Acknowledgements

Chapter 1

For Richer, For Poorer

For Jody, life was great. Just 27, she’d been married for almost two years to 38-year-old Richard, and although he worked long hours as a loans officer at a major bank, she had her freelance artwork and her local sports club to keep her busy when he was at the office. Sure, they were only renting their house, but it was a comfortable three-bedroom place in one of Hobart’s loveliest suburbs. The biggest things on Jody’s horizon were the possibility of replacing their ageing car or perhaps taking an overseas holiday – something they had talked about for ages, but hadn’t been able to afford. The last thing she expected, as Richard left for work early one morning, was for the police to arrest him in the driveway of their home. Soon she was to find out what exactly her husband had been up to.

‘I’d had a problem with gambling since I was a teenager’, says Richard. ‘I started off playing illegal pokie machines; there were coffee shops with pinball and other machines, where they’d rigged them so you could play for real money if they knew you were OK.’

In those early days, finding illegal gaming houses was never a problem for Richard: ‘How does the druggie recognise a drug dealer if they have never met before? How does a man find a prostitute? If you have a need, you will find a solution’. Richard’s problem was specifically with pokies; buying lottery tickets or betting on the footy, the horses or the dogs never had the same appeal for him. Changes to the gaming laws only made access to pokies easier.

As a loans officer, Richard had been responsible for authorising loans for the bank’s clients – mortgages, credit cards and car loans, whatever was needed. He established fraudulent loans for fictitious borrowers, with names either made up or plucked from the local telephone book. About 50 loan applications were made using this system. Richard had then transferred money from the loans into a bank account he’d set up under a false name. The fraud was discovered after a woman – who had a similar name to one of those taken from the telephone book as a loan applicant – complained to the bank after repeatedly being sent statements to a loan she had not applied for.

Having that power was like a red rag to a bull for a compulsive gambler like me. I was like, ‘Well I’ll just organise a little $10,000 loan for myself’. One thing led to another, and by the time I was arrested, I’d taken about a million dollars all up. They had a list of all the loans I’d authorised, and I had to say which ones were for me and not real clients.

Richard is still surprised at how much money he’d actually managed to steal. And it wasn’t as if he had been living the high life on the stolen funds.

Finances in the family were always an issue. We kept our heads above water but only just, and only by robbing Peter to pay Paul. I was driving an old car that had done over 250,000 kilometres, we didn’t do overseas holidays, and I’d never bought myself flash suits, worn a Rolex or bought Jody diamonds.

Practically every single cent from the bank had been fed straight into pokie machines, wherever and whenever Richard could find one.

I’d go to work at 7.30 am, duck into the pokies afterwards and come home at 3 am the next day. Even in bed, I’d continue to dream about the machines, no matter if I’d spent 10 or 14 hours on them that day. Sometimes when I was having a good run, I’d still be there at 9 am from the night before, even though I was meant to be at work at 8.30 am. I’ve read studies in the US that have shown that gambling on pokies causes the same chemical reaction in the brain as heroin addiction. It can be that hard to beat. Another thing with compulsive gambling is that you live in a dream world. I kept thinking that I would have a big win and everything would be all right.

Financially, physically and emotionally, Richard’s gambling problem had been taking its toll for some time. He could spend hours and hours sitting in front of the machines every day, not eating but possibly going through 60 cigarettes and numerous coffees in one session.

In his relationship with his new wife, he was also treading a fine line.

I’d lie and make up all sorts of bullshit about why I wasn’t home. And of course Jody loved me, so she wanted to believe me. I made up all sorts of excuses – a work trip, being in a car accident, even hitting a pedestrian one time… the stupid thing was that occasionally things really did happen to make me late home, but many times I’d just been lying. That’s my biggest regret today – the selfishness of my actions and the way I treated Jody back then. She’d query where I’d been, and I’d somehow turn it around on her and make her feel guilty for asking a perfectly valid question. Could I have been a bigger arsehole? Jody had no knowledge and no control at all, and the only reason she ended up in that situation was because she loved me.

