banged up abroad
peru (2/4)
22.00–23.05

Continuing tonight is the four-part drama documentary series that tells the gripping real-life stories of young travellers who find themselves incarcerated overseas. This programme focuses on two American teenagers who were sentenced to ten years in a Peruvian prison after being caught attempting to smuggle cocaine back into the US.

Krista Barnes and Jennifer Davies worked together as hostesses on the Hollywood nightclub scene, where late nights, celebrity friends and fun were all in a day’s work. “We were living a pretty nice lifestyle,” says Krista. When Jose, an old friend of Krista’s asked the two girls to move into his swanky beachside house with him, they quickly agreed.

Soon afterwards, two of Jose’s Peruvian friends, Angelo and Lucio, asked to speak to Jennifer and Krista. They offered the girls a fun-filled, all-expenses paid trip to the beautiful country of Peru, on the condition that they carry “a little bit of cocaine” with their luggage. The girls were assured that the drugs would be sewn into the seams of their bags so that they would be untraceable.

Both girls had always wanted to travel so agreed to the plan. “We had nothing to lose,” recalls Jennifer. “I was 19 –I felt like I was invincible.” However, soon after they boarded the plane, they began to regret their decision.

Upon landing in Lima, Krista and Jennifer saw that it was not as beautiful as they had hoped. They were met by two men who offered to drive them to their hotel, but things took a nasty turn when the car doors slammed shut. The men –who the girls realised were armed with guns –demanded their passports, then drove them to a hotel miles away from anything except a dirt road and some farm land. Having taken their bags to hide the drugs, the men left Krista and Jennifer alone for two days – they had no money, could not speak Spanish and were terrified. “We were not on vacation,” remembers Jennifer. “We were prisoners already”.

After nine days of unease, the girls were driven back to the airport, which was now swarming with dogs and armed police. A customs officer asked them several questions about their holiday, before taking them to a secluded room where it took another officer less than a minute to find the drugs in their luggage. The girls then sat and watched for 45 minutes as officials carefully took their bags completely apart, revealing 8.8 kg of pure cocaine. An officer opened the curtains of the room, showed the girls their plane and made them watch as it took off without them. “That’s when we broke down and realised we weren’t going home,” says Krista.

They were handcuffed, driven to a temporary jail and left there for 15 days without food, water or showers. “We contemplated ending our lives but we couldn’t figure out how to do it at the same time,” recalls a tearful Krista. The girls were then transferred to Chorrillos prison where the conditions were deplorable. Looking more like a bomb shelter than a typical US prison, there were up to 30 women sharing each small room. The food was covered in cockroaches and the water undrinkable, and the girls were constantly afraid of being assaulted by the male guards. They were cut off from the outside world in a place where they could not speak the language.

They decided to cooperate with the authorities and plead guilty, offering descriptions of the men they had dealt with, which eventually led to the arrests of two of the gang members. The girls were sentenced to ten years at Chorrillos, but they eventually served two years and ten months.

Today, eight years after the girls’ ordeal ended, Krista returns to Peru to revisit Chorrillos prison. Now that she is a mature, completely changed women, how will she react to seeing the site of her incarceration once more? What old memories will the experience provoke? And what lessons have Krista and Jennifer learned from their time spent banged up abroad?