Speaker 1: The public has had a long held fascination with detectives.
Speaker 1: Detective see a side of life the average persons never
Speaker 1: exposed to. I spent thirty four years as a cop.
Speaker 1: For twenty five of those years I was catching killers.
Speaker 1: That's what I did for a living. I was a
Speaker 1: homicide detective. I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys. Instead,
Speaker 1: I'm taking the public into the world in which I operated.
Speaker 1: The guests I talk to each week have amazing stories
Speaker 1: from all sides of the law. The interviews are raw
Speaker 1: and honest, just like the people I talk to. Some
Speaker 1: of the content and language might be confronting. That's because
Speaker 1: no one who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged.
Speaker 1: Join me now as I take you into this world.
Speaker 1: Welcome to another episode of I Catch Killers.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: I normally prepare the introduction for the guests when they
Speaker 1: come on I Catch Killers. But I've decided to do
Speaker 1: something a little bit different today. Today's guest is Peter
Speaker 1: Linden James, and this is how he's described on a website.
Speaker 1: After twenty six years as an addict, drug dealer and criminal,
Speaker 1: Peter turned his life around to create Australia's largest and
Speaker 1: toughest rehab housing over one hundred and fifty residents no
Speaker 1: cost to the community. Peter has upended everything we know
Speaker 1: about addiction and rehab. Now, I figure with an introduction
Speaker 1: like that, I don't need to add anything because this
Speaker 1: is going to be an interesting chat and I'm looking
Speaker 1: forward to speaking to Peter Lindon James on I Catch Killers.
Speaker 3: Peter Lindon James, Welcome to I Catch Killers.
Speaker 2: They're goody, it's good.
Speaker 1: To be a well, it's good to sit down and
Speaker 1: have a chat with you. I've had quite a few
Speaker 1: people drop your name and the work that you're doing
Speaker 1: at Shalom as Shalem House and quite impressive. So a
Speaker 1: lot of people have been pointing me in that direction.
Speaker 1: And so the work you're doing over there is reaching
Speaker 1: the east coast of the country because you're over in Perth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's good getting around.
Speaker 1: Well, you're doing something that's making a difference. So you
Speaker 1: should be proudiest often happy that the reputations traveling.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 3: In prepping for this.
Speaker 1: Chat with you, I've got to say you've certainly had
Speaker 1: an interesting life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you could say that a bit of variety.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a variety incarcerated, addictions, crime, time in prison, all
Speaker 1: sorts of things. And here you are turning your life around.
Speaker 1: Did you think you would make it this far at
Speaker 1: the low point in your life? Like what goes through
Speaker 1: your mind when you're going in and out of jarle
Speaker 1: you're addicted and your habitual offender and addict.
Speaker 3: Basically, yeah, mate, telling the truth.
Speaker 4: I don't actually I don't look ahead. I just I
Speaker 4: just try now, just get up to be the best
Speaker 4: me I can be. I mean, and my whole life,
Speaker 4: I just wanted to be a geek, normal person and
Speaker 4: just doing normal stuff and I want my life to matter.
Speaker 4: And unfortunately, because of the way they grow up and
Speaker 4: what I went through, I grew up on the wrong
Speaker 4: side of the fence doing stuff that I didn't want
Speaker 4: to do. But yeah, just sort of the cards that
Speaker 4: were dealt.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So even that those those lower points in your life,
Speaker 1: you were just still looking I want to get out
Speaker 1: of this life, but I'll just get through the day
Speaker 1: and we'll worry about it the next day.
Speaker 3: Is that the sort of the way you rolled?
Speaker 4: Yeah, just day by day, just whatever came came. Just
Speaker 4: accepted who I was, what I did, and like most people,
Speaker 4: you just accept it and thing's going to be a
Speaker 4: lot to hit the big wall and then I sort
Speaker 4: of recalibrate and then just do it again and again.
Speaker 4: It's like groundhole day, just doing what you don't want
Speaker 4: to do, and it's sort of just your life follows you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're a slave to it. Well, you have been
Speaker 1: quoted somewhere. I just read this quite out because it's
Speaker 1: pretty heavy, but it sort of gives an insight. I
Speaker 1: hated who I was, what I stood for. I hated
Speaker 1: everything that I'd become, but I didn't know who I was.
Speaker 1: That's confronting and sad on a lot of different fronts,
Speaker 1: but that how you felt.
Speaker 4: That's how I felt from probably the age of eight onwards.