The End of the Honeymoon

Richard is intelligent, articulate and clearly a very convincing liar. Jody was completely in the dark.

I had no idea that there was any sort of problem until the police came to the door that morning. The whole thing was absolutely surreal. I just couldn’t make sense of the fact that there were people in our house, going through every room, every part of our life, and calling my husband a criminal. Trust me, it’s not something you ever want to experience.

Richard and Jody were held separately while the police searched the house, so she was unable to even ask him what was going on. She was kept out the back in the kitchen. ‘Before they took him away, they let him come and give me a hug but that was the only contact we were allowed. It was all so overwhelming. I remember actually sitting at the kitchen table, just shaking, and with no idea of what to do or feel or say.’

To this day, Richard feels guilty for what he put Jody through.

I’d never considered getting caught, or what might happen. Jody’s world just collapsed around her. That’s the thing about gambling – just like drugs or alcohol, gambling is a very selfish pursuit. You don’t see the bigger picture and how your actions are affecting others. You become a brilliant bullshit artist so that people will believe the lies you tell them. You have to convince yourself that they are true too, because otherwise your world would fall apart.

Richard hadn’t even been able to share the good times – his few, rare wins – with Jody.

One day in particular, I got home and had $10,000 in $50 notes in my pocket. I knew I couldn’t show Jody, because she’d realise that something was going on, but what the hell could I do? I could hardly put it in the bank! I couldn’t even buy a new car or pay for a holiday, because then I’d have to explain where I got the money.

Before his arrest, Richard had thought about leaving his job – deluding himself that if the theft was discovered, they wouldn’t be able to blame him if he no longer worked there. He’d even put in for leave and was planning to take a holiday and then never come back. He really thought he could get away with it – at least until the police cars blocked off his driveway that final morning.

Richard had been gambling solidly for almost 30 years when he was finally arrested. He had an earlier conviction for defrauding a previous employer, but had escaped a prison sentence. ‘When I was arrested this time, I knew there was no way I could get out of it, so I put up my hand straight away and confessed to everything.’

Baptism by Fire

Richard was taken to the police station for further questioning about the million dollars that were missing from the bank, while Jody was left at home alone and in shock at how her morning – not to mention her life – was unravelling. But before Richard had been taken away, he’d been allowed to make a call to his sister, who lived just around the corner, and she had come straight around.

Amid the shock, the practicalities took over. What do you do when your husband has been arrested for embezzlement? Who do you call? What about his employer? What about clothes, toiletries, money, lawyers and other essentials? It was all very confronting for someone like Jody, who’d grown up in a good middle-class family and who’d never had any contact with the police or courts before. Richard’s sister was equally bemused. She and Richard and their siblings came from a family of high achievers who’d never been in trouble. Jody and Richard’s family suddenly found themselves on a very steep learning curve.

I quickly found out that, for a start, I’d have to take Richard some clothes. There are no facilities for laundry or anything like that, so if someone [on remand] doesn’t have anyone on the outside then they could be in the same clothes for weeks. Toiletries too. I had to pack up everything I could think of and take them into my husband in prison. It was horrendous.

The first time Jody saw Richard after his arrest it was from behind glass. ‘It was just like a bad American film – you’re in separate little cubicles, you pick up the phone and then you’re talking to each other through two-inch-thick bulletproof glass.’

Jody doesn’t know whether it was the shock of Richard’s arrest or the environment in which they now found themselves, but she found it impossible to discuss anything personal or to talk of her anger and confusion and disappointment. ‘Everything just shuts down and you just have to operate on a practical level – you know, what do we need to do next?’

Jody thinks that Richard was probably still in denial about his problem, his crime and its impact on their marriage when she first saw him in prison.

It took a while for him to realise what he’d done, and the fact that it had been found out. The first time I saw him, he thought that he could sort it all out – that he could fix it somehow. But embezzling a million dollars from your employer to fund a pokies addiction is not something you can easily fix.

Nor could Richard control his new environment. He describes his introduction to the prison system as both degrading and frightening. His first cell was lined with concrete slabs, and the only extras were a thin mattress covered in vinyl, a pillow and some bedding. He was relieved to find himself alone, but in the middle of the night a new cellmate arrived.

