Prison Child: The Story of Vanessa Goosen’s Daughter

By Felicia Goosen and Deonette de Kock

After Vanessa Goosen is imprisoned for smuggling drugs out of Thailand she gives birth to Felicia in Lard Yao Prison. Felicia is sent back to South Africa when she turns three. Here she is lovingly raised by her mom's best friend. But Felicia feels desolated and she does not know how to voice her feelings. Years of rebellion and self harming follows. In her student years Felicia's life turns around, and she becomes a wounded healer, reaching out to others bringing a message of hope. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lux Verbi
• Release date: May 19, 2023
• ISBN: 9780796323194

Felicia Goosen

Felicia Goosen was born in Lard Yao Prison in Thailand. When she was three years old she was sent to South Africa to be raised by her mom's (Vanessa) best friend Melanie. Today Felicia is a Youth Wellness Counsellor, Confidence Coach and Mental Health Advocate and speaker. 

Book preview

prison_child.jpg

Writers work over a long period and do extensive research to create a book which is eventually published. The ebook version of such a title is, like the printed edition, not free of charge. You may therefore not distribute the ebook for free, but have to purchase it from an authorised ebook merchant. Should you distribute the ebook for free, you violate the Copyright Act 98 of 1978 and render yourself liable to prosecution.

Lux Verbi

In loving memory of Melanie Holmes and Deonette Naudé

"The harder I am thrown,

The higher I bounce.

I give it my all,

And that’s all that counts.

In first place,

Myself, I seldom find.

So I push to the limit –

I won’t be left behind."

(Sara Nachtman, extract from I Won’t be Left Behind)

Prologue

My story begins on 31 October 1994 when I was born in the notorious and dreaded Lard Yao women’s prison in Bangkok.

When I turned three, according to Lard Yao’s rules, I was sent back to South Africa where I grew up with loving foster parents.

Now, at the age of 28, I have finally found the courage to share my story, a story of immense pain and rejection after the trauma of being torn from my mother in Lard Yao. Although I had wonderful foster parents, I always felt guilty for enjoying my childhood, knowing my mother was still in prison.

In 1994 my mother Vanessa Goosen (21) was accused of alleged drug-trafficking and sentenced to life imprisonment at the Lard Yao prison. Her story of having been duped into carrying books with 1.7 kilograms of heroin hidden in them made headlines worldwide.

After she was released in 2010, she had to carve out a new life for herself in South Africa. In 2013, Drug Muled: Sixteen Years in a Thai Prison, a book about her life behind bars in Bangkok, was published.

For as long as I can remember I’d felt alone, rejected. As a teenager I grappled with serious mental health issues, including depression, panic attacks, self-harm and a serious drinking problem that culminated in various suicide attempts.

For a very long time I was in a deep, black hole. After I returned from a missionary outreach in Lard Yao at the age of 24, I finally found closure. I let go of my emotional baggage and found healing. As a survivor, I am now ready to talk about it.

Healing is not an easy process, so it’s of the utmost importance to share those deeply pent-up feelings with someone you trust: a friend, family member or a professional. Even if it is difficult and you feel that nobody understands you, it can spare you unnecessary long-term pain. And yes, nobody has walked in your shoes.

If only I’d reached out and spoken to someone earlier in my life, my story would have been so different. But I never thought anyone would understand, and I didn’t want people to pity me. I did enough of that myself.

Today I realise how wrong I was. For healing to take place, it’s essential to open up about your feelings. I want those who are suffering to realise that you don’t have to feel alone. Even if our stories differ, healing is always possible.

I hope my story will touch and inspire each and every one who reads this: those with emotional issues, and even those without.

Felicia

Mommy will be home soon. I promise!

These words haunted me for many years. When I was sent back to South Africa, three years after my birth in Lard Yao women’s prison in Bangkok, my mother promised that she would follow me home soon. I believed her. As a child I waited year after year for my mother to return, but in vain.

The reality was that she was sentenced to life imprisonment at Lard Yao. Her story of having been duped into carrying books with 1.7 kilograms of heroin hidden in them made headlines worldwide.

