just want to help you.
And this is what I'm doing now. Oh I'm not
a junkie anymore. I have a job now.

Speaker 1 (36:50):
And look, just it's toxic, isn't it that that's ridiculous.
We all know those relationships, all being in relationships like that,
and then it's exploiting the vulnerable and everything else that
comes into play. But you've described it well and I
hadn't really put my mind to the social media aspect
of it as well, But that's very much. People have

(37:11):
you twenty four to seven. Now you get no time
to yourself if someone's trying to cling onto you or obsessed.

Speaker 2 (37:17):
With you, that's exactly right. It's just something that never
turns off, you know. Unfortunately in this generation, even things
like bullying nothing turns off, you know. Fortunate for me
when I was at school, if you were bullied, you'd
go home and call it a day. That was it.
You're in your safe space, you know, that was it.

(37:37):
But now social media is constant.

Speaker 1 (37:41):
Well, I think of all the times I stuffed up
as a kid growing up, and the embarrassment, the instant embarrassment,
but there wasn't photos of it, and you weren't being
reminded of it when you got had. Yeah, so it
has changed. It's a tough, tough gig, isn't.

Speaker 2 (37:54):
It exactly right? And they say, look, the same thing
with relationships, you know. Unfortunately now people loved to publicize
their relationships or what they're going through or if their
partners upset them or whatever else. Everything is just so
forward facing, like you can't escape it. Yeah, you really
can't escape it unless you know that this is what

(38:15):
you're going through. You can acknowledge that and then figure
out steps to move forward. There's there's no escape.

Speaker 1 (38:21):
And it's keeping self worth with yourself too. That that's
an important part. That you're not defined by who you're
in a relationship with or what they think of you.
If you can hold that line. It's a pretty important line.
Not always easy to do, but important line, isn't it.

Speaker 2 (38:36):
I think it's it's about actually finding your self worth.
And this is out of every single value that I
can think of, self worth is the one thing that
has stuck with me from being in jail till this day.

Speaker 1 (38:52):
I forgot about the jail things. We've probably got, We've
probably got to get onto that. Anyway, it's playing great
having you on the podcast. I'm glad you've got away
from that relationship. Look when did you fall into the
life style of the as the media would call you,
the glamorous caught up in a dollar dealer lifestyle?

Speaker 2 (39:13):
Oh, the designer girl that shops a Cama. Yeah, that one.

Speaker 1 (39:18):
Must have been a good product we got from Cama. Oh.

Speaker 2 (39:21):
Look, the one thing I will take away from from
all those headlines, like the fact that they called me
an events manager. I was like, you know what, I'll
take that. Like, they said a lot of bad ship,
but they said some good shit as well, so I'll
wear that. But yeah, look, coming out of that relationship,
there was a lot of physical and emotional abuse, but
that also meant there was a lot of financial abuse,

(39:43):
and so I was there were so many debts that
were put in my name. We were living in eastern
suburbs at the time, so yeah, again it was that
lifestyle and trying to catch up with it. I mean
I was driving I was driving the worst, the worst,
like beat up piece of shit car wouldn't have been
anything more than two grand Like, I just didn't fit.

(40:06):
I didn't fit in the demographic, and so I had,
you know, all these bills now falling pouring out of
my eyes. And I got to this point where finally enough,
like I actually started to recognize my worth and I
kicked him out because I was like, you know what, yuck, Like,
this is just what are we doing after this many years?

(40:28):
You have a serious drug addiction. I have now basically
like developed another drug addiction because of that.

Speaker 1 (40:34):
What type of drugs were you taking?

Speaker 2 (40:35):
Well, he was on methemphetamine. I dabbled in it every
so often. It really wasn't my drug of choice, so
my drug of choice, unfortunately it was that ex yep.
It basically created this false, this false pretense that that's
that same feeling I had as a child, that life
was amazing, there was no judgment. No, I didn't care
about what anyone else thought. I was me. I was happy.

(40:58):
I was carefree. No, because I was so off my
head that nothing literally nothing mattered. But because I had
undiagnosed PTSD adhd add I created the narrative of my
head that every time I had a xanax, everything would
calm down.

Speaker 1 (41:16):
The world was a beautiful place.