He’d escaped from jail and then been captured. He had massive bruises where he’d been beaten up by the police, and for the next 24 hours he was coughing up blood and ranting about whom he was going to murder next. He clearly had serious mental and aggression problems, and I was locked alone in a cell with him.

Richard spent that first night fighting the pressing urge of stress diarrhoea, too scared to use the seatless, stainless-steel toilet for fear of upsetting his cellmate further. He passed a very uncomfortable night. The next morning, the cell was unlocked and he was let out into the yard shared between eight adjoining cells. The small space – about 20 by 50 feet – was now heaving with 30 other prisoners. There were two shared showers – the use of which was dictated by informal prison hierarchy. The same applied to the toilets. ‘I saw some blokes going through their faeces in the toilet bowl to recover drugs they’d swallowed before being arrested, just so they could get their next hit. I’d never seen anything like that before.’

Once it became known what Richard was in for, some other prisoners caught the scent of money, if not blood.

They wanted to know where I’d stashed the money, but there was nothing left. I was broke. They just couldn’t understand that I’d gone through a million dollars. They even indirectly threatened my wife, thinking that she must know where I had stashed it. I had to stand up for myself and try to make them understand that there really was no money left. The pokies had got it all.

Know Your Friends

You quickly learn who your real friends are when your husband goes to prison, says Jody wryly, particularly when your friends are unacquainted with the niceties of Australia’s justice and penal system, except perhaps from the professional side.

There was a lot of gossip in our social circle, and some people tried to make Richard a scapegoat for other things that had been going on – discrepancies in the local sports-club books and stuff like that. Things that Richard had had nothing to do with. People kept on embroidering the story of what he’d done until it became completely ridiculous. I kept saying, ‘that’s not what happened’, but no-one took any notice.

Jody trusted some friends who let her down very badly, including one who rang to offer support after seeing an article about Richard in the newspaper, and then gleefully shared Jody’s confidences with their entire circle of friends.

I was at the point that if the Foxtel man had walked in the door, I would have told him everything. I have not spoken to that woman in all the years since.

Jody’s family was shocked, protective and also very, very angry with their daughter’s relatively new husband.

Let’s just say, they didn’t take it very well, but how do you take something like that well? Nowadays it is much better and they are fine with him. Most of the friends who got me through that time were people I hadn’t been particularly friendly with beforehand. Some people I thought were really good friends didn’t speak a word to me after it happened. It was all about how it affected them. And I’m sorry, it affected them how?

But some people surprisingly stepped up to the mark. Indeed, today Jody says that many of their main supporters were people they didn’t know particularly well when it first happened.

A friend’s husband – whom I didn’t really know back then – dropped in very early in the morning not long after Richard’s arrest to check that I was OK. He’d brought me a chart of the stages of grieving, and he said that although I hadn’t experienced a death, these were the stages of grief that I was probably going to go through. I went to give him a hug and then just started crying and couldn’t stop.

Jody describes the then relative stranger as someone who is a ‘darling, darling man’. She still can’t believe that after saying he couldn’t stay long, somehow he ended up staying all day.

He’d arrived at 7.30 am, and a while later I realised that it was much lighter and I was still drinking tea and chatting to him. I looked at the clock, and it was 4 pm! Realising that I needed someone, he’d stayed with me the whole time without saying a word. Not once did I even notice him ringing work to say that he wouldn’t be in. He was a godsend that day, and also afterwards.

There were some funny moments in between the rougher times. One friend used to call frequently in the early days after Richard’s arrest, when the police still believed that Jody knew where the missing money might be.

I could tell that the phone was being tapped, so we used to deliberately talk about the tea canister and the cistern and the washing machine – all the places that people traditionally hide money. The funny thing was that although these are the places they always search in movies, they’d never even lifted our mattress or looked in our cistern. It was like, ‘You’re going to go through my knickers drawer but you’re not going to check the cistern of the toilet?’ It was insane.

While Jody was discovering new sources of support and friends on the outside, she was also Richard’s mainstay. His family had been both shocked and horrified by his arrest.

