Australia's most famous detainee, Cornelia Rau, is in trouble again. Now she is detained in Jordan, of all places.
I feel profoundly sorry for her - and cross with her.
She was given $2.6 million compensation for being wrongfully detained as an illegal immigrant in a hideous Australian detention centre after she was picked up wandering in Queensland and concealing her identity as an Australian citizen. She is, in fact, a joint German and Australian citizen but she has psychological problems. They would seem to have been exacerbated by a traumatic experience which she explained to me when I did a huge "Cornelia Rau - her own story" feature on her a few years ago. The magazine section in which that was published was not included on the website but Cornelia refers to it on her own website.
The problem with Cornelia is that, so long as she is taking her medication, she feels as if she does not need medication.
This is an issue with many people with psychotic disorders.
On medication, Cornelia is one of the most delightful people you could meet. It is truly impossible to dislike her. I took to her immediately - and subsequently spent time with her both on the quest of getting to the bottom of her story and, just for the pleasure of it, walking the beach with her or talking on the phone when she needed someone to talk to.
It was clear to me from the outset that Cornelia needed the medication she so resented having to have. She said it clouded her world, made her feel hazed.
But she claimed to have no recollection of the psychotic episodes that led to her incarceration. These were all blanks - the only memory being a sense of shock and injustice at police intervention. Over and over again, I plied her for clues about those pivotal incidents. It was always the same nothingness. Just Cornelia's indignation at the situation in which she found herself - under the Guardianship Board's supervision with a psychiatriast she had to see fortnightly and medication to which she was compelled to submit.
Cornelia, or Conny, as she prefers to be called, confuses physical health with mental health. She is a fitness freak, swimming in the sea every day whatever the weather, jogging miles on the beach... She had a lovely apartment within walking distance of the beach.
The calm of her disposition was clearly medication-related, and it made for a really pleasant companion, albeit one preoccupied with being free of all medication.
Conny was absolutely confident of her ability to get back into the working world but she had enrolled in several courses over the time I knew her and had not seemed to go through to the end with any of them. One was a sort of justice course, another a language course. She was obsessed with being able to get out of the country, go back to Germany, get back into air hostessing...
Clearly intelligent, charming, interesting, warm - she felt caged by the limitations placed upon her. She had friends, but was also rather lonely. Her family have stuck by her throughout. I met her parents briefly and the family relationship I saw in those minutes seemed very strong and loving. Perchance Conny could not accept what a worry she is to her family any more than she can accept that her stability is dependent on the drugs she so loathes.
Anyway, the Government compensated her for her wrongful detention and she is now a wealthy woman. I worried that she would become an instant target for exploitation but she said that the money was not available to her in bulk but that she could draw upon it.
At that stage, she was being "managed" all of a sudden by a colourful woman lawyer who told me she thought Conny had "celebrity" value she could make more of. This arrangement did not last very long. The "manager" had disappeared from the scene the last time I heard from Conny. She was on her own again and still trying to get her passport back.
Clearly, she did not pause to tell me when she got it back. She must have been at that airport within minutes. And out of Guardianship jurisdiction - away from anyone who could force her to take the medication she despised.
Catch 22, poor Conny. She gained that freedom which has so obsessed her. The gift the freedom has given her is more detention.
If only she would accept the meds. Dear girl. If only.