Speaker 2 (41:17):
The world exactly right, was a beautiful place, and I
could compartmentalize all of my life. I could suddenly I
started building businesses. I started doing all of these things
for myself because I was no longer procrastinating, I was
no longer lazy. I didn't have all of this shit
placed upon me. I could finally feel like, oh, this

(41:38):
is my saving grace. No, I was just off my
face twenty four to seven. So anyway, this one particular day,
I realized, Yep, he's got that drug addiction. I have
this drug addiction. What is going on? This is not it?
I'm up to my eyeballs in debt. How can I
fix this?

Speaker 1 (41:56):
Is it true? How many parking fines you had?

Speaker 2 (41:58):
Yep?

Speaker 1 (41:59):
How much?

Speaker 2 (42:00):
Because I read the figure and forty thousand dollars.

Speaker 1 (42:02):
Forty thousand dollars parking fine.

Speaker 2 (42:04):
Yeah, still paying it off stage debt, and it just
it speaks to you.

Speaker 1 (42:10):
Can I like these a true crime podcast and we're
deviating slightly, but I've never had a notorist parking the fan?
How do you collect forty thousand dollars worth of parking
kick just.

Speaker 2 (42:20):
Speaks on the level of recklessness. Yeah right, And when
when you're on things like xanax or methanphetamine, you don't
give a shit about anything. So I would look at
these fines and be like, man, I would pick those
one hundred and fifty dollars parking fines over having a
walk let's say four streets.

Speaker 1 (42:40):
That is reckless, isn't it, right?

Speaker 2 (42:42):
Yeah, because you just you have no respect for the system,
You have no respect for yourself. You don't care, you know,
you don't really think that all of these fines, this money,
whatever's going to catch up to you one day. Oh,
I'm paying for it, now, do you pay for it back? Then?

Speaker 1 (42:58):
People in jail for partucking fines. But early in my
police career, people that accumulated a lot of parking fines,
they could write them off by serving time, and you
would have people turn up at the police station on
a Friday afternoon to pay their parking tickets off to
get locked up for a couple of days, so pay
off their parking team.

Speaker 2 (43:15):
I wish I could run a concurrent being like forty
thousand dollars a year and a half. That seems fair. Yeah,
I wish I could do that.

Speaker 1 (43:21):
Well, it's a lot anyway. Okay, well we've identified that
there is a recklessness set. What about the drug dealing.
How did you get caught up in the cacaine? Now?

Speaker 2 (43:31):
Yeah, so look from that and just recognizing that I
had all of these bills and I think I was
so young, very early twenties at that point, and I
just kicked him out. We're living in a Bondai beach
front apartment. I'm going, how the hell am I going
to afford anything. I didn't want to admit defeat. I

(43:52):
didn't want to run back to my family and basically
prove everyone right saying this is what's happened. Help. I
didn't want to ask for help. My parents were even
struggling at the time. You know, that's you're an adult
at that point. You don't want to admit defeat, you know.
So anyway, came across some friends, had a friend that said, look,

(44:13):
do some things several times, just drop some things off.
Very minimal, da da da da. Whole thing was very downplayed.
In my mind, I thought, sweet, every second person in
these suburbs at the time does cocaine. So I was like,
it's nothing whatever started doing it realized that the operation
was a lot bigger than what was played out, But

(44:36):
at that point I was already in it, and I thought,
you know what, stuff it. Yeah, there was no gun
to my head. I was never forced against my will.
I thought, you know, I need to make money. And
it sounds like an excuse, and it sounds like a
cop out. But when your self worth and your identity
is so minimalized that you're not capable of anything meaning,

(44:59):
like my partner more my ex at the time, would
tell me that, like, who the fuck do I think
I am? To go work in childcare or to go
work traffic control, any normal job? Who did I think
I was? Because everyone was going to judge me because
I'm a terrible person. I'm an addict, I'm a the
summer that, I'm a slider, I'm a whatever word he
could think of that he knew was going to hit home,

(45:20):
he used. And so it sounds twisted, and it sounds
like such an excuse. But I started creating that narrative
in my head that like, I can't have a normal
job because no one values me because I don't value me.
I'm a shit I was a shit person. So I
kind of almost belittled myself, thinking the only thing that
I'm capable of is selling drugs. Why because I didn't

(45:43):
have to talk to anyone, I don't have to do anything.
I drove around like I'm a freakin uber driver and
just drop things off. I didn't even have to look
at the customer half the time, so it was a
mindless job that I didn't have to think about. I
didn't have to overthink, I didn't have to stress out
about nothing.