The shame was the main thing for me. I came from a well-to-do, upper-middle-class family, I’d been educated at a good school so there was definitely an element of ‘How the mighty have fallen’. One of my brothers happened to be close friends with a very senior policeman, so can you imagine how embarrassing it was for him to admit that I was now in prison. Another brother ran a successful business, and he had to change banks after 25 years because of what I had done and his connection with me. The whole thing was very distressing for all of them, and I’ll live with that for the rest of my life.

Richard admits that being in prison shielded him from much of the fallout – that he wasn’t the one having to worry about what might be in the paper and having to face the reactions of their friends and acquaintances.

The Abnormal Normal

Inside, Richard was finally getting the help he needed with his gambling. ‘I did a lot of one-on-one counselling, and lots of gambling courses. I went to gambling support meetings inside too, and ended up becoming the jail coordinator and acting as a mentor to others.’ Richard is proud of the fact that he didn’t have a single bet during his time in prison. ‘It’s a big thing in there too; darts, pool, table tennis, cards – they’ll bet on everything.’

Richard says that although in many ways prison is the worst thing that has ever happened in his life, in other ways it is the best.

It was inevitable though, looking back. I had to end up in there the way I was going. And at least it broke the spell of the pokies. The consequences of my actions before that were not sufficient to act as a deterrent. I would have kept on going if it hadn’t been for prison.

Richard’s pokies addiction introduced Jody to a whole new world too. She spoke to anyone she knew with personal experience of addiction, and then she reached out to the professionals.

They were as useless as you could possibly be. Their idea of support was to tell me that if I was feeling angry, I should go outside and throw some plates. I was like, ‘And that will help me how?’ They told me that I wouldn’t feel so angry, but I pointed out that I also wouldn’t have any plates!

Family support services at the prison were equally useless, mainly because Jody didn’t fit the mould of the typical partner of a prisoner, or so she believes.

They basically said that I must have known what Richard was up to and accused me of being in on the whole thing. Their attitude was, ‘All the wives of the thieves we get in here are involved too’.’ Jody describes their attitude as ghoulish. ‘They just wanted to hear all the gory details from me – maybe it was to fill in their forms, but it felt like they just wanted a story to tell their friends that night. It was horrid.

Richard was sentenced to five years in prison for his crime, with three years of non-parole. As a result of his incarceration, Jody went from living in a comfortable three-bedroom house in a very comfortable suburb to a one-bedroom flat in a far less salubrious area. It was a very difficult time, to say the least, particularly as Richard had been the main breadwinner during their marriage. ‘Suddenly I had to support him – to pay for all his needs, including his clothing, which changed every time he moved to a different prison. At one place it would be a green tracksuit with a white T-shirt; at the next, black and blue.’

The whole bizarre experience became Jody and Richard’s normality. ‘I’d visit, I’d come home, and then I’d count the days to the next visit. It became routine… it wasn’t something I’d ever expected to do, but it became something we both just had to endure.’

Richard drew up a calendar on the first day of his sentence and crossed each day off, one at a time – all 1095 days of the sentence he was expected to serve before being eligible for parole. Jody couldn’t bear the thought. ‘If I’d counted all the days from the start, it would have been way too much to handle. I simply wouldn’t have got through it.’ Instead, she focused on putting one foot in front of the other, trusting that somehow things would improve. Looking back, there were times when she thought it was all too hard, but then she’d remember the marriage vows she’d made. ‘Yep, that’s what I promised I would do.’

When she made those marriage vows, little did Jody expect that it would involve a close encounter with another side of society. Prison visits were a particular eye-opener on a number of fronts. The never-ending procession of ‘ferals’ was a bit of a shock to Jody. ‘Some women had seven children to different men and the kids didn’t know whose father they were visiting.’

Jody didn’t make any friends in the visiting room, despite seeing some of the same faces week after week. Inside, Richard took much the same approach – mainly because he was determined to just survive the three years and then leave it behind him. While some of the prison officers were ‘psychopaths’, others soon recognised that Richard was an intelligent bloke who just wanted to do his time and get out, and they treated him accordingly.

