Law Breakers and Mischief Makers by Bronwyn Sell

Author:Bronwyn Sell [Bronwyn Sell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2016-05-13T00:00:00+00:00

Lorraine Cohen, 1943–

Aaron Cohen, 1966–

Mother and son drug smugglers

On a February afternoon in the mid-1980s a middle-aged New Zealand woman and her gangly teenage son were struggling through a Malaysian airport with their bags and a pile of souvenirs and gifts for their family back home in Sydney.

They were running late for their flight to Singapore. It didn’t help that the large elaborately decorated incense cones the teenager had bought kept falling off the trolley but eventually they negotiated their way through the bustle and handed over their tickets and bags.

And then they heard a voice: ‘Will you come with us please?’

To anyone else queuing for the flight, they appeared as surprised as any innocent tourist. The woman protested, as anyone would, that they’d miss their plane.

‘Don’t worry, we’ll keep the plane for you,’ came the answer.

But the Malaysian police and the mother and son knew that was an empty promise. The pair were taken into separate rooms and strip-searched. Between them they had 174 grams of heroin stuffed into their underwear – this in a country where trafficking just 15 grams was enough to qualify for the death penalty.

Lorraine and Aaron Cohen were doomed, and they knew it. The only excuse they could offer at their trial in Penang two years later was that it wasn’t technically trafficking because they were addicts who were intending to use it all themselves. This wasn’t true. Though Lorraine had decided to source cheaper heroin from Malaysia because she could no longer afford to satisfy her habit in her adopted home town of Sydney, she also saw dealing as the only way she and her three younger children could escape her violent partner.

Lorraine, then 42, knew the gig was up for her, but she tried her best to save her 18-year-old son, who had become addicted to heroin by his early teens – following his mother’s example. He’d been caught with only 34 grams of heroin compared with her 140 grams, so that worked in his favour. She told the court in a statement: ‘Please remember that the mother’s sins have fallen on the shoulder of her son. He is only a young boy. I should take all the responsibility for him.’

Lorraine had weaned herself off drugs while in prison awaiting trial and remained staunch and sober throughout the hearing – she later said this was for her son’s sake. But Aaron, who had easily sourced heroin in prison, faced his fate stoned, swaying and distracted.

The judge announced Lorraine’s destiny first: ‘I sentence the first accused to death by hanging.’ She stared blankly at him while Aaron wept. The courtroom, which was full of supporters of the pair, was unusually silent.

Mother and son had to wait an anxious 15 minutes to hear Aaron’s sentence. They clasped each other’s hands. Eventually the judge spoke: ‘You may consider yourself very lucky to escape the gallows by the skin of your teeth, so to speak, and I hope you will learn a bitter lesson for the great risk you had taken in this case.

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