Olympic swimming champion, Cleo Bachelor of the Year, drug addict, escort agency owner, leader of a meth ring, prisoner… Scott Miller has had many labels in his lifetime, but two years after getting out of prison he tells Woman’s Day he’s only interested in one title now – truth-teller.
“Obviously sitting in there for years, you do a lot of reflecting,” Scott says of his three years behind bars.
“Now being sober and clean for a number of years, it’s easier to talk about. When you’re in it, controlled by addiction, you want to bury it and that’s what I did. But it’s about acknowledging what I did wrong and owning it. I’m a truth-teller these days. No more stories.”
Scott, 51, lives with his mum, Jenny, as her carer, and he admits, “It’s a humbling time. It’s really confronting. No one was there [for me] more than she was… It’s the least I can do.”
Facing those hard times head-on has been his modus operandi lately. Committing to doing an ABC documentary, Deep End: The Scott Miller Story, required some serious contemplation about the darkest times in his life, mistakes that long carried shame and regret.
He also had to face his hatred of the water – the place he once felt most at home – that first developed after the Atlanta Olympics.
“All I know is that it was therapeutic for me to do,” he admits. “I wanted to get back in the water and find out why I was pushing [away] something that I loved so much my whole life? Now if I plan to go swimming, I’m not worried about it all day. At the start I was – it was really f**king hard.”
A COMPLICATED ESCAPE
Among the truths Scott is finally ready to tell is the real story behind his whirlwind marriage to TV personality Charlotte Dawson – one that had far less to do with romance than most people assumed.
Scott met broadcaster Alan Jones in 1994 after winning gold at the Commonwealth Games, and within a few years had moved into the radio host’s Newtown home, just a short walk from his training base at Sydney University Pool. Alan took a keen interest in his career – offering accommodation, advice and motivation as Scott set his sights on gold at the Sydney 2000 Olympics.
“He gave me a place to live, gave me a lot of opportunities,” Scott acknowledges. But the arrangement grew complicated. “Did it get a bit controlling? Did it get a little bit too much for me? Yeah, maybe. I felt like I couldn’t say no because he was doing so much.”
Charlotte – who Scott met in 1997 at Cleo magazine’s 25th anniversary party – wanted him out of Alan’s home, and the friction between the two was something Scott quietly relished.
“Strong woman, didn’t take any s**t from him, really would put her foot down – and he didn’t like it. And I liked the fact that he didn’t like it. It made her more attractive to me.”
Now, looking back on their 1999 wedding at Sydney Harbour’s Quay restaurant, Scott is candid about his motivations. “I’ve got a lot of fond memories and that, but I’m not convinced I was married for the right reasons,” he says in the documentary. “Did I get married to make some space there and get some independence and get back in control of my life? Yeah, I think so. A way to softly fix the situation that was becoming uncomfortable.”
It’s a revelation he’s never made publicly before.
A DOOMED MARRIAGE
Scott’s brief marriage to Charlotte was a pivotal time in his life, and a “painful” one. They only lasted a year as husband and wife before Scott’s partying – and a drug scandal in a public toilet – led to their split in 2000.
He says they “made amends” in the years since they parted ways, and Charlotte supported his sister Nicole immensely through her battle with stomach cancer while Scott was in rehab in 2013.
But in 2014, a deeply depressed Charlotte took her own life, and Scott admits he’s been harbouring a secret guilt over her death.
“I didn’t realise the depths of her problems until it was too late. There are some things I have regret for, definitely.
“She befriended me on Facebook a couple of weeks before she [died by] suicide, and I looked at it, and I wanted to accept it but I didn’t. I thought about it and I sat on it for a bit, and then before I knew it, it was too late,” he says.
“And a part of me really hurts over that. If I did reach out, and I did accept it, and say, ‘Hi, how are you?’ maybe things would have changed. It’s something that’s tough, to be honest with you. That’s the first time I’ve said that to anyone.”
FALLING HARD
Narrowly missing out on the gold medal in butterfly at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics – by 0.36 of a second – has been a significant source of pain for Scott throughout his life, an “if only” scenario he’s never been able to get over. What others saw as a tremendous achievement for a promising young star, he still views as a “failure”.
After a shoulder injury forced him into retirement in 2004, a year shy of 30, it was a rapid downward spiral – drug addiction, depression, an overdose and, in 2021, his arrest for running a drug syndicate.
“I don’t think we had the support that they do these days,” Scott says of his demons post-sport. “Not many people knew about what it took to be a swimmer in those days and how isolated you feel, and how hard it is to transition from being an athlete into normal life.
“And I really felt like I was on my own. Not handling that properly and not dealing with it… it all compounded for me.”
Part of owning his mistakes is acknowledging there were others at fault, too, and that’s a “tough” truth Scott only got clarity on years after the fact.
“I was surrounded by sharks who didn’t really care about me, they just wanted to cash in on the good times,” he says. “You know that because where are they in the bad times? They’re nowhere to be seen. That’s a really big lesson I’ve learned.”
TIME FOR REDEMPTION
Clean and sober since his arrest in February 2021, Scott is in his second act, driven by purpose and a desire to help others from veering off life’s course like he did.
“I feel like I’ve got a future, some direction,” he says. “For years, I was just caught in this riptide, a cycle of addiction, self-sabotage, just hating myself and punishing myself.
“If my story can stop one person making the wrong choice then my job is done. That’s what I feel like I’m here to do now.”
Scott’s now working with Alcohol and Drug Awareness Australia, giving talks to electrical apprentices on the dangers of drugs and alcohol. He says, “I don’t hold anything back.”
NO BACK-UP PLAN
If he could go back in time and give younger Scott valuable advice, he knows exactly what he’d tell him.
“Have a plan B. Everything was about swimming, I was all in, and if anything went wrong, I didn’t have a back-up plan,” he says. “When I look back, that was my biggest problem, I never prepared for life after swimming.
“That’s the message I’m trying to tell these kids. What happens if you get injured and you can’t be an electrician any more? Are you going to start smoking ice like I did? I hope not because it will be the beginning of the end.”
Deep End: The Scott Miller Story starts Monday June 22, 8pm, ABC & iview
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