They saw me as a guy who’d screwed up his life and didn’t need them to screw it up more. And I was quite happy to do whatever I was asked to do – mop the floors or something. I didn’t make any friends – you’re never friends with anyone in jail, because you can never be sure what they want from you. I also didn’t want anyone there to have any lasting association with me. I wanted to be an isolated unit, so that the experience would have the least impact on me.

Richard says that he is a very private person at the best of times, partly to do with the obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) that he now recognises he has always suffered from.

I’ve always had a thing for numbers and counting things. I can control it now, but at one point I could tell you how many steps there were from my front door to the post office, 800 metres away, or how many bricks there might be in a wall. I could also sit in front of a pokie machine for 10 minutes and tell you what percentage it was paying. It didn’t matter what the odds were though; I’d always keep playing. At one time, I got to the point where I was dreaming in numbers and doing mathematical equations in my head, which did nothing for a good night’s sleep or a chance for my brain to switch off. I was never fully rested.

Some of the characters he met in jail made a lasting impression, including one chap who seemed perfectly nice but who turned out to be doing multiple life sentences for contract killings.

The other guys warned me against him, saying that he was a nutcase and he might be nice to me now, but he could turn like that. Best to stay away. Another man called me into his cell and we had a lovely chat but it turned out that he was another killer and considered very dangerous.

With white-collar criminals, murderers, druggies and everyone else all thrown in together, there was no way of knowing who to trust or what to do.

You’ve got to be careful what you do or say, because of who you might offend. It can be little things like calling someone ‘Champ’. That sounds like ‘Tamp’, which is short for ‘Tamperer’, meaning a paedophile. Calling someone a paedophile can get you killed. You don’t whistle in jail either, because that’s something you do to dogs. In prison, a dog is someone who snitches to the guards. When you first go into prison, you’re very naive and can do the wrong thing without even knowing it. Luckily, I was a reasonable size – 100 kilograms and six foot – so people thought I could protect myself.

Richard’s worst night came when, for some unknown reason, he was briefly transferred to maximum security.

I had one night when I was in fear for my life. I’d been put into a triple cell and the other two guys were convinced that I was a police informer. I spent an entire night listening to them planning to kill me… they thought I was asleep and were discussing whether they could rip the leg off a table and beat me to death before the guards came in. All I could think of to do was to try and use my pillow to shield the blows… if they’d had a shiv [knife], I would have been stuffed.

In the event, his cellmates didn’t make a move that night, but Richard had been so tense that he’d put his back out and couldn’t walk. He was moved to the medical wing in the morning via wheelchair, and from there to another part of the prison. It was a very lucky escape, he reckons.

Richard spared Jody many of the details of his daily life at the time.

I always thought, ‘Does she need to know this?’ There was also an element of it being my punishment – that I had brought it upon myself, bucko, and that I should just shut up and suck it up. At the end of the day, I’d put myself in that position, so why should I burden her? What she had to go through was equally horrendous.

But for three years Jody was constantly worried. ‘I couldn’t do anything to help, and had no way of protecting him. And I knew that however badly the guards sometimes treated me, it must have been 10 times worse for him.’ Jody, of course, had very personal experience of the guards, thanks to her regular visits to Richard. One particular incident is seared in her memory.

Before a visit, all visitors had to line up on dots on the floor about two metres apart. The sniffer dogs would go all over us and then we’d be patted down and scanned for drugs and other contraband. One day, one of the sniffer dogs knocked down a toddler, who immediately burst into tears. The mother was standing on a separate dot and wanted to go to her child, but the guards screamed at her to stay put. I mean, what was she going to do? The guards were the ones with the guns. All the visitors were treated like criminals – even the toddlers.

At that time, the couple was able to see each other three or four times a week, albeit through the bullet-proof glass. If they were lucky, they’d be the only couple in the room – if not, they might be surrounded by other prisoners, their partners and possibly children. Having a private conversation was only a dream on those days. However, they were allowed a one-hour contact visit every month. Then, Richard would be dressed in overalls fixed with cable ties so that he couldn’t unzip them. ‘But at least we could sit at a table and hold hands’, Richard says.