Speaker 1 (46:00):
And look, just let me stop you there, because I've
asked you how you got into it, So I'm not
putting you up there saying it's an excuse, like and
you've clarified that you're not making excuses. But it's interesting
how someone falls into it, falls into that trap. So
thanks for being honest with us and explaining it. And
you're not using anything as an excuse. This is just

(46:21):
why you went down that path. I'd see a lot
of people get caught up in drug dealing where I'm
just supplying a bag to a friend that's not really
drug dealing. Well, sadly, technically that's a yeah, you are dealing.
You're providing an illicit substance. To another person with your
dial a dealer. I've always you know, I'm not naive,

(46:42):
but I've always wondered, how does everyone get this cocaine?
Like where does it all come from? Andyah? In the
police obviously we know, but there's so many people that
are involved in it and can pick up the phone
up and get something delivered, like ordering a pizza.

Speaker 2 (46:56):
Yeah, and that's look, that's that's it. I feel like
I give to a lot of the young girls that
I deal with now, is like, although you think you're bulletproof,
you will always get caught. This whole dial a dealer,
this whole thinking that everything so underraps, Like I can't
even discredit the amount of work that New South Wales
Police put in to figuring out what we were doing.

Speaker 1 (47:19):
Well look with it. I look at the investigation. That's
not hard to track.

Speaker 2 (47:26):
Terribly but it's not hard.

Speaker 1 (47:29):
And I'm surprised it's been allowed to flourish as long
as it has. And you know, with all sorts of people,
it's not we're not looking at This is a people
that look down on In some industries, it's considered the
same as having a beer or a glass of wine.

Speaker 2 (47:45):
And that's literally the code word they use for it
is like when they used to text the phones, for example,
they'd be like, oh can I get three beers? Like
it's so normalized. Yeah, yeah, these days like that particular drug.
And this is why initially when I started doing it,
I started telling myself the narrative that it's not that
bad because oh why, because it wasn't heroine or ice,

(48:06):
it wasn't ruining the lives of people. And yet I
would deliver to people three, four, five times a day,
not even small amounts. I'm taking thousands of dollars of
them each day. And I would see families like I
would see, you know, their kids playing in the backyard
when I'm sitting in the lane dropping off coke.

Speaker 1 (48:26):
When you've just spent a couple of thousand dollars exactly
gone to the family and the kids.

Speaker 2 (48:31):
And it's sickening. Like I got to the point where
I was like, no, this isn't a party drug anymore,
because to me in my generation and to what I
saw when I would go out, it was a party drug.
It wasn't you know, even even till this day, like
I've I've never been hooked on cocaine I've never you know,
it truly is a rich man's drug. However, doesn't necessarily

(48:51):
mean it's not a problem.

Speaker 1 (48:52):
Well, I think that's that's very true too. And there's
there's not that social stigma to someone doing a line
of Coke's often laughed at or yeah, someone's in the toilet,
you know, the standard joke. They've just gone in the
toilet and come out with white powder on their k nose.
But you've seen it, and you've seen the damage that
can be done by it. With the money that goes in,

(49:14):
and I've seen people that you know, friends that might
might have a habit and the other it's not really affecting,
and I'm thinking how much money they're spending, like it's crazy.

Speaker 2 (49:25):
And that's what till this day it still burns me.
Like I will go out to social events whatever else.
I've got, to nightclubs, whatever, and I just see people
using the toilets as if there's a swinging door. And
you know, I'll see people friends using their last fifty
hundred dollars to go thirds in a bag, and I'm going,

(49:45):
what for, Like, I don't while I understand the drug,
I understand the effects of whatever it for what like
it brings nothing positive. It just doesn't. It's a means
to an end. It's boring.

Speaker 1 (49:57):
So with what you were doing, was that your full
time employment. Was there anything else that you're doing? I
would I say employment, you weren't paying tax on anyway?

