In and out of jail for two decades, she's now a mother of six – and a lifeline for ex-offenders
Having spent over 20 years battling addiction and repeated prison stints, Ms Sabrina Chong Abdullah now channels those experiences into helping female inmates and ex-offenders recover and reintegrate.
Ms Sabrina Chong Abdullah, a mother of six and former drug offender, is now 14 years sober and works with Yellow Ribbon Cares supporting female inmates and ex-offenders. (Photo: CNA/Syamil Sapari)
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Motherhood, the way I imagine it, often comes bathed in an afterglow.
A mother holds her baby for the first time, a father close by to share in the joy and relief. They take their newborn home, where a nursery has been lovingly and carefully prepared to cradle their bundle of joy in cosy comfort.
Ms Sabrina Chong Abdullah didn't have any of that after giving birth to two of her six children, as she was serving prison terms at the time.
Instead of loved ones waiting outside, she had prison officers supervising her labour. Instead of returning to the warmth of home to bond with her infant, she returned to a bare prison cell.
It's a grim reality, and one I found difficult to reconcile with the upbeat, energetic 49-year-old sitting across from me in her office. She never seemed to run out of quips and laughs.
Once we settled into our chairs, my colleague asked her to clap once for an audio test. She clapped as requested and then deadpanned: "Got mosquito."
Even as she dredged up the sordid details of her past as an ex-drug offender who cycled in and out of prison several times, she was able to puncture the sombre weight of our conversation with jokes.
Today, Ms Sabrina is a mother of six who has been sober for 14 years.
She has spent the last year working with Yellow Ribbon Cares (formerly ISCOS and NeuGen Fund), a charity registered as an Institution of a Public Character that helps ex-offenders and their families rebuild their lives.
It seems like a perfect turnaround tale, but in truth, it has taken years for Ms Sabrina to achieve the stability she has now – or to even conceive of it as a possibility.
"My younger self would never have imagined that I'd one day have a stable roof over my head, children I love coming home to every day and a meaningful job that gives me purpose," she said.
TRYING MARIJUANA FOR THE FIRST TIME
At 11 years of age, most children are focused on homework and playing with friends. At 11, Ms Sabrina was tasting marijuana for the first time, oblivious to what it was.
Back then, she was living in Malaysia with her Malaysian father and Singaporean mother, and struggling emotionally both at home and in school.
Sandwiched between an older sister and a younger brother, Ms Sabrina grew up struggling with "middle-child syndrome", feeling that her parents did not love her as much as they did her siblings.
"I felt unwanted," she said plainly. "I felt that I was the troublemaker at home because I was always failing in my studies, while my brother and sister were doing okay. I was always the stupid one."
School was a rocky journey for Ms Sabrina, who recalled being prone to fits of shouting and crying. "I wasn't good in my studies and when teachers punished me, I would fight back."
Without warning, her mother left the family one day to return to Singapore alone. With no explanations given, the young Sabrina couldn't understand what had happened or why.
"I felt like my mother left because of me. I thought I was the problem."
She ran away from home and took shelter in empty shophouses, where she came across other wayward youths who introduced her to marijuana.
Being so young, she did not fully comprehend the seriousness of what she was doing. She didn't even know what a joint was – the rolled spliffs simply looked like cigarettes to her.
I felt that I was the troublemaker at home because I was always failing in my studies ... I was always the stupid one.
It took some time before she was found and taken home by the police, but she continued to act out at home and in school.
After almost two years of truancy, her father decided it was best for her to move to Singapore and live with her mother's family. He had been advised by the police that she would be safer there.
But at 13, just a few months after being uprooted and sent to Singapore, she was caught extorting money from students she bumped into on the street.
"I would walk up to them and act like a gangster, telling them I didn't like the way they were staring at me ... I'd ask if they wanted me to beat them up," she said.
"I actually didn't need the money. But behaving that way made me feel strong."
A court order landed her in Toa Payoh Girls' Home. But her stint there did not help her get a handle on her anger and resulting violent tendencies.