His final months in prison were spent in a lower security facility. ‘I was in a cottage with three other guys who’d all done over 10 years inside at that point. One was in for killing a cop, another one for killing his girlfriend, and another for slashing a guy’s throat. And then there was me.’

Richard still can’t quite believe that Jody stuck by him during this time.

I wouldn’t have blamed her at all if she had found the whole thing too hard. When we first met, I was a 30-year-old divorcee with a gambling problem; she was a 19-year-old country kid who’d grown up on the family farm and come to town for university. What happened next was not what she expected. It wasn’t what I’d promised when she married me, nor what I would ever have wished for her. The fact that she stuck by me proves what a good choice I made!

The Afterlife

During Richard’s time inside, neither he nor Jody had really planned what might happen on his release. Planning was too much pressure, Jody says. ‘It was easier to say, “Let’s just put it behind us, pick up and go on”. I did make preparations for Richard to come home, but I honestly couldn’t fathom how he would fit into my life at that time.’

Jody celebrated her 30th birthday just before Richard was released. It was a bittersweet occasion for many reasons – it was not how she’d ever expected to be celebrating, but then it was also a marker that Richard was on his way home. Having had three years by herself, in a new home where everything was done her way, Jody realised that she had to let go of the way she’d been living.

I had to make a deliberate effort to let him be part of my new house and my life, which was difficult at first having been so independent for the last three years. I also had to make allowances for the habits he’d picked up inside – little things he had to do before he went to bed like checking that the doors and windows were locked, and that all the taps were turned off. Part of it was about him feeling safe, but it was also part of the OCD that led to the gambling problem in the first place. It took a while before he stopped.

About six weeks before Richard was released, he was given day leave and then overnight leave, so he had a chance to reconnect with life on the outside. But when it came to the big day itself, he opted to make his own way home from prison.

Having anyone meet me would have felt too much like a celebration. I wanted to have time to reflect and get my mind together, to get used to the fact that for the first time in three years I wasn’t being watched. That was a huge thing for me. Plus, going home under my own steam meant I was released a bit earlier so I could make the public transport connections I needed. I was let out before prison officially opened for the day – all the other guys were still locked in, which meant that I could go without having to see anyone.

Richard says that his time in prison still affects him.

Even now, ten years after getting out, I walk into the house and leave the front door open, and just lock the fly-screen. I can’t bear being locked in anywhere. It’s the freedom issue. I’d prefer not to be living on the ground floor too, so that there are fewer ways for people to get at me. Not a fortnight goes past without me dreaming about prison, and that’s ten years after I got out. I still get vivid flashbacks and get very restless. The only thing that calms me is to be by the sea or to look at the sky. It was one thing having my body locked away, but when I couldn’t see the sky, that’s when I felt really in prison.

Social anxiety was another issue that still hasn’t completely dissipated for either of them. ‘When Richard walks into a group of people, he always wonders if people know about his past. We’ve learned to live with it over the years since his release, but it is always there.’

Richard admits that as a result of his prison experience, he’s always looking for ulterior motives when people ask questions about his life, even innocent questions. ‘I always wonder whether I can trust that person or not. It’s not a nice way to live.’

Finding employment has been one of his biggest problems, particularly at the senior level he’d previously occupied.

I can’t apply for any job where they ask about a criminal record, and it seems that employers looking for senior staff generally want to do a probity check. If I ever do say that I have a criminal record, then that’s it; I never hear back from them again. I’m yet to have one call-back from an application where I have admitted to my past.

Richard has even pursued jobs well below his experience level – in a call centre, for instance. ‘I didn’t even get an interview for that, and it’s not like I am Jack the Ripper or something. But I never get the opportunity to explain – people just don’t care.’ He even came up with a brilliant fundraising idea for a charity, but when the organisers found out about his past, he was swiftly asked to cease his involvement. ‘There was nothing in it for me – I was just trying to help raise money because I felt the need to give something back to the community, but they wouldn’t listen. They even threatened legal action against me.’