Speaker 2 (50:06):
Should it be could have been by the end of that.
But I would always try and double in other things,
Like I knew that this wasn't a means to an
end for me. I always still try to keep that
those morals about myself of going no, like I'll just
and this is whatevery drug dealer tells them themselves. Or

(50:27):
I'll just save X amount and then I'll get out,
or I'll do something with this money, and I did
so I would start small businesses, or I would use
that money to then go overseas and then oh, when
I come back, I'm gonna start other work. And I did.
I would have, you know, other careers. I'd work in hospitality,
traffic control, childcare, whatever. But you would always come back

(50:50):
to the same thing of like, I make X amount
in one day, so why would I work an entire
week if I can make that in one day? Yeah,
And there was never I never had I don't know
how to describe it, like I was never pulled over
for the first couple of years, of months, years, whatever,
never pulled over. I was never in trouble, So I thought,

(51:14):
stuff it, whatever if I can, If I can do that,
even for one or two days, I'm laughing. So I
would kind of balance a few jobs at a time
and try and justify it to myself and tell myself,
you know, I'm still doing the right thing in one aspect,
so it's okay. But then it got to this point
several years later where I ended up coming back to

(51:35):
it and I just knew it was wrong. And then
the way that the entire operation was being carried out
was so poor, and I just thought, I'm just I'm
literally a pawn in this operation.

Speaker 1 (51:49):
I was going to ask you that, did you get
a sense of how easy it would be to take
you down? And you would be very expendable.

Speaker 2 (51:56):
I acknowledged that. Look, I was just a pretty face,
and unfortunately I was the only female that was available
in the Eastern suburbs at the time. So at first
I played on that knowing how much money I could make.
But then I got to a point where it made
me sick, and I'm like, you know, what, who's to
say if I stepped out of line or god forbid,
you know, I wanted to do something else in my life.

(52:17):
What if they wanted to keep me here? What if
this is all I'm ever going to I'm out to?
And that really freaked me out. So I think kind
of from like that mentality, subconsciously, I started recognizing that
this was so wrong, that this is this is not
my life path. I want to get out, and I
made so many attempts to try and get out, or

(52:38):
I would just come up with really shit excuses like
I'm sick or whatever. You forget, like I'm dealing with
men at this point, like men that you don't fuck with.
So I didn't know how to handle the situation. So
I'm forever coming out with sick days or I'm going
on a holiday, or I need to take days off.
And it became very aggressive of like no, you will
work these hours, you will not get off the road

(53:00):
till that sale is made or whatever else, And so I.

Speaker 1 (53:03):
Would imagine that that's.

Speaker 2 (53:07):
No one to talk to. There was no one to
complain to, So I'm going, okay, I can't trust anyone here,
I don't know who to speak to. You know, my
roommate at the time, poor thing copped the full brunt
of it. I'm going, I'm waking up every day with anxiety,
like a very new emotion for me, Like it almost
felt like someone was stepping on my chest when I'd
wake up, and I would always say it like she's

(53:30):
my best mate. To this day, I'm going, I don't
know what to do, Like, who do I call about this?
How do I like? You said, there was no HR,
so what do I do? She goes you just you
need to get out. You need to be honest with everyone,
for starters, because I was only I think I'd only
told her and several other people what I was doing.
To my family, I was what did I say? Some bullshit?

(53:51):
I was either an uber driver or I was a
childcare worker, you know, so I was driving around all
the time.

Speaker 1 (53:58):
Did they have suspicions?

Speaker 2 (53:59):
I didn't think so until I told them.

Speaker 1 (54:02):
So.

Speaker 2 (54:03):
After this initial conversation with my friend, I thought, you
know what, stuff it. I've had enough. I'm living this
massive lie. Maybe if I'm honest about everything, the anxiety
will lessen. So I went home. I think it was
my twenty first birthday. I went to my family home
that night and we're celebrating my birthday, and I said, look,

(54:23):
I've got something I need to tell you. I told
them what I was doing, and both of my parents
kind of looked at each other and they were like,
you know what, we kind of had an inkling that
you were doing something wrong. We didn't know what it was.
But again, they've always given me the kind of this
is your life, you're going to make something of it.
Not necessarily we trust you, but like we're here when

(54:44):
you need us. So once I told them, they said okay, fine.
There was no how dare you get out of our house?
There was okay, how are we going to fix this?
And they've been like that since I was born, you know.
So they saw that I was in a situation and
they said how are we going to fix this? And
I said, look, I don't know. All I can do

(55:05):
is be honest, say that I want to leave. I
don't know how to get out of it. And so
Mum and dad would kind of like, just be honest,
you know, just do the right thing. Da da da dad,
And I thought, okay, fuck, that can't do that. Criminal mentality.
Here we go. So I actually contacted my ex that
bad X. We were just speaking about and I said, look,
this is what I'm doing, this is what I need

