Michelle Leslie

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For other uses, see Michelle Leslie (disambiguation).

Michelle Leslie (born 1981), who also works under the name Michelle Lee, is an Australian model. Leslie is best known for her 2005 arrest, conviction and three-month imprisonment (time served) for possessing two ecstasy tablets in Bali, Indonesia. Prior to this she was a model for Antz Pantz and Crystelle lingerie.

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[edit] Career

Leslie was born in Adelaide, South Australia to Violeta from the Philippines and Albert Leslie. She was educated at Sacred Heart College in Adelaide. She appeared on the TV program Search for a Supermodel in 2000, and was first runner-up in the 2000 Miss World Australia pageant held in Darwin. Due to her part-Filipino background Leslie is in reasonable demand as a model in Asia. She was living and working in Singapore as a full-time model before her arrest in Indonesia.

[edit] Arrest and trial

On 21 August 2005 two pills were found by police in Ms Leslie's handbag during her visit to an open-air dance party at GWK park, which is situated on a hill just out of Jimbaran Bay on the road to Uluwatu on the Indonesian island of Bali. Police suspected the pills to be illegal substances and arrested Ms Leslie. Subsequent tests by Indonesian police found the pills to be Ecstasy. Ms Leslie's charge sheet stated that she had purchased the drugs in Bali. She faced a maximum of fifteen years in jail. Ms Leslie tested positive to ecstasy following a urinalysis. Her arrest was the third arrest of an Australian in Bali on drugs charges in twelve months following the October 2004 Schapelle Corby (cannabis) and May 2005 Bali Nine (heroin) cases.

According to Indonesian police, Ms Leslie claimed that the pills were given to her by a friend, "Mia", who was unable to be located. Mia was later revealed to be Ms Nameera Azmaan, who was also a model based in Singapore and working out of the Chic Modelling Agency. Ms Azmaan denied having given the ecstasy to Ms Leslie. At the time of arrest, Ms Leslie was in the company of Ms. Azman and, allegedly, one of the sons of the then Coordinating Minister for the Economy Aburizal Bakrie[1] and two unidentified men from Jakarta.

There has been much police action in Bali in 2005 targeting drug users. Nightclubs along Jalan Legian such as Paddys have received lightning raids with many police, sniffer dogs and police-operated video cameras recording the raids. In July 2005 such raids were commonplace and numerous arrests of foreigners and locals were made.

Ecstasy has long been readily available in Kuta, Legian and Seminyak. The area around the Double 6 nightclub in Seminyak is a hotspot for dealers selling fake and real 'disco biscuits' to drunken revellers and then informing the police, who target foreigners and extort bribes.

Like raves at Thailand's island beaches and in Ibiza, Bali entrepreneurs were starting to provide full moon dances where young people dance to 'rave' music for hours while clutching water bottles. GWK was such a venue on that peak tourist season evening when Ms Leslie was arrested.

The then-Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, commenting on the recent apparent rise in arrests of Australians on drugs charges in South East Asia, described any Australian with drugs in Asia as "stupid", declaring they should not expect the Australian government to save them. He also said,

"We have told Australians — young Australians — again and again, don't take drugs out of this country, don't take them into Asian countries because you can't expect any mercy. Now we'll keep pushing that message but people have to understand that if they defy that, and they get caught with drugs, they can't expect the Government to bail them out."

According to Indonesian police, Leslie claimed to have an addiction to Ecstasy. In a signed statement given to the police she is alleged to have said: "I'm addicted to it. I can't enjoy parties if I don't have ecstasy." In the meantime her representative, Sean Mulcahy [2] said,

"While we do respect the position of the police and the statement attributed to them by the media, any comment said to be made by Ms Leslie must be considered in their full and detailed context.
At this stage the defence team is not prepared to provide the detailed version from our client until the appropriate stage in the proceedings."

Ms Leslie's response to this leak was to sack her high-profile Indonesian defence lawyer M. H. Rifan and replace him with Dr K. R. T. Basuki Prawirodipuro.

Leslie declared herself a Muslim on 29 August and asked the media to respect her privacy.