Speaker 4: Just the whole life just hated me. So what I
Speaker 4: stood for, what I did, how I smelt people, I
Speaker 4: hurt my life, I lived family, you name it.
Speaker 1: You carry a lot, don't you. Well, look you've turned
Speaker 1: your life around, and there's something and we want to
Speaker 1: talk about that. And now you're the CEO and you
Speaker 1: actually established it, the Shalem House and it's been described
Speaker 1: as Australia's strictest rehabilitation center where you employ a tough
Speaker 1: love approach that has been seen Shalom become the most
Speaker 1: successful rehab center in Australia.
Speaker 3: That's something to be proud of.
Speaker 2: I am.
Speaker 4: I love my staff, love my residence. I'm really proud
Speaker 4: of or the effort to put in and it's taken
Speaker 4: a lot over the probably the last thirteen fourteen years
Speaker 4: to establish the culture and now it's not one person
Speaker 4: carrying it, it's all of us who carry it.
Speaker 1: It's nice when you set something up that's worthwhile and
Speaker 1: you create that lineage, isn't it where people are it's
Speaker 1: not all to you.
Speaker 3: You've passed on the torch and people are out actually
Speaker 3: doing it with you.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 4: Yeah, right from day tod always, I learn it, I
Speaker 4: teach it, I delegate it, I let go, and I
Speaker 4: just I want it to run, not because of me,
Speaker 4: but in spite of me. So I'll get you by
Speaker 4: a truck tomorrow. It'll just keep going. It's definitely laid
Speaker 4: on a good solid foundation.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, that's a pretty good insight into running anything or
Speaker 1: doing anything, is that you create it to the situation
Speaker 1: where you set it up so it doesn't need you.
Speaker 3: That's a perfect, perfect thing. We're going to talk.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk in great deal about what you're
Speaker 1: doing at Shalam House because I think it's fascinating and
Speaker 1: to give people an insight into why it is so
Speaker 1: successful and why people are coming there and knocking on
Speaker 1: the door to get in because of the reputation. But
Speaker 1: before we do, I want to talk about your upbringing.
Speaker 1: Get a sense of where you've come from, because I
Speaker 1: think people are you know, it's one thing to say
Speaker 1: this is my life, now, look how successful I am,
Speaker 1: but people have got to understand where you came from
Speaker 1: because it's your life experiences that have got you to
Speaker 1: this point. So tell us about your upbringing.
Speaker 4: Well, ninety percent of the people that we will actually help,
Speaker 4: the root cause of what they are like they are
Speaker 4: is actually childhood trauma. Me Lockridge, which is in Perth,
Speaker 4: is a bit like the Bronx type stuff. I gore
Speaker 4: up in Lockridge, some second eldest of five kids. I
Speaker 4: got an older sister, two younger brothers, and the younger
Speaker 4: sister the Lockridge scanned. The way where everything started going
Speaker 4: wrong was when I was probably six or seven. My
Speaker 4: dad actually went out with my mum and they had
Speaker 4: a baby sitter stay over the night and looked after
Speaker 4: us five kids, and I come back, and they come back,
Speaker 4: and I wake up in the morning.
Speaker 2: All I could hear was screaming and yell.
Speaker 4: And there's a five year old, six year old I
Speaker 4: can actually remember it. And we're on a two story place.
Speaker 4: I walked out in the bedroom and I've seen Dad
Speaker 4: going down the stairs and Mum just through this pot
Speaker 4: and like a cooking pot at the back of Dad's head.
Speaker 2: And for me, that was.
Speaker 4: Where all life started going skew with. So I'm a
Speaker 4: six year old kid. Dad's moved out of home, moved
Speaker 4: into moto and my mom she started drinking lots, and
Speaker 4: I remember the repossession of people coming through after Dad
Speaker 4: moved out, took our TV lounge fridge because Mom couldn't
Speaker 4: afford the payments, and our quality of life kept going down.
Speaker 4: But as a kid, all I can remember was Mum
Speaker 4: throwing the pot. When I was going to school lock
Speaker 4: Whose Primary school, I'd pull in the Eaton Hill Pub.
Speaker 4: My dad was starting at the motel on the way
Speaker 4: to school. So Dad do it something from the shops.
Speaker 4: He gave me ten backs and get us a pack
Speaker 4: of fags, and I lay for bread and so I'd
Speaker 4: go down the shop give him matt and he said,
Speaker 4: I keep the change. And I really loved my dad.
