In an interview with Neos Kosmos, the daughter of Debbie Voulgaris tells the “real story” of her mother and the pain her ordeal has caused the family.
Voulgaris was arrested in late 2023 on drug smuggling charges and is currently serving a 15-year sentence in Taiwan.
She was arrested carrying about four kilograms of pure heroin and a smaller amount of cocaine in black plastic bags inside a suitcase at Taoyuan International Airport, about an hour west of the capital Taipei.
She claims that someone else placed the drugs in her suitcase without her knowledge.
Now her 25-year-old daughter Maria is ready “to let the whole world, especially the Greek community” know that her mother is innocent.
“She was lied to. She was tricked,” she tells Neos Kosmos.
“It’s just sad because she’s stuck there because of someone else’s crime. Someone lied to her… and now they hide.”
There was an unsuccessful subpoena and affidavit, which Maria claims had they been signed, Voulgaris would have had her sentence reduced.
“If someone is guilty, they remain silent. And they have remained silent,” Maria says.
“When someone is innocent, they scream. I know this because all I’ve heard is my mum scream for the past year and four months, all I’ve heard is her cry.”
She says her mother, the woman who once nurtured her and took care of her, has become “helpless” and it’s almost as if she has now “taken the role as a mother”.
Maria also says she is ready to fight this thing and opened up about her mother’s deteriorated health, both physical and mental.
“I’ve done it all on my own in the past. I’ve been the next of kin. I was the one waking up every single morning to the embassy saying your mum’s on death row or mum was getting bullied in prison, like there were so many things happening,” she says.
“She was on eight or nine medications and now she’s dropped to just her anxiety and panic attacks, and for her legs, at one point I think she was at risk of blood clots developing because she doesn’t get exercise and was sleeping on the floor.
“Hearing all this, makes you think enough is enough.”
She stresses that this fight is against the person who she says is at fault.
“I will never get my mum back again. I think that’s something the world has to know.”
“Prison changes people and I’ve never seen it until the first time I saw my mum after our communication ban had broken. I couldn’t identify her. I was in shock. She looked so different. She sounded different.”
For the first eight months of her incarceration, Voulgaris was prohibited from contacting family.
Since that ban was lifted in August, Maria and her two older brothers have been able to talk to her on the phone and have travelled to Taiwan to see her in person.
However Maria said they were only allowed contact visits on special occasions like Mother’s Day, while the other times they’ve been separated by a screen.
“The first day when we saw her was so emotional – we cried so much,” she says.
“I think the hardest part was after that day, I knew I wasn’t going to hold my mum for a very long time.
“She told me do your best. Do everything, please. I’m counting on you.
“How do you let down your mum? She’s crying and screaming on the phone to you every now and then when you only speak to her twice a month. It was really hard.”
The pressure has been a lot for Maria to burden and it became too much when her mother could have been facing death.
When she got the call from the consulate that her mother could face the death penalty, Maria couldn’t get the words out of her head. She kept hearing the consulate’s voice repeating the words.
“I mentally spiralled. I was crying, screaming all night. I went into my own investigation process in that stage of grief where you think ‘I can fix this. I can free her’,” she says.
“I lost my speech, which was really weird. I started stuttering really badly every time my mum was mentioned, my head would start shaking. My eyes would close really tightly. I couldn’t hear it.
“I lost myself completely. Mentally, physically and emotionally. I was trying literally my hardest to cling on to life.”
Maria says that despite all her mum has gone through, her character, her kindness has remained.
With what little money she had left, Voulgaris bought her cellmate dinner and a new pillowcase.
This is not something new though, as Maria says she would give charity to complete strangers back home.
Even when suffering financial problems, she would buy canned food and other goods for people who needed it, like those in commission homes.
“She’s so kind to everyone. I mean, the guards love her. Mum loves everyone, she’s welcoming and they were really shocked.”
“You wouldn’t expect someone to be in prison ready to give so much love. You’d expect them to be broken and so turned against the world but my mum stands strong on [sic] karma will come around and the truth will prevail.”
Even while in prison overseas, Voulgaris still thinks of her kids and is being a mother.
Maria reveals she had a skin cancer check and had another appointment made for the following year while her mum was still around. A year had gone by and her mother while imprisoned wrote to the lawyer to remind Maria of her appointment.
“So many people see her as a drug trafficker and it’s so exhausting. I mean, I cry about it every night because that’s not my mum.”
“It hurts so much, you don’t know how beautiful this woman is. You don’t know how kind she is. And I don’t just say that as a daughter – I promise.
“Friends who have literally lived and eaten on our tables and being in the warmth of our homes have said the same things publicly and said things that I didn’t even know.
“That just goes to show who Debbie, and it’s not Debbie, it’s Despina, who Despina is.”