On 14 October 2005 the Sydney Morning Herald reported that Leslie could possibly be released within weeks as a report from a Sydney doctor had been provided to prosecutors stating that she was addicted to prescription medication. Under Indonesian law this would allow her to be tried as a "user" and benefit from a reduced sentence. The maximum sentence for a user is three months imprisonment, whereas the maximum penalty for possession is 15 years.

Leslie's trial began on 28 October 2005 in the Denpasar District Court and concluded on 18 November 2005 with her being found guilty of using a prohibited substance.

[edit] Sentencing and release

She was sentenced to three months in jail but, due to the three months already spent in custody, was freed from Kerobokan prison at about 1PM on 19 November. Indonesian immigration officials announced the she would be deported from the country due to her guilty conviction. Leslie's lawyers said that they would lodge an appeal against that.

Michelle's failure to wear the traditional Muslim hijab causes controversy, thus being dubbed as a "fake muslim".
Michelle's failure to wear the traditional Muslim hijab causes controversy, thus being dubbed as a "fake muslim".

She flew out of Bali to Singapore where she spent time with friends and family before returning to Sydney, Australia on the morning of 22 November. In Singapore she said, "I'm so exhausted, I'm really excited to be going home and I'm just really relieved to be out of Indonesia. And I'm really thankful to all the people that have supported me and sent me emails and letters and phone calls during my time in Bali."

A family friend, Norah Cullen, announced that she would be getting engaged to boyfriend Scott Sutton, a millionaire car dealership heir.

Leslie sparked criticism upon her release by wearing tight-fitting clothes without the traditional Muslim hijab she had frequently worn leading up to her trial. Nor did she say a word to the waiting media, possibly because she thought talking to media would reduce any sum that would be paid to her should she decide to sell her story. President of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils Ameer Ami said,

"It looks as though ... she used Islam as a stunt to get a judgment in her favour. There's an Islamic code of dressing which says women must be modest. You can't go cat-walking with a semi-naked body. Michelle Leslie cannot do what she was doing before as a model for lingerie and underwear. That's not allowed in Islam." [3]

Further controversy surrounds reports that she intends to sell her story to the commercial media, with Federal Justice Minister Chris Ellison warning that any person profiting from a crime risks losing such proceeds under federal laws.

Around the time of her release and return to Australia and since, Leslie has become the subject of public denigration from the Australian media. An article in the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, reported that some of her lawyers distributed bribes to secure her freedom; allegedly to a lab in an unsuccessful attempt to change test results, and allegedly to the Bali Police Chief, who turned the offer down. Channel Seven News displayed Leslie's home on television and named the suburb it was in. However, Fairfax columnist Miranda Devine has written articles sympathetic to Leslie, criticising the media for their attacks on her, and wrote that Leslie's actions, if they took place, were justifiable under the circumstances, and that others would have done the same thing. Devine also suggested that Leslie's "pariah status" was delivered by Schapelle Corby "fans" who wished that "their heroine" had been released instead.

On 17 April 2006, documents from her police file were made available to the public. These documents revealed that Leslie had declared herself a Christian in a signed statement on August 20, 2005. On August 24 2005, Leslie had amended the statement, now describing herself as a Muslim.

In an interview for 60 Minutes, she admitted that she had not converted to Islam and was not a practicing Muslim, although she also commented that she agreed with many Islamic beliefs. She said the reason she started wearing the hijab while incarcerated was because she was treated less rudely by the guards, the press and the public while wearing it.

In the 60 Minutes interview (for which she was not paid - though nor was she asked any genuinely probing questions by the interviewer), Michelle claimed that the "Ecstasy" had been planted on her by police who had a racket of arresting rich foreigners and extorting money from them in exchange for dropping the charges; she said she was targeted because they believed that an internationally-known model must also be rich. At first she was outraged and refused to give in to the extortion. This appears to contradict her original story that "Mia" gave her the ecstacy, a contradiction she has never attempted to explain. She also described watching, horrified, as the police "doctored" her clean urine with drugs, right in front of her. However this claim appears highly dubious because if it were true the amount of drug readings in her urine would be of such an enormous emount it would kill any normal person.

Michelle asserted that, eventually, her parents and her boyfriend ended up paying thousands of dollars which "bought" her more humane treatment and small "perks" while in prison. She said that the only way she was able to secure her release was by agreeing to admit that she was guilty and signing a confession, and that she finally did so because she could not take being imprisoned any longer.

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