Speaker 4: I was really close to my dad. He was a mechanic,
Speaker 4: deeds a mechanic. And I'd done that for like three
Speaker 4: four weeks. And one day I went knocked on the
Speaker 4: motel and knocked on the motel. No one was there,
Speaker 4: and so I went to get on my pushbite right off,
Speaker 4: and the garden was in the car park and I
Speaker 4: said to himself, you seen my dad, and goes, oh,
Speaker 4: your dad doesn't live anymore. He's moved up north. And
Speaker 4: when he said that, I just broke down and cried.
Speaker 4: I can remember it clear as day. I just felt
Speaker 4: that he abandoned me. And from then onwards just life
Speaker 4: just went crap mate. My mom started moving from house
Speaker 4: to house. I went from gool to school, and by
Speaker 4: the time I was eight, I'd been at like six
Speaker 4: different schools, seven different schools. She started drinking lots abused alcohol.
Speaker 4: One in particular fellow that she was with. He used
Speaker 4: to discover her by the hair and I'd walk out
Speaker 4: and the lander at three o'clock in the morning, all
Speaker 4: the screaming had stopped. I had my brothers and sisters
Speaker 4: hit under the bed, but I walk out in the
Speaker 4: lander and mumby sitting on the end of the lounge,
Speaker 4: and her face would be mad in blood, two black eyes,
Speaker 4: her false teeth to be smashed in half, and she'd
Speaker 4: be sitting on the lounge like that, the superlo trying
Speaker 4: to glue her teeth back together.
Speaker 2: The alcohol, no food in the cupboards.
Speaker 4: Every school, you go to your height behind the library,
Speaker 4: and because other kids would picked on you, you never
Speaker 4: had a fixed group of friends, never had school clothes
Speaker 4: like other kids. I was going through all this stuff
Speaker 4: as a young kid, and I shouldn't have been subjected
Speaker 4: to it. But eventually mumy going to a rehab and
Speaker 4: my brothers and sisters went to my grandma, and I
Speaker 4: tried to stay with my mom. So Gavin Judy and
Speaker 4: Gavin Shrean Gray went to grandma's. My sister went to
Speaker 4: her best friends, and I went into her Wansley Children's
Speaker 4: Home and then into Foster Cany. Mom at the rehab
Speaker 4: and then when she get out of the rehabit all
Speaker 4: she did was drink and spend time with his bloke.
Speaker 4: And I met some young kid in the caravan park
Speaker 4: and it's become mates. And one night I said, Mum,
Speaker 4: can I stay with it my mate's carry and he
Speaker 4: goes yeah, And then I started with my mate's caravan
Speaker 4: and I wake up three o'clock at the morning and
Speaker 4: my mate's uncle was giving me oral sex and I'm
Speaker 4: laising their frozen solid and mate year old kid and yeah,
Speaker 4: this bloke was doing stuff to me and I had
Speaker 4: to pretend I was asleep. And the reason I share
Speaker 4: that is that that's one of the root causes of
Speaker 4: why I was like I was. And I remember geting
Speaker 4: up in the morning and walked out of the carrian
Speaker 4: park and I heard a voice and it says, tell you, mum,
Speaker 4: And then I heard another voice and now, stuff ya suffer.
Speaker 4: She doesn't love you. She loves this man or the
Speaker 4: alcohol more than she loves you. And I remember thinking,
Speaker 4: as night year old kid, yeah, stuffa, she loves him
Speaker 4: more than she loves me. If she loved me, I
Speaker 4: wouldn't have been molested. I would have been all these
Speaker 4: children's homes. I mean, I would to be in all
Speaker 4: these different schools. And so from the age eight, I
Speaker 4: literally hated her guts and every chance I could, I
Speaker 4: just ran away. I'd run away from her to sleep
Speaker 4: under my mate's floorboards. And if it wasn't and that
Speaker 4: I was in Good Samaritan bidness. I was living on
Speaker 4: the streets from the age eight. Age of nine, they
Speaker 4: put me into another children's home even Perth called Parkaol
Speaker 4: Children's Home, and I spent three sins in there. From
Speaker 4: the age of nine, I used to run away back
Speaker 4: up there for two weeks run away again the third
Speaker 4: time they caught me from the good run away from Parky.
Speaker 4: I was sleeping in the Good samaran been at the
Speaker 4: middle of Gate Shoping Center. And I remember waking up
Speaker 4: in the morning five o'clock, four o'clock on the morning
Speaker 4: with the coppers with a big torch light on my head.