When I turned three, in accordance with the rules of Lard Yao, I was sent back to South Africa where I was placed in foster care. Between the ages of five and 15 I visited my mother in prison four times. Because of the trauma of these visits, I blocked out my experiences and emotions after each visit – no doubt a subconscious coping mechanism.

At the age of 24, I tried to put the missing pieces of the puzzle back where they belonged. It was as if a part of me was missing, and I didn’t know where to find it. I had to go back to Thailand, my place of birth, to find answers – in Lard Yao prison where my footprints echoed in every passage and around each corner.

But a part of my brain still protects me so that there are things I cannot remember. This I do remember: that Lard Yao was home. That it was a place of abundant love and attention. That I had enough to eat, and that I was spoiled by everyone. I remember hundreds of faces, those of the guards as well as those of the inmates.

I can recall that I never felt dependent on anyone emotionally – not even my mother. I somehow felt like a grown-up.

Seeing the photographs of myself as a little girl, holding on to the bars of the cells in Lard Yao while looking outside, upsets me greatly. I can feel the pain of that little girl. The photos brought back the pain this girl felt when she had to leave her mom and all the inmates she loved. These were the women to whom I spoke Thai fluently, the language in which I was brought up.

There is another image that often haunts me: me as a little girl in Lard Yao looking at my mother. Of course, I did not know what she was thinking, but I could see she was sad. Another clear memory is the image of myself leaving Lard Yao after visiting my mother, when I felt I had to be strong for her sake and not look back when I walked out that door. The door to freedom.

I remember the overwhelming pain. Later in life, I realised that those were the same feelings my mother must have experienced. Somehow my mother’s emotions have always been part of my own. This turned me into a very sensitive child.

On my return visit to Lard Yao – some years after my mother had been released – and while trying to piece my life together, the words Mommy will be home soon. I promise! seem to echo inside the cold room with its light grey walls, silvery steel chairs and grey counter. I recognise the big fans that try to cool the sticky heat. The inmates with their light blue shirts and dark blue skirts are painfully familiar.

The realisation of being emotionally connected to this place hits hard. It feels like home.

I know it oh so well! I remember how, as a five year old, I ran up and down the stairs, excited to be visiting my mother. Although it didn’t feel strange then, I now realise that the situation was abnormal. My playground was cold concrete and sterility, but the people inside lent a paradoxical warmth to the environment.

I meet an elderly lady from South Africa, who is about to be released.

She is in her late fifties or sixties with long grey-blonde hair. She has no front teeth. Her face is wrinkled: a landscape full of hardship. She stares at me through the thick glass partition, reinforced with burglar bars.

She and the other inmates who will remain behind bars had heard of my mother, Vanessa, who was in Lard Yao prison for more than 16 years. She had left a legacy of hope for each and every one of them. Not only had she been wrongfully sentenced to life imprisonment and eventually set free, but she had also made a difference in many lives through her charitable work in prison. She had made positive changes and transformed many of the inmates’ lives by teaching them about the Lord.

The woman who sits in front of me is excited to be going home soon. But on her worn face I can see the naked fear. What will life be like when she gets back home after so many years in prison? She is apprehensive because her children have stopped writing to her.

Her dull blue eyes are filled with remorse. As a struggling single parent, desperate to put food on the table, she’d plunged into drug dealing in Bangkok and ended up in Lard Yao.

This woman’s fear that her children might have rejected her is heart-wrenching. Their silence is deafening, and it breaks her heart. But she doesn’t cry. To cry is a waste of time, especially if you have only half an hour to speak to visitors. Each visit brings hope. The fact that someone from the outside cares and wants to spend time with you is something to be treasured. A luxury.

My mother often told me how every letter from me, her family, friends and even strangers from all over the world helped her cope and gather the courage to carry on, to face the next day.

How did you handle it when your mom was still in prison and you were sent home? the woman asks anxiously.

It’s not as if your children don’t care about you or love you, I explain. It’s difficult to write a letter to your mother in prison and only receive an answer two to three months later. So much happens in between.

