The bitterest pill - how a Sussex mum became a drug mule

A far cry from the frightening prison cell in Trinidad she was to find herself in just a few weeks later.

As hard as it is to believe, Angela's story is not uncommon. She was cajoled into being a drug mule because she was vulnerable and desperate.

While there are legions of celebs and partygoers who rely on people such as Angela to fuel their coke fix, few would have the bottle to walk through customs and survive the horrors she witnessed in a foreign jail.

Given the scale of what she was involved in, she is too scared to give her real name or appear in a photograph because she fears for her life.

The 37-year-old from Sussex has decided to tell her story, however, in the hope it will deter other women from suffering a similar fate.

Trapped in a violent relationship for 16 years, Angela had suffered a string of injuries, including a broken collar bone which left her hospitalised on one occasion. The violence escalated until, one day, she finally snapped and flung a bottle at her partner's head. Angela ended the relationship and her partner pressed charges for GBH.

As a result of the conviction, she lost her job as a carer and suddenly found herself a single mum bringing up four young children on benefits. Struggling financially, Angela says she tried endlessly to find another job but no care home would take her with a criminal record.

It was while she was dropping her youngest off at school, of all places, that the suggestion of drug trafficking first came up.

"I met a woman who suggested it was something I could do," she recalls. "I said, Do you think I'm nuts?' She said, Look, I know what's happened, I know how tough things must be for you right now, as you've always been so independent. All I'm saying is it's an option.' "Every time I saw her, she kept saying things like, You look so down'. They could see I was vulnerable and wasn't thinking clearly. I was constantly worrying about money and how I'd feed my children. So in the end I said I'd do it."

Angela was offered £6,000 to smuggle drugs into the UK - a paltry sum considering the risks but enough to turn her life around, solve her money problems and get back on her feet again. Or so she hoped.

Once she'd said yes, there was no turning back - tickets were bought, flights were booked and she was told she'd have to leave within the week. She says the enormity of what she was about to do only hit home moments before it was time to go, as she sat watching her children sleep. She tried to pull out but felt intimidated and knew by the look on the man's face it wasn't an option.

Angela was flown to Trinidad and on to Tobago, where she was taken to a house and told to sit down. A large bag of cocaine was thrown on the table in front of her. According to Angela, there were about 100 capsules in the bag (each one about the size of a thumb). She was told she had to swallow the lot. "I thought, Oh my God, I cannot do this, I am going to die'," she recalls, her voice still trembling at the memory.

"I said, Please, just let me go home - take me to the airport, I promise I will give everyone their money back'. The man just looked at me and said, I don't know you but you seem like a really nice girl, please - just do as they ask'. I knew if I wanted to see my kids again, I'd have to go through with it.

"I tried swallowing the first capsule and nearly passed out. I managed another and then another. I was breathing so fast, I constantly felt sick and my stomach felt really bloated. I was told to try and relax and take a sip of water but it was really hard. As soon as I'd swallow one, I was handed another. I almost passed out at one point and the guy woke me up and told me to carry on. It took a whole night."

By the next morning, Angela had swallowed 37 capsules of cocaine. She was driven to the airport, dropped off and left to walk through customs alone.

"I kept praying If you just let me through, if you just let me through, I will never ever, ever do anything like this again'," she says. "All I could think about was not being able to see my children. It was so frightening. My heart was thumping. I could see two officers watching me and just as I was about to walk through they called me over.

"One of them said, We believe you have ingested a class-A drug, madam'. I started to panic and shake so much. I kept saying No, no, no'. They said, You don't have to be scared, but at this point your life is in serious danger, we need you to come with us'. They took me to a room, read me my rights and searched me."

Angela was then driven to hospital where she was kept on watch for three days until the drugs could pass through naturally. She was under armed guard the whole time, but even that didn't stop the traffickers from trying to get to her.

"At one point a nurse came in and said, Your son is here to see you'," she recalls.

"I looked at her and said, My son's in England'. The officer took the safety catch off the gun and raised it as two men were about to enter the ward. As soon as they saw the police they ran off. I have no doubt they'd have shot me if there hadn't been armed police at the hospital."

Angela was put on remand for three months before being sentenced to five years in prison, most of which would be spent at the women's jail in Trinidad.