"I was very lost. I started to self-inflict (harm) … and fight with the girls there.”
After six months, the girls' home staff deemed her too difficult to control. She was sent back to court, and then to Changi Women's Prison (known as Institution A4 today).
She celebrated her 14th birthday alone in a cell, fashioning herself a cake out of rice and vegetables.
"I was sad … (but) at that time, I didn't understand anything. My brain was still in havoc with hatred and anger."
Ms Sabrina's life became a blur of incarceration – from prison to rehabilitation, release, and then prison again. She estimated that from the age of 13 to 35, she went in and out of prison about five or six times.
If you, like me, have never abused drugs, it may be hard to understand why someone trapped in such a vicious circle would keep returning to them.
But at the time, drugs were the only thing that gave Ms Sabrina the courage to stand up for herself and a sense of belonging.
Without drugs, she struggled with crippling low self-esteem and couldn't bring herself to interact with people at all. She believed that as long as she could maintain ties with her fellow addicts and abusers, she would no longer feel the pain of loneliness.
GIVING BIRTH WHILE SERVING HER SENTENCE
By her late teens, Ms Sabrina was already making a living for herself. She worked in nightlife as a guest relations officer, drinking and singing with customers in karaoke lounges.
On the surface, she said the role was presented as glamorous and exciting. But in reality, the job largely consisted of drinking and singing with mostly male customers in karaoke lounges.
It also exacerbated her drug use. During this time, she moved on to heroin, ecstasy, ketamine and eventually methamphetamine or "ice", which she described as the worst addiction of all.
When she was 20, she learnt she was pregnant – but by the time she realised, she had already broken up with her then-boyfriend.
At this point, she had reconnected with her mother, who advised her against proceeding with the pregnancy. But Ms Sabrina felt determined to keep the baby, chalking it up to maternal instincts. Some months after, she gave birth to her first child, a girl, who spent most of her early years under the care of Ms Sabrina's mother.
In her mid-20s, Ms Sabrina met a customer at her workplace – a man about 10 years older than her and with whom she immediately hit it off.
Given her history as a drug addict, she did not expect anything serious to come out of their relationship, let alone for him to eventually become her husband and life partner.
"Usually, (people) run away from us (addicts)," Ms Sabrina said. "But this guy said: 'It's okay, I can help you'."
Her years of working in nightlife had hardened her view of men, and she found it hard to believe him at the time. Nevertheless, she felt comfortable enough to start spending time with him casually, and their relationship deepened over time.
In 2006, Ms Sabrina became pregnant again at 29 and her partner asked for her hand in marriage.
Yet, throughout this courtship and marriage, even with a newfound home and another baby on the way, Ms Sabrina remained caught in the grip of addiction.
By then, she had become dependent on Subutex, an oral medication prescribed by her doctor to help heroin users manage withdrawal symptoms. In the early 2000s, the drug was widely available through private clinics in Singapore before buprenorphine, its active ingredient, was classified as a controlled drug in 2006 amid widespread abuse.
Enabled by friends, she continued to abuse Subutex even during her pregnancy, despite her husband's repeated attempts to get her to stop.
Eventually, when Ms Sabrina gave birth, her newborn daughter was handed over to her brother-in-law's family, where she would remain for much of her childhood.
"I did feel sad. I wanted to see my children. But … I also thought that I still needed my drugs, so I kind of just brushed it off."
Addiction maintained its hold on Ms Sabrina for the next several years, leading to two more jail terms, both of which she served while pregnant.
She gave birth to two sons while incarcerated. After the delivery of the first son at KK Women's and Children's Hospital at 30, under prison supervision, Ms Sabrina was allowed to keep the baby with her in prison temporarily.
Forced to be sober within the four walls of that single cell, those months were the first time she learnt to be fully present with her baby, giving consistent care and attention to her son.
She talked to him constantly, even while showering. She experienced – for the very first time despite being a mother of three – the excitement of hearing her baby, at six months, mimic the movements of her mouth, as if to say "mama".