I add: "Just thinking of your mother in prison is so demoralising. You want to show you care but at the same time you have tried to move on with your life. You try to negate the overwhelming sadness inside you, so writing to your mom is extremely tough.

That was the reason that I also wrote less and less over the years when my mother was still in here. It’s so difficult for a child. But it doesn’t mean that you don’t care about your mother anymore. The only thing you can do now is to pray for your children.

The woman looks at me with new hope in her eyes. Grateful.

When I get up to go, she also stands. She puts her hand against the glass panel. I stare at her, rattled and touched. My mother would do the same thing when I visited her and had to say goodbye. I’d firmly press my small hand against my mother’s bigger hand, too sad to let go of it.

Suddenly a whirlpool of memories floods through me. I have to do something to comfort this woman, so I put my hand against the glass, as I did so often in the past. And then I quickly move away, remembering how hard it was for me to leave my mother after each visit.

I am close to tears, but I try to hold them back; just as I did each time I visited my mother, trying to be strong for her.

On my way out, short of breath, I suddenly have a crystal-clear realisation that this is the reason my brain has been protecting me all along. Coming to the prison and visiting my mother was my life for many years. I couldn’t touch her and had to talk through a glass panel and bars. There wasn’t time to get to know her. Leaving her again was extremely hard, as was trying to establish a life at home.

I feel numb. I realise that I am angry with my mother, and that I have been angry for many years.

Why did she have to send me away as a little girl of three? Why? Here, inside, I felt safe and loved. In my child’s mind, it felt as if she had cast me out into a big, unsafe world full of strange people and expected me to get on with life on my own.

Suddenly, I feel traumatised all over again, the same way I felt after each visit to my mother in Lard Yao. This feeling of rejection – that I was given away, discarded – has been a part of my life for a very long time.

I feel crushed, as if my heart has been trampled. Broken.

Vanessa

"I heard Fifi crying and screaming when she walked away from me and out the prison door. She was three years old, and it was her birthday. It affected me so badly that I collapsed.

But I kept telling myself that I had no option, and I knew God would take care of her and watch over her. Still, it was not easy, not at all, Felicia’s mother, Vanessa Goosen, recalls.

When Vanessa was told that Felicia had to leave Lard Yao prison once she turned three, she had to prepare herself mentally. It was very difficult. She desperately wanted to go home to South Africa with her little girl.

"The fact that I had to be strong for Fifi kept me from falling apart. I poured all my love into her, and she kept me busy. I could not imagine how I was going to survive after I had to let her go.

"It helped that I could send Fifi to my best friend Melanie Holmes and her family in Johannesburg. She offered to take care of Fifi, who was the same age as her own daughter. I trusted her. Although I had a good relationship with my mom and my sisters, my sisters were young, didn’t have children of their own and had no experience in raising a child. I knew that my mom, who was suicidal because of my situation, could not take care of Fifi.

"I worried and feared that Fifi wouldn’t cope without me. On top of that, she spoke only Thai.

But I had no choice but to accept the inevitable and start to prepare Fifi for leaving me and everyone who had been part of her life in Lard Yao. My faith in God helped me. I knew that He had a purpose and plan for my life, and that it was not to harm me, but to mould me (Jeremiah 29:11). I also realised that prison was not a place for a child, and that I had no option because the rules dictated that my child had to leave when she turned three.

Eventually the day arrived. Melanie came to fetch Felicia, who was excited because Vanessa had painted a beautiful picture of life in South Africa. She had told Fifi that she wouldn’t be sleeping on the floor but on a soft bed, nor would she need to shower in cold water, and she would have many toys.

"After she had left, it affected me emotionally. As a mother in prison, you are kept very busy, doing your washing and keeping an eye on it because it might get stolen, getting food and taking care of your child. I was one of the most exhausted people in that prison.

But when Fifi left, it was much harder to deal with all my fears and concerns for her. It was extremely tough, but prayers kept me going.

Vanessa remembers how she ended up in Lard Yao prison,