After a three-month nightmare in an Indonesian jail following a controversial ecstasy bust, all model Michelle Leslie wanted to do was “get her life back”.
The model who one graced the catwalks of New York, Hong Kong and Singapore hoped to put the blackest period of her young life behind her and get back to the thing she does best, modelling.
But it hasn’t turned out that way. Friends have revealed the 25-year-old has hit rock-bottom and spends her time moping around her house in Sydney’s Rose Bay, emotionally scarred by her ordeal and stung by criticism.
“People have been saying such horrible things about me and it hurts,” Leslie told The Sunday Age in an exclusive interview.
“It hurts most when I see how much it hurts my family and friends. But I can’t let all the nasty things that have been said get to me. I have to think of all the positive things and try to go forward.”
Leslie, who was caught by Indonesian police with two ecstasy tablets in her Gucci handbag in Bali, is being treated as a pariah by the industry that brought her fame on the world’s catwalks.
A much trumpeted return at Australian Fashion Week next month has fizzled, after at least one high-profile designer dumped her.
Her agency, ChicManagement, sacked her as soon as she arrived home from a three-month stint in an Indonesian jail after being arrested last August outside a dance party at Kuta Beach. The former AntzPantz covergirl hasn’t had a modelling job since.
Labels such as “drug dealer” and “fake Muslim” have stuck.
Leslie shares a home with long-term boyfriend Scott Sutton, a member of the Sutton family that runs Holden car dealerships in Sydney. Friends says she spends her days with only her Staffordshire terrier, Vegas, for company.
She was especially stung last week by stories describing her as a “drug dealer” on her return from a trip to Cambodia to help raise money for a children’s char-
ity. Accompanied by her father, Albert, she met some of the 4000 orphans and street children rescued by the charity, Krousar Thmey, which is sponsored by Sydney photo-journalist Peter Carrette, actor Jack Thompson and the king of Cambodia.
The story and photos from Leslie’s “life-altering” trip will appear in New Idea tomorrow, but Leslie says she was not paid by the magazine, which instead donated money to the charity.
To the cynics who say she is just trying to rehabilitate her career, Leslie says: “Going away to Cambodia was about doing positive things with my life.
My family has sponsored World Vision children my whole life and my parents brought two of my cousins out from the Philippines and sent them to school.”
It is six months since she donned a white burqa for one of her Indonesian court appearances, sparking accusations that she was a “fake Muslim”.
She apologised later for causing “any offence”, saying it was an “extreme situation”, but won’t be drawn on whether she still follows Islam. “I’m choosing not to discuss religion,” she says.
Neither will she talk about what happened in Bali before she was arrested while travelling in a car with a well-connected group including the son of an Indonesian Government minister. At the time she claimed the ecstasy tablets were placed in her bag by someone else. But her friend and media adviser, cameraman Sean Mulcahy, explains her reluctance to talk by revealing the death threats she received in jail.
“She had a visit from a man in her cell on two occasions, who said something like, ‘Keep your mouth shut or we’ll kill you and your family’.”
Welcome to the fashion biz!

In 2000, Estella Ngambi was lured to New York from her native Zambia with promises of a good-paying live-in nanny job and a chance to further her education and eventually send for her young daughter. But when Ngambi arrived in Yonkers, she says her job of caring for her new employer’s 2-year-old son suddenly and inexplicably included extensive cooking and cleaning during 18-hour work days _ all for $250 a month. She slept on the living room floor behind the sofa rather than in the bedroom her employer promised. “It wasn’t working like a slave,” said the 29-year-old, who filed a federal lawsuit against the man she worked for. “I was a slave. And I’m not the only one.” When supermodel Naomi Campbell was charged recently with assaulting her housekeeper, domestic workers advocates say they weren’t surprised. The alleged assault was just one, unusually public example of the often-hidden horrors _ verbal and physical assaults as well as exploitation _ that many housekeepers, nannies, caregivers and other domestics across the country face, the advocates say. Domestic work arguably falls under the “jobs most Americans don’t want” rubric _ something that has emerged during the many immigration rallies in recent weeks. The grueling, relatively low-paying jobs are usually filled by immigrants. “We routinely hear about physical assaults, verbal and sexual harassment, non-payment of wages, not being allowed to take off or getting fired for calling in sick with a fever, getting fired for getting pregnant, and being forced to work overtime on a regular basis without notice,” said Ai-jen Poo, a paid organizer of Domestic Workers United. “It’s really widespread and it’s really not this one incident,” Poo said. The Domestic Workers union found an ally in Harlem Assemblyman Keith L.T. Wright, who helped introduced what is called a “bill of rights” for domestic workers. The bill calls for wage standards, overtime pay, vacation, sick and personal time, advance notice of being fired, and penalties for violations. It also would prohibit trafficking in domestic workers. “It’s way overdue that we have a domestic workers bill of rights,” said Wright, whose paternal grandmother was a domestic in New Jersey. “Without them, the city of New York and the state of New York would shut down.” Wright expects the bill to reach the Assembly floor by early May. In 2002, Ngambi filed a federal lawsuit in White Plains against Teza Simunyola, the man she worked for until that year. In 2003, the case was settled for $45,000, their lawyers said. However, Simunyola’s lawyer, Paul J. Noto, disputed Ngambi’s allegations. Simunyola paid Ngambi’s room and board, medical expenses and a trip to Zambia, plus her monthly $250 salary, Noto said. “As bad as she says it was she went home and came back,” Noto said. “So it couldn’t have been that bad. Under no circumstances was she ever mistreated by the Simunyola family. She was looking for money.” Simunyola settled the lawsuit because of mounting legal costs, Noto said. Ngambi met Simunyola, who is also from Zambia, while he was visiting the south African country. Simunyola, a tennis instructor, was going through a divorce at the time and was keeping custody of his son, she said. “He said he was looking for somebody to cook Zambian food, who knew the culture and tradition,” Ngambi said. Simunyola told Ngambi that the $250 a month he would pay her would be plenty in America. He also said he would help her attend school and bring her daughter to the United States, she said. “Who doesn’t want to go to America?” she said. “So I said, OK, all right, this sounds good. After I came here it was something else.” Aside from cleaning, Ngambi says she cooked for Simunyola, his father and son. She says she waited until Simunyola got home, sometimes late at night, to make dishes such as dried pumpkin leaves and broiled fish. “He would say I want fresh food,” Ngambi recalled. “He didn’t like to use the microwave.” “Mop, sweep, vacuum, dusting, ironing. When I would get sick he would make me work. The conditions were horrible.” Eventually Ngambi met another domestic, also from Zambia, who took her to Domestic Workers United meetings. She later filed her lawsuit. Ngambi has since worked in at least three other domestic jobs, where she said employers increased her job duties but not her pay. Currently she is a nanny on Long Island. Eventually, Ngambi says she plans to return to Zambia, where her daughter remains with her parents. But she wants to go back with some accomplishments, she said. “Without the domestic workers this country would be nothing,” Ngambi said. “They need us to watch their kids (so they can) work, to clean their houses, watch their dogs, their cats, their birds to do whatever they want to do in their lives. “But as workers,” she added, “not slaves.”
This whole story reminds me of the modeling scene….