Twenty years in jail: Kathleen Folbigg’s extraordinary story of wrongful conviction, and how science, advocacy and friendship freed her.
In Inside Out Kathleen takes us back to her traumatic childhood, her difficult marriage, her dream of nurturing a family, and the profound souring of that dream into a nightmare.
This is also , however, a story of unwavering friendship and resilience. Tracy Chapman and Kathleen were close at school. After Kathleen was jailed, Tracy renewed contact and, convinced her friend could never have committed such crimes, began advocating for her with extraordinary tenacity. She never doubted Kathleen’s innocence, relentlessly petitioning for new evidence to be examined, and for a new approach to be taken as doubts about the safety of the conviction grew among scientists and the legal community.
Ultimately, these two women together faced down a misogynistic justice system and forged a friendship that supported Kathleen as she endured the trauma of the prison system. And finally, after many devastating setbacks, came the leaps forward needed to overturn one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in Australia’s history: in 2023 Kathleen was released, pardoned and exonerated.
Kathleen and Tracy will be in conversation with Quentin McDermott.