Cocaine Cassie
Author: Cassie Sainsbury
ISBN: 9781760798567
Publisher: New Holland Publishers
Year first published: 01 Dec 2025
Pages: 256
Format: Paperback / softback
On Wednesday, 12 April 2017, 22-year- oldCassandra Sainsbury, a personal trainer fromAdelaide, South Australia was arrested atEldorado International Airport in Bogota,Columbia.In her luggage she had been carrying 5.8kilograms of cocaine.She was looking at up to 30 yearsincarceration for drug trafficking.It was to be the beginning of a harrowingordeal of survival in El Buen Pasor – one of theworld’s most notorious prisons and the settingof a tale of violence and abuse as a youngwoman struggled to make sense of themadness all around her.At the centre of an international mediacircus, the woman who the world wouldcome to know as “Cocaine Cassie” survivedbeatings, stabbings and rape while her storyplayed out in public, distorted by lies andexaggerations that played out over years.Now, in her own words, Cocaine Cassie setsthe record straight in this raw and harrowingaccount of what it was really like.Bruised, battered and scarred she tells of howshe was forced into becoming a drug mule. Itis a story of pain and loss of hope for a future.But it is also a story of her rise to forgivenessand redemption – to creating a life where awoman’s past does not define her future.I am not ‘Cocaine Cassie’.I am Cassie Sainsbury.
ISBN: 9781760798567
Publisher: New Holland Publishers
Year first published: 01 Dec 2025
Pages: 256
Format: Paperback / softback
On Wednesday, 12 April 2017, 22-year- oldCassandra Sainsbury, a personal trainer fromAdelaide, South Australia was arrested atEldorado International Airport in Bogota,Columbia.In her luggage she had been carrying 5.8kilograms of cocaine.She was looking at up to 30 yearsincarceration for drug trafficking.It was to be the beginning of a harrowingordeal of survival in El Buen Pasor – one of theworld’s most notorious prisons and the settingof a tale of violence and abuse as a youngwoman struggled to make sense of themadness all around her.At the centre of an international mediacircus, the woman who the world wouldcome to know as “Cocaine Cassie” survivedbeatings, stabbings and rape while her storyplayed out in public, distorted by lies andexaggerations that played out over years.Now, in her own words, Cocaine Cassie setsthe record straight in this raw and harrowingaccount of what it was really like.Bruised, battered and scarred she tells of howshe was forced into becoming a drug mule. Itis a story of pain and loss of hope for a future.But it is also a story of her rise to forgivenessand redemption – to creating a life where awoman’s past does not define her future.I am not ‘Cocaine Cassie’.I am Cassie Sainsbury.