Today, Richard is unemployed, which he admits does have its own stresses. He also worries about the lasting record of his conviction and imprisonment.

For three years, I disappeared off the radar of the Tax Office, Medicare, Centrelink, all because I was in the prison system. But every government department knows where I was… so if I go into hospital or something, it is there on my notes. I carry it with me everywhere I go.

Richard also has a huge restitution order issued by the court hanging over his head. The restitution order has no statute of limitations, so if by chance he does manage to get back on his feet financially and acquire assets – such as a house – then there is every chance that the state could swoop in and take possession of it.

The whole thing about doing the crime, doing the time, and then having the slate wiped clean is nonsense. I’m sorry, but in 20 years time I will still have it hanging over my head. Why would I risk buying a property if the bank could just move in and take it away? I’ll never have a sense of stability again. Not only do I have the stigma of being an ex-prisoner and the difficulties involved in getting a job so I can rebuild my life, but if I do, then they can take it all away.

Coda

A few years after his release, Richard and Jody moved to the mainland. Most of their new friends have no idea of their past. Then again, they don’t have their family and those friends who’d been supportive either. It’s a catch-22, says Jody.

As for their relationship, re-establishing trust is an ongoing process. ‘Whenever Richard is late home, there’s always a little nagging doubt about where he has been. Sometimes I can go for months without thinking about it, but it’s self-preservation on my part; once bitten, three or four times shy. I’m always a little on my guard now.’

Richard agrees, saying that he recognises that there will always be doubt, and he doesn’t blame Jody for that. Rebuilding trust, both with Jody and their family and friends, is something that he knows can only be done slowly. ‘I can’t believe how lucky I am with Jody. I sometimes wonder if things would have been different if we’d been three years further down the line, when the gloss of the first years of marriage had worn off – not that there was a lot of gloss with my lifestyle!’

Richard took his prison sentence as a time to stop and reassess what was really important in his life. He came to the conclusion that he needed to celebrate and enjoy what he had.

For 30 years, while I was gambling, I didn’t appreciate my life. Gambling cost me all sorts of things – jobs, relationships, and sport. I had a chance to play one sport at the highest level, but it required too much commitment and too much time away from gambling. I look back, and think, what my life could have been like if it hadn’t been for the pokies? From now on, I’ve vowed to live a different life.

And he knows he is lucky to still have Jody at his side.

When you are together, you both change together. You either grow stronger together or you grow apart. But when you’re separated by prison and only have a couple of hours once a week or a fortnight together, then you are both on different paths and changing in different ways. In the limited time you have together, it’s difficult to convey how you are changing, so when you are reunited after three years, both of you are new people.

Richard is still in awe of the way Jody – a young woman who’d never really had to fend for herself – took responsibility for her life; a married woman but alone and also dealing with the stigma of a husband in jail.

I wasn’t party to all the changes that brought about in her. And she had no idea of how my time in prison fundamentally changed me. When we came back together again, it was like, ‘Hang on, are we still the couple we used to be? Do we still have a relationship that we can pick up and carry on? That was the biggest question. Because we’d been changing independently of each other, we didn’t know whether we would gel when we got back together.

Having a husband or partner go to prison is not something that Jody would wish on anyone. But she’s proud of the fact that their marriage did survive. ‘I’ve heard that if you can both survive the first two years of them being home, only then can you put it behind you.’

Recently, Jody and Richard celebrated their 15th wedding anniversary. The joke they have is whether they should include the three years Richard spent in prison. Is it really their 15th anniversary or their 12th? Or do they count those years inside as double? In that case it would be their 18th.

However you measure the time spent inside, Jody advises that you’ve just got to get through those years however you can.

Laugh maniacally, write down nonsense – make it as surreal as you like because it is a surreal situation. One dear friend used to come over before each hearing, and we’d say, ‘What are we going to do? I know, let’s work out a smashing outfit to wear!’ We always joked that we were going to write a book about what to wear when your old feller is going to court. You have to have a sense of humour to get through something like this, otherwise you’ll still be sitting crying at that kitchen table.