The estranged wife of AFL great Rick Olarenshaw has criticised her husband for not being at her trial for illegal prostitution in Bali, and has given a handwritten note to the judges pleading for leniency.
Ni Ketut Sri Astari Saranitha, 36, is on trial for allegedly operating a spa business in Bali that was offering sexual services, in breach of Indonesia's strict ban on prostitution, but she argues her husband Olarenshaw, his brother Darren and two other Australian men were the real owners of the business.
Ahead of Tuesday's hearing, Nitha, as she is known, tearfully spoke of her concern for her two children, who are with family members in Bali, and again reiterated her wish that her husband return to Bali for the trial.
"I wish he was here and faced the same things that I am facing [along] with my other staff," she told the ABC after being brought to the court in a prison uniform.
She is being held at Bali's infamous Kerobokan prison, which previously housed Bali Nine drug smugglers and convicted terrorists.
Nitha and another Indonesian woman are accused of being co-owners of the Flame Spa in the popular tourist area Seminyak, which police raided in September last year.
Three other women who worked there are also on trial.
But submitting her defence to the accusations for the first time in court, Nitha's lawyers argued she should not be seen under the law to be "providing" pornographic services.
"The provider of the business is Rick Olarenshaw with capital investment from Gregory Campbell Hinchcliffe, Darren J Olarenshaw and Adam Dalby John, and is proven by the distribution of dividends to shareholders or owners," read a statement submitted to the court by her lawyers.
Her lawyers also told the court she was asked by Rick Olarenshaw to establish a company to operate a massage parlour and spa, but she did not know for sure what activities were carried out because recruitment of the massage therapists was carried out by her husband.
The ABC attempted to contact through various means the Australian men named in the court documents.
A representative of the Bali Geckos Australian Rules club, of which Rick Olarenshaw and Greg Hinchcliffe are associated with, responded with a yawn emoji when asked about contacting the pair, before deleting it.
None are believed to still be in Bali, and Rick Olarenshaw told Nine News on the Gold Coast in November last year that it was a "delicate and complicated situation", but declined to comment on the case.
Prosecutors in previous hearings submitted records of police interviews with former staff members of the Flame Spa that described regularly seeing Rick Olarenshaw at the business.
The witnesses also stated seeing Nitha regularly at the business.
An earlier pre-trial legal bid by Nitha to have her case dismissed failed, and prosecutors last week said they would still seek a 9-month jail sentence for her if convicted — well short of the maximum 12 years under the anti-pornography law.
At the hearing, she maintained she was unaware of what was going on at the Flame Spa.
"I regret that I trusted him [Olarenshaw], and I was supporting him for what I thought was the right thing," she told reporters.
In a handwritten note she gave to the three judges, she wrote: "Hopefully my experience will be a lesson for women in Indonesia, and especially Bali to not make the same mistake."
According to its website, Flame offered an "erotic experience", and prosecutors have submitted detailed evidence in the trial outlining the types of sensual massage services on offer and how they violated the country's broad anti-pornography law.
Investigators previously expressed a desire to interview the Australian men, but there was no suggestion they deemed them suspects.
Rick Olarenshaw played more than 80 AFL games, mostly with Essendon, including the club's 1993 grand final victory, and he is a well-known figure on the holiday island, where he played with the Geckos club while working as the director of several gyms.
The verdict in the trial for Ni Ketut Sri Astari Saranitha and her colleagues is set for March 4.