(55:27):
help getting out of. You know, this is someone that
didn't fear the police, This is someone that didn't fear
anyone in life. And so I knew, although I feared him,
he was going to help me out of this situation.
And so yeah, contacted him, said x y z. He said,
all right, this is what you're going to do. You're
going to tell them that I have found out about
it that and I lied, saying that he was still

(55:49):
my actively my partner. I said, yep, x y zed
he found out about what I've done, what I'm doing,
I can't do it anymore. I'm sure you understand and why.
And so that same day drove the car, the drugs,
the money, whatever, left it at the drug house. He
was in the car with me, absolutely shitting myself thinking

(56:11):
that these these people were inside. They weren't, thank god.
But yeah, I sent this half aassed text message to
the to the main phone saying that I'm done, and
then yeah, from from there kind of just held my
breath and was and was waiting for an outcome.

Speaker 1 (56:25):
And what was the outcome? But if you stepped out
of that, did they drag you back in? Well, when
did you got arrested?

Speaker 2 (56:33):
Shortly after that, Yeah, how's this fit intuition? So two
weeks later we all started getting arrested. So there was
about I think there was seven, seven or eight of
us in this syndicate. And funnily enough, this anxiety on
my chest was was intuition and was telling me, you know,
get out, and so I'll never forget living in this

(56:55):
ground floor apartment in Bondo. I wake up one morning
after I told my parents would happened. I called my mom.

Speaker 1 (57:01):
And you dropped all your gear off at that stage,
and thinking you we're going to get out of it.

Speaker 2 (57:06):
Everything was done and it.

Speaker 1 (57:08):
Must come spectacle sometimes.

Speaker 2 (57:10):
Got Calma's a bit, and everything was fine for a
few days. You know, hadn't heard of course, I was anxious,
but hadn't heard anything from the people that were running
it whatever, and I thought, oh my god, maybe this
is it. I'm good. Anyway. I wake up one morning
I had a friend send me an article of several
of the boys being charged.

Speaker 1 (57:32):
These are the people you're working for or with for.

Speaker 2 (57:35):
Yeah, the people I was working for, and so she
sent me this article, going, oh my god, is this you?
And my heart stopped and I called my mom instantly
and I said, they know, like this is this is
getting real now. But then I tried to justify it,
and I was like, you know what, they got the kingpins,
so maybe I'm okay. And my mom said, just get

(57:56):
out of the country, like do whatever you can. She goes,
this is no, she goes, you know what, this this
is your opportunity, like they've obviously they got the people
they needed. Danny, it's done, start fresh.

Speaker 1 (58:12):
Go.

Speaker 2 (58:13):
So I'm literally I will never forge. I can see
it so clearly in my brain. I'm sitting on my
lounge in front of so I had two clear sliding
doors with blinds, ground level, Bondo Beach. I'm booking flights
to Bali in my pajamas. At like nine am in
the morning, I see these two guys walk past my

(58:33):
balcony stick their heads over and I was like, oh, okay,
didn't think anything of it. Ground floor again, and then
I hear it bang on the door. I ship myself
and I thought it was Strata because we were housing
a pitbull. But we had told we had told our
leasing agents that we had a two hour I prefer

(58:55):
but for for you know, keeping our rest.

Speaker 1 (58:57):
There is a big difference.

Speaker 2 (59:00):
We're keeping a nice, you know, tendency. We're like, oh,
you know what it's it's just a chwo hour. It's fine.

Speaker 1 (59:05):
Well, you can identify with whatever you want these days.
So maybe he was a pity.

Speaker 2 (59:10):
I exactly right, exactly right. So I had sent photos
of this two hour and we're full blown details to
our landlords and they proved him. Our other friends bless him.
But anyway, so yeah, this bang on the door and

(59:32):
then in an immediate bark. So I'm trying to hold
this people's mouth shut and I was like, fuck, it's
it's strata. And I looked to my best mate and
I said, move, get rid of him, like we're going
to get kicked out. Get rid of him. So she's
standing in the room with this fully grown people bless her,
and I opened the door and sure enough, detectives from

(59:53):
Croydon Police where he to arrests. You are you duney
ol hogan? Da da da da? And I didn't even
know what to think at this point, Like I think
I laughed because I was so nervous. I was like, fine,
I said, do you know what you're under arrest for?
And I said no, no idea And they find about
the pit strata is that you and they kind of

(01:00:14):
just laughed it off and said no, like you're you're
under arrest a supply this or the other. And then yeah,
it was kind of just autopilot from there. I remember
asking like, can I at least get out of my pajamas?
I still have my coffee cup in hand. I was like,
it's nine am, like let me get changed whatever, And
so yeah, that was that was history from there.

