By LACHLAN MOORHEAD
ROSALIE Crestani remembers howling with sadness 15 years ago when she was told her sister had died.
Years of heroin abuse had left the Casey councillor’s older sibling, Nichole, prone to violent outbursts and unable to successfully walk away from a long history of drug addiction.
Rosalie said she’d always doubted whether her sister would ever be able to walk away from that life completely.
Nichole died in 2000 at the age of 28 when her anti-depressant medication mixed fatally with the methadone she was using to wean herself off heroin. Nichole went to bed at her parents’ home in Endeavour Hills and never woke up.
She left behind her seven-year-old son, Justin.
Earlier this month a community question was asked at Casey Council in relation to the spread of ice and its potential effect on those in Rosalie’s Four Oaks ward.
In response Cr Crestani stood in the chamber and vowed to do everything she could to curb the ice scourge.
Fleetingly she referred to the “drug problem” which claimed the life of her “dear sister.”
“Drugs eat a person’s soul,” Rosalie later told the News.
“It wasn’t the sister I grew up with. Drugs just rip out every part of their life.
“Towards the end she started not caring about her appearance … I saw it suck the life out of her.”
A beautiful young woman and an extremely talented pro basketballer, Nichole’s smiling exterior belied a haunted past.
Rosalie said her sister was subjected to child abuse and later gang-raped in her late teens while she was studying at an American college on a full basketball scholarship.
“She was full of life, she was flamboyant, she was vivacious, talented, beautiful, more beautiful than the rest of us,” Rosalie said.
“She was athletic, and I look back now and … I can see now that she was upset about a few things that happened to her when she was little and as she got older as well.
“Nichole had a lot of anger and she also, I think, struggled with her self-esteem.”
It’s unsurprising her sister’s tragic battle with drugs serves as inspiration for Rosalie 15 years on, having spurred her into a life of politics, participating as a member of Casey Council and Danny Nalliah’s Rise Up Australia Party.
While her strong views have provoked a backlash in some cases from both the community and her fellow councillors, Rosalie makes no apologies for her outspokenness.
“In every person that needs something, I see my sister. So I have dedicated a lot of my life to helping community groups. I visit Cornerstone a lot, transit soup kitchens and food banks,” she said.
“We get these kids early and show them a lot of love early and we can stop them from going down a path.”
Born into a religious family, Rosalie, her other siblings and her parents Walter and Danielle continually draw on their faith for strength.
Each day they are reminded of Nichole, while 22-year-old Justin, brought up by his grandparents, has more recently fought and come through the other side of his own battle with drugs a decade and a half after his mother lost the same fight.
Rosalie admits she questioned her faith after Nichole’s death, but stresses it was her belief that then provided solace.
“I was very angry for a long time at God. She (Nichole) was getting her life back together, she was trying to be responsible and she was going on the government-funded methadone program to at least take care of her addiction,” Rosalie said.
“Why did you have to take her?
“She was turning her life around, she was trying to turn her life to God and I believe she did.
“I don’t know that we’ll ever know the reason why people are taken at a certain time.
“Maybe we’re not meant to know.”