Speaker 4: And so they took me back up to Parklor So
Speaker 4: I hadn't seen me dad since he took off when
Speaker 4: I was six. From now nine, they took me out
Speaker 4: to park with children's aims and I walked walked into
Speaker 4: this room right and I had my dad sitting on
Speaker 4: the right and I had the counselor sitting on the left.
Speaker 4: And again I remember this as clear as day, and
Speaker 4: she said, listen Pete, you obviously don't want to be here.
Speaker 4: You're wasted down time and our resources. You can either
Speaker 4: go with your dad or you're going a lot more.
Speaker 4: And I didn't realize long more was a boy's prison,
Speaker 4: like with bars and all that sort of stuff, actual prison.
Speaker 4: But I looked at my dad and I heard his
Speaker 4: voice again and said, he doesn't love you. He loves
Speaker 4: the babysitter more than he loves you, because it turned
Speaker 4: out that he ended up running off with a babysitter,
Speaker 4: had two kids with her, and went out to the
Speaker 4: marble bar.
Speaker 2: That's where he'd been for the last three years.
Speaker 4: But I looked at me Dad, and I heard this voice,
Speaker 4: I don't love you now, And so I said to
Speaker 4: this chick, I got a lot more.
Speaker 2: And then I heard this voice and making a mistake, and.
Speaker 4: Then I heard these other ways, nice stuff stuff he
Speaker 4: make him pay for what he's doing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 4: And so my dad was the one who drove me
Speaker 4: a lot more eleven o'clock at night, and when we
Speaker 4: pulled it up at the gates, nine year old kid,
Speaker 4: and I tell you what, my heart mate was going
Speaker 4: fin in a mile and hour. I've never been so
Speaker 4: scared and we're like And I walked up to these
Speaker 4: big bars, this prison offs to come down with all
Speaker 4: these keys, and I went through the gates and I
Speaker 4: looked back and the dad walking back to the car
Speaker 4: and with the baby sit in the front of the
Speaker 4: passage seat or his wife. And they took me into
Speaker 4: the into the prison. They took me into the prison
Speaker 4: and the train, and they stripped me naked. They put
Speaker 4: nick cream on my hair, crab cream on me nuts,
Speaker 4: and they gave me six comic books and eat the
Speaker 4: toilet shoders. And they marched me down these right prison
Speaker 4: cells and there's like nine cells to the left, nine
Speaker 4: cells to the right.
Speaker 2: I'm getting put.
Speaker 4: In prison just because I want my mom and my
Speaker 4: dad and I done nothing wrong. And I remember when
Speaker 4: they marched me down about six cell and the left
Speaker 4: down side open the door, pushed me in the slot
Speaker 4: and the bolted the door shut. I remember chucking me
Speaker 4: comic books that we crap on the steel bench, jumping
Speaker 4: on the bed, just grabbed a hold on my pillow,
Speaker 4: started to bottomie out, crying saying, if you let me
Speaker 4: out now, I'll behave. I won't run away again.
Speaker 2: That experience of getting put in a prison as a
Speaker 2: nine year old kid. Kid scared the liver crap out
Speaker 2: of me.
Speaker 4: I'm rocking side to side and I heard a voice
Speaker 4: in me cell Again, I'm going to refer to a
Speaker 4: voice quite often, but I heard a voice of Mesell
Speaker 4: and I said, Peter, from this stay forward. You're going
Speaker 4: to have to look after yourself. And so I made
Speaker 4: a vow from they stay forward. I'm going to look
Speaker 4: after myself when I get stressed. Now I'm a fifty
Speaker 4: four year old fellof, but I cut on my slow
Speaker 4: to get to sleep.
Speaker 2: Every night.
Speaker 4: I wake up the next day and we clean your
Speaker 4: cell out, up your floor, stand by yourself door for selling,
Speaker 4: inspects to shirts tucked down, hands behind your back, not talking.
Speaker 4: So I'm sit there in the prison sell with all
Speaker 4: these other kids, and do they inspect you end up
Speaker 4: spending three months in Lonmar. But that three months in
Speaker 4: Nornmore was the first time that I ever found I
Speaker 4: had a home.
Speaker 2: All those other kids in you know, there's about one hundred.
Speaker 4: And forty of them, one hundred and thirty of them,
Speaker 4: but they all had stories like mine, that mum had
Speaker 4: run off with a man, or dad had run off
Speaker 4: with a woman and they were just like me. All
Speaker 4: they wanted was a mum and dad normal, But because
Speaker 4: of the life that they parents have lived, they were
Speaker 4: wearing the consequences of the parents' choices.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I just unpacked that story and I haven't interrupted
Speaker 1: you because it's just it's heavy, mate, that's a sad
Speaker 1: story and that you know, my heart goes out for you.