Speaker 1 (01:00:36):
Like we're laughing, but that is a yeah, it's almost
like it that's you must have anticipated it was a possibility,
but then your ignorant bliss, you're going, no, no, I've
got the way of it.

Speaker 2 (01:00:49):
Well, not to that degree like it was. You know,
they let me get dressed.

Speaker 1 (01:00:53):
Yeah, and that was that was lucky because sometimes a
gad you're coming with taking you as whatever you're wearing,
and that might be your pajamas, and that's tough time
in prison, but it's a worth time if you.

Speaker 2 (01:01:06):
Time in prison. At least, no one told me that
I needed, like bag your clothes or something. I walked
out and you know, the tightest clothes possible. But walking
out of my home, you know, there was ABC nine
News seven, News Channel ten like it was relentless from there.

Speaker 1 (01:01:22):
Yeah. Well, preparing for the podcast, I had to look
at some of the media coverage and they certainly rolled
you out, didn't they.

Speaker 2 (01:01:28):
I was disgusting. Like even the arresting officer like he,
like I said before, like he actually apologized and said,
we're about to make an example out of you. Yeah,
And I couldn't, for the life of me understand why.
And then yeah, several months later, after all of these
headlines coming out, I'm going, Wow, I'm learning some stuff
about myself.

Speaker 1 (01:01:48):
I always believe what you've read in the article. Yeah,
so at that point in time you arrested, that was
I think there were five charges. You interviewed or tell
us what happened when you're taken to the police station,
because I think if there's a lesson to be learned,
people often think, hm, Okay, it won't happen to me,
and they roll the dice or whatever. But I haven't

(01:02:09):
seen anyone that's gone to a police station been arrested
for the first time where it doesn't impact on them significantly.

Speaker 2 (01:02:15):
Oh, it impacted in ways that I couldn't even fathom
at that point, but in retrospect, like, I'm very grateful now.
So when I was arrested, I was going, what the hell, Like,
I'm put in a cell that's literally like a meter
by maybe fifty centimeters. You can't even stretch your legs
out from one side to the other, you know. And

(01:02:36):
for the life of me, I couldn't really understand what
was going on or what was going to happen from here,
you know. Being in the lifestyle that I was in,
I met so many people that have either been to
jail before or have you know, done some pretty interesting
things and maybe like they didn't necessarily go to jail.
So I'm going, oh, I'll be fine, I'll be fine whatever.
And so I'm sitting in there and I was like,

(01:02:59):
in my mind at that point, I was like, I
haven't done anything that that bad, you know, and so
I'll never forget. I'm sitting in the interview room they're
preparing to interview me, and two male detectives sit down
and all of a sudden, one by one, they start
throwing all these pieces of paper in front of me
with all this evidence, and to my surprise, there's like

(01:03:21):
one drug house, two, drug house three, and I'm like,
I don't know any of this, like I had, I
had no idea of how big this operation was. And
so I'm looking at all this stuff and shock going
like what do they expect me to say to them? Anyway?
And then they said, you know, is there anything that
you want to add or you want to talk, like,

(01:03:43):
let's let's start this interview. And I was like, no,
I've got nothing to say, and they're like, are you
saying that? You're like, you don't want to do the interview.
I said, well, yeah, I don't want to do the interview.
I said, but also like it seems like you more,
you know, a lot more than what I do, Like
I couldn't even There's nothing I could say about the
amount of least work they put into this because the
from the surveillance of you and phone records, photos, phone records,

(01:04:07):
but they had had literally tied so they had put
cameras in the drug house that I was working out of,
but they somehow managed to tie the times that I
would walk in the house to the Times that I
would text the phone to the times that I would
leave the house saying you're fucked. Yeah, it was crazy.
It was Clay, They've got you dead. They had me wholeheartedly.

(01:04:27):
So there was nothing I could do but laugh at
that point and been like what else can I say?
Like this is you see it for what it is,
you know. But at the same time, I'm not about to,
you know, make it worse for myself or anyone else.
But I was more or less shocked at the amount
of work that they had put behind this for the
last three months, and none of us had any idea
about it. The fact that they had put cameras in

(01:04:51):
a place that we were in twenty four to seven.

