A former Canberra model and basketballer, who is attempting to prove to the courts she can turn her life around, has checked herself out of a religious rehabilitation centre in Queensland because she said staff restricted calls to her lawyer.
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Janna Maree Sladic, 29, has sentences for break-in last year and a robbery in 2011 hanging over her head.
Sladic's promising career in basketball – she played as a Canberra Capitals reserve – was cut short after a serious car crash.
She fell into prescription drug abuse, and later took up with well-known criminal Matthew Massey.
Sladic began using heroin and later robbed a KFC outlet in Hawker in 2011.
The ACT Supreme Court gave her a chance to rehabilitate following that crime, and suspended a three-year jail sentence on the condition she be of good behaviour.
Within a year, Sladic had broken into a home in Hawker.
The break-in last year brought her back before the court.
But Justice Richard Refshauge gave her a second chance, deferring her sentencing to give her another opportunity to beat her addiction.
Sladic went to a residential rehabilitation centre in Queensland in February this year.
But she turned up in Canberra on Friday, making good on a commitment she had made to the court to come straight back if she left the treatment program for any reason.
Sladic appeared before Justice Refshauge on Monday, represented by barrister Tim Crispin, and said she had left the strict, religious rehabilitation centre because of issues over her communicating with her lawyer and family.
She said the staff had prevented her from having private conversations with her solicitor, despite a court date next month.
Sladic said she went out and bought her own mobile phone to circumvent the restrictions.
When staff discovered she had her own phone, they told her she would need to start the entire rehabilitation program again, she said.
"I just didn't see the sense in that," Sladic told the court.
"I got to the point where I didn't want to make a bad decision so I wanted to come back to Canberra and work out something that was going to work for me."
Sladic returned to Canberra, bringing herself before the ACT Supreme Court.
Crown prosecutor Mark Fernandez quizzed her about the purpose of buying the phone, asking her whether it could have put her back in touch with people in the drug trade.
Justice Refshauge granted bail on Friday on condition Sladic stay at a home in Page, and not leave unless in the company of three named individuals. She is also banned from taking drugs and will be subject to random testing.
Sladic will seek to secure a place in a new rehabilitation centre before her next court date on August 12.