"When you're told you're going to prison you go into a mini state of shock,"

she says. "I was put in a concrete cell and when the prison warden slammed the door behind me, I started to cry for the first time," she says.

"There were three people to each cell, a concrete slab and a bucket. You weren't allowed to know the time, wear make-up or smoke."

With a diet of two bread rolls for breakfast, a handful of rice and baked beans in the evening - and a piece of cheese, if she was lucky - Angela lost two stone in the space of three months.

The worst time, she says, was on remand, when she recalls hearing screams of boys and men being raped and then having to walk over bodies in the cells on the way to court.

Some of her experiences are still too traumatic to discuss. Angela says she survived by staying strong and keeping a low profile. Luckily, at least she knew her children were being looked after by family, rather than taken into care.

On September 28, 2005, almost a year and a half after being sentenced, she was told to pack her bag as she was being transferred to the UK.

"I can't explain the joy I felt at that moment," she says.

Angela was transferred to Holloway Prison before being moved to Downview in Sutton. "It was like a holiday camp compared to Trinidad," she recalls.

"Everyone was really nice and I had a room to myself with a proper bed, pillows, wardrobe, toilet, TV - everything.

I hadn't slept in a bed with a pillow for a year and a half."

Crucially, there was also a rehabilitation programme for drug importers.

"That was when I realised the true scale my contribution was having on the breakdown of society," she says. "It was like dropping a stone into a pond and seeing the ripple effect. I made the wrong choice, but I can see the bigger picture now."

(There were 4,309 drug offences in Sussex alone in 2005-6).

Since being released from Downview earlier this year, Angela has become involved with Hibiscus, a charity which offers support for women caught up in drug trafficking, helping them maintain relationships with their families abroad.

According to Hibiscus, at least 90 per cent of drug mules are first-time offenders who have been forced, threatened or cajoled into getting involved in the drug trade because of poverty.

Unlike the teenager in the film Maria Full Of Grace, the majority of drug mules are single mothers in their 30s. Seventy per cent have between two and four children in countries where there is no social welfare and some women have been handed prison sentences of up to 20 years.

Founder and director of Hibiscus, Olga Heaven, claims it's almost impossible for a judge to determine an appropriate sentence for a woman from a foreign country when they know nothing about her.

"If a woman is caught for the first time she should be sent back to the country she came from with some sort of bilateral agreement. It would save UK tax payers millions of pounds. If she comes back and is caught smuggling drugs again, she should get a minimum of ten years," she says.

Figures in 2003 showed more than half of all the foreign women being held in British jails were drug mules.

Olga points out that Gatwick will always have serious problems with drug importers because of the number of flights to and from the Caribbean, and she believes the best deterrent is education for foreign nationals as well as Britishborn traffickers such as Angela.

The number of drug mules on flights from Jamaica have dropped as a result of a high profile publicity campaign in Jamaica. Numbers have increased, however, on flights from Trinidad, St Lucia, Barbados, Nigeria and Ghana.

Hibiscus has already taken its campaign to Nigeria and is planning to target Ghana in the next year.

Olga claims links with local probation officers in Sussex have deteriorated over the past few years because of resources and changes in the system and, as far as Gatwick goes, she believes there is a need for more publicity to deter potential traffickers on the ground.

Gatwick refuses to comment on drug mules, saying it's an issue for Customs and Excise, who are equally vague about the actual number of women involved.

"When we have a seizure at Gatwick, we raise awareness through news releases," says Bev Morgan assistant press officer for Customs and Excise.

"While it's our job to inform and educate we can't target groups individually. We are here to detect and act as a deterrent."

Hibiscus is limited in what it can do but with women on board such as Angela, who has experienced the grim realities of drug smuggling first hand, it is at least moving in the right direction.

Angela also feels there is a need for more awareness in schools, doctors' surgeries and on TV.

"People recruiting drug mules know exactly who to target and more often than not it's women in vulnerable positions because they know we have that natural instinct to care for our children," she says.

"People think we're the scum of the earth but we're articulate people and mothers trying to survive like anyone else.

"Thank God, I've got a strong will.

I've built up my self-esteem and learnt my lesson the hard way."

She adds: "If I can stop one person importing drugs, that's a big thing for me."

What's your opinion about Angela's story and the targeting of women as mules? Leave your comments below.