Speaker 1 (01:04:53):
Crazy crazy, But that's you know, it's the ignorance of
drug dealers or people involved in that industry, that's it.
It's not a hard crime to investigate because people get sloppy,
and yeah, they think it's very hard to capture murderers
and people don't make mistakes. They're conscious of covering up
their crimes. But with drug dealing, it's like follow the

(01:05:17):
bouncing ball.

Speaker 2 (01:05:18):
Absolutely, And that's the advice that I give now to
you know, any of the young people that I come
in contact with that are kind of going down that
same path as It's like you are not invincible, like unfortunately,
cops will know and will find out everything. Like you
are not bulletproof. It will always it's a means to
an end. You will always be.

Speaker 1 (01:05:38):
Caught and a lot of resources get put into it
because it is something that you would have seen. The
amount of people in prison that have got the drug
habits or in there for drug related defenses, it's quite high.
There was a couple of things how it was reported
in the media. So it was Strikeforce Northrop that locked
you up. So just in case you didn't didn't know that,

(01:06:01):
thank you for The was established to investigate and target
ongoing supply of cocaine within the Central Metropolitan Region. In
May twenty nineteen, Strikeforce detectives arrested and charged fifty five
people during the targeted proactive operation into Dialar dealer services
operating through Sydney, CBD and Eastern suburbs. During the operations,

(01:06:21):
officers received information about the activities of a sophisticated organized
criminal network involved in facilitating and directing the supply of
prohibited drugs through a dialar dealer service. Four men, two
age twenty eight and two age twenty nine, and two
women aged twenty four and twenty seven have been charged
and remain before the courts. That's how it was reported

(01:06:42):
now that type of crime. I wouldn't imagine you got
bail from the police station.

Speaker 2 (01:06:48):
Not from the police station. No. I was given a
happy meal instead, and said unfortunately, literally a happy meal,
literally a happy mil And I didn't know that that
was kind of like the thing that they do when
you don't receive bail. So I was adamant. I was like,
you know, I had girls in the in the cells
next to me that were like, oh, see this it's
your first it's your first crime, You'll be fine. Blah
blah blah blah. I was adamant that I was going

(01:07:10):
to get bail.

Speaker 1 (01:07:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:07:11):
And then I had the leading I think it was
the leading detective for maybe the chief, that came to
my cell and just stood in front of me and
he goes, what do you want from McDonald's? And I
was like, oh, this place is mad, Like I'm going
to I'm going to get a feed. This is called
you know. And then I didn't know that that was
actually signal for no, you're not leaving tonight. We're going
to feed you so that you can go to Surrey
Hills tomorrow. And that's exactly what happened.

Speaker 1 (01:07:33):
And Surrey Hills is a lovely place, isn't it.

Speaker 2 (01:07:36):
I spent more days there than what the average person should,
so I think legally you're only supposed to spend a
couple of days there. I spent maybe a week and
a half. I had to shower in front of men.
I didn't receive phone calls to anyone. It is literally
hell innocent.

Speaker 1 (01:07:54):
Yeah, a lot of people that have been to prison
talk about the cells at Surrey Hills and yeah, it's
the pits. We might take a break here. There is
so much to talk about. And I appreciate your honesty,
because you know, what we try and do here is
let people understand how you fall into this path. When

(01:08:14):
we get back, we're going to talk about your time
in prison. And yeah, I've seen enough of that world
to understand you're going in the prison. How old were
you at the time.

Speaker 2 (01:08:25):
I think I was twenty three, twenty four.

Speaker 1 (01:08:27):
Okay, going into prison, fairly naive into the ways of
the world. It was going to be a hard time.
It was a lot what happened to you in prison,
how you survived in prison, and how it made you
sort of reflect on yourself and turn your life around,
and what you're doing now, which I think is Yeah,
if there's a moral of the story, it's what you're

(01:08:47):
doing now and the difference you're trying to make and
offset the bad things that have occurred or that you've done.

Speaker 2 (01:08:54):
So I can't wait. Well, I'm taking you the prison
part two, so maybe go back to go forward?

Speaker 1 (01:09:01):
Okay, all right, we'll take a break and be back shortly.

Speaker 2 (01:09:04):
Karl wait, thanks for hearing me.

Speaker 1 (01:09:06):
Cheers. H

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Party girl to prison - inside the Bondi dial-a-dealer bust: Danielle Hogan Pt.1

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Party girl to prison - inside the Bondi dial-a-dealer bust: Danielle Hogan Pt.1