And then she got into a fight with another inmate. Her baby was taken away from her and placed under the care of her brother-in-law's family.
Later, in 2011, her fourth baby was removed from her shortly after delivery, while she was still breastfeeding in the hospital after childbirth.
She does not recall being given a clear explanation for the removal, but she believes it was due to her history of violence.
"I became hysterical and miserable," she said. "I thought my child was taken away from me for good."
Psychiatric medication had to be administered as she slumped into depression shortly after, she added.
Enough was enough, decided Ms Sabrina. After her release in 2012, she promised her husband she would change and began seriously working on her recovery – not just for her sake and his, but for all her children, including the two younger ones she would later have after getting sober.
"IF YOU CAN DO IT, WE CAN TOO"
As hard as it was for Ms Sabrina to seriously resolve to get better, what proved much harder was actually getting better.
She recalled the early days of sobriety as being particularly difficult, rife with triggers, cravings and compulsive thoughts of "taking the easy way out" by going back to drugs.
But for the first time, she learnt to confront the emotional wounds that lay beneath her addiction. Much of this was done through mandatory monthly counselling, which Ms Sabrina admits to writing off at first.
"When I was first forced to go for mandatory counselling, I thought it was just for fun, just to pass the time. But eventually, I made full use of it," she said.
"I was able to (trace) the root cause … back to the brokenness I felt when I was young. After talking it out, I felt lighter and more willing to seek help."
Ms Sabrina gradually learnt to show up consistently for her kids – all six of them. The eldest is 28 this year, while her youngest is 10.
She began distancing herself from old social circles that had repeatedly led her back into drug abuse, and learnt to manage her own triggers differently. For instance, in moments of high stress where the temptation to seek out drugs arises within her, she now calls her counsellor to talk things through instead of acting rashly.
Now, as a programme executive on Yellow Ribbon Cares' reintegration team, Ms Sabrina's life has flipped from night to day.
Gone are the dark, neon-lit karaoke lounges of her young adulthood. She now spends her waking hours visiting prisons and schools, leading support groups and pitching in with community give-back initiatives under the charity's Titans programme – and, most importantly, looking after her kids.
The Titans programme supports former offenders in using their lived experiences to encourage others through volunteering and peer engagement work in the community and within the prison system.
When she speaks to high-risk female inmates about addiction and recovery today, she is often reminded of the Sabrina she used to be – and the women, some of whom were even incarcerated at the same time as her, are able to see themselves in her.
"They would tell me: 'Sabrina, if you can do it, then maybe we can too.' And I would tell them: 'Yes, you can do it even more than me, because you're stronger than I was'," she said.
More than anything, she wants female inmates struggling with addiction to know there is a way out of this vicious circle – and it's not out of reach.
"You don't have to keep going round and round, and much of that change starts with asking for help."
In addition to the support she's received through formal avenues, Ms Sabrina said she's also luckier than most to have her husband, whom she described as "God-sent", an anchor who kept her grounded throughout the tumultuous years.
Her husband, who wanted to be known only as David, told me that despite their ups and downs, his trust in his wife has never wavered.
"Despite all the struggles she faced, she never gave up trying to change," said the 60-year-old.
"I'm proud that she stayed drug-free and is now helping others who were once in her shoes."
Despite having long turned the corner, Ms Sabrina is candid about the fact that her children remain both her greatest motivation for healing and the source of her deepest regrets.
She remains acutely aware that while she tries her best now to be a present mother for her children, her years of absence in their formative years have created emotional distance that can be narrowed but never entirely erased.
"No matter what, there's always a gap," she said, her voice heavy with emotion despite her matter-of-fact demeanour.
But the past can't be changed. All she can do now, she said, is show up for her kids in a way that's completely different from how she was raised – learning to say sorry to her children when she is wrong, to give them space when they need it, and to try to understand their emotions rather than just react to them.
Above all, she's dedicated herself to making the best possible impact she can on their lives.
"Whatever I do is just to keep them safe. I don't want them to waste the life that I've wasted previously."
