A former model and elite basketballer who fell into a life of crime and drugs following a career-ending car crash has been given a second chance to turn her life around.
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Janna Maree Sladic, 28, was a promising young semi-professional basketballer who regularly filled reserve spots with the Canberra Capitals.
But Sladic’s life was turned on its head after a car crash, which ended her sports career. She began to abuse pain killers, and later met career criminal and habitual drug user Matthew Massey, who she started a relationship with.
Sladic began using heroin, and later turned to crime, robbing a KFC in Hawker in 2011, armed with a knife, and in the company of another man. She says she had broken up with Massey at that point and claimed her co-offender threatened to kill her if she didn’t help with the robbery.
After that crime, the ACT Supreme Court gave Sladic a chance to rehabilitate herself, and prove she could turn her life around and address her addiction.
Justice Richard Refshauge suspended her three years of imprisonment in December 2012, instead ordering her to be of good behaviour.
But Sladic broke that order within a year, by breaking into a home in Hawker in August 2013.
Police found her hiding in the home’s laundry, and claimed someone had been chasing her.
Sladic then pushed past police and tried to flee, but was soon arrested.
Those crimes put her in breach of Justice Refshauge’s good behavior order, meaning she was brought back before him for re-sentencing for the KFC robbery.
But Justice Refshauge on Thursday gave her another chance at rehabilitation, saying it often took a number of attempts to beat drug addiction.
He deferred sentencing Sladic for 12 months, bailing her to a residential rehabilitation centre in Surfer’s Paradise in Queensland.
If she was successful there, she might face only a period of weekend detention or community service.
But if Sladic failed, she could be sent back to prison for the remainder of her outstanding sentence for the KFC robbery.
Justice Refshauge told Sladic she must have seen inmates in the Alexander Maconochie Centre who were trapped in a life of drugs and crime, coming in and out of the “revolving door” of prison.
“If that’s the life you want, then the court will have no hesitation in doing that,” he said.
He told Sladic that the strength and determination she employed in her former life as an elite athlete should help her to beat addiction.
“This is your opportunity. I won’t say it is your last opportunity, because you never know what happens in life,” he said.
The court will check up on Sladic’s progress in August, and she will be brought back before the ACT Supreme Court in February next year for resentencing.