Speaker 1: And I'm looking at your seeing you're a big tough man,
Speaker 1: but I'm looking at this young kid.
Speaker 3: Yeah, life dealt you some shit cards, But isn't it.
Speaker 2: It wasn't good.
Speaker 1: Just how these things happen, these sliding door moments, and
Speaker 1: just one person's life is just forever stuffed up. I'm
Speaker 1: sitting here and I've heard a lot of stories on
Speaker 1: my catch killers and a lot of people have been
Speaker 1: down some tough paths. But Peter, the way that you
Speaker 1: told that really took me there and thinking what would
Speaker 1: I be thinking at that age as a kid, What
Speaker 1: would be going through my head?
Speaker 3: Like my mom doesn't love me, my dad doesn't love me.
Speaker 1: Violence is the thing you go to a place where
Speaker 1: you feel a little bit more secure, you sexually assaulted,
Speaker 1: then you get locked up in a prison, and it's
Speaker 1: a prison, call it juvenile whatever, it's a prison.
Speaker 3: You're not allowed out.
Speaker 1: You haven't done anything wrong, You're just trying to look
Speaker 1: after yourself. Like fuck me, I do not know how
Speaker 1: people come through that and the stuff that you must
Speaker 1: carry from that. We all carry some sort of childhood trauma.
Speaker 1: But full credit to you that you can sit here
Speaker 1: and talk about it and you survive that. I just
Speaker 1: want to get a sense, like you're in and out
Speaker 1: from the age of nine into those detention centers. Do
Speaker 1: you have an old detention centers does it create Tell
Speaker 1: me how you think when you're in there, because I
Speaker 1: would imagine you'd be thinking, I'm just a worthless piece
Speaker 1: of shit. Nobody cares about me. This is you know,
Speaker 1: and you've become a self fulfilling prophecy.
Speaker 4: I would imagine in jail you've got a projected image
Speaker 4: that people perceive to fit in with where you are.
Speaker 4: You've got to adapt to the culture. But what's normal
Speaker 4: in prison is what's normal outside. And prisons don't actually
Speaker 4: make your better, they make your worse. And so when
Speaker 4: you get out of prison, even though you're out of prison,
Speaker 4: you're still in prison. You can take the prisoner out
Speaker 4: of prison. You've got to get the prison out of
Speaker 4: the prisoner. And so all jail did for me, I
Speaker 4: was just institutionalized. If I wasn't locked up, I've been
Speaker 4: living on the streets. But I thought I was away,
Speaker 4: that I wasn't good enough, I didn't belong No one
Speaker 4: loved me, Mum and dad. I was just a mess man.
Speaker 4: And then and then there's stuff I'll be in for.
Speaker 4: I spent seven years a lot more two years in Riverbank.
Speaker 4: When I wasn't locked up, I lived on the streets.
Speaker 4: I was straight kidding Perth from nineteen seventy nine, nine
Speaker 4: eighty eight. Yeah, when I was in jail, mate, I
Speaker 4: was on the on the streets do a lot of
Speaker 4: stuff they shouldn't have done.
Speaker 1: Well, I look at look at your life, per Who
Speaker 1: do you have as a role model there? Like who's
Speaker 1: who's your role model? You like it as a kid,
Speaker 1: you're looking for role models. You're looking for someone that
Speaker 1: I want to follow that person or I want that
Speaker 1: person to help me in life.
Speaker 3: Who is your role model?
Speaker 4: And then again, I've come across a couple of geek fellaws,
Speaker 4: older fellaws. They just feel like they're your dad, and
Speaker 4: I get I get that with Chris DAWs. I met
Speaker 4: Chris DA's West Australian governor at the moment, but I
Speaker 4: met him a fair few years back.
Speaker 3: And form former cop Chris.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he was a police commissioner and then now he's governor.
Speaker 4: But I really related to remember time I sat down
Speaker 4: and how he armed with him and an unpacked. He
Speaker 4: just he felt like my dad.
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, And.
Speaker 4: So there's a few blakes like that that's come across
Speaker 4: my path since I've been semi normal that I can
Speaker 4: I can download to.
Speaker 2: But otherwise I've got one.
Speaker 4: Hundred and sixty residents and all these stuff, so I
Speaker 4: don't really have time to look up. I'm just focusing
Speaker 4: on what's someone below me.
Speaker 3: Hey, I ask you this question.
Speaker 1: Do you think if at that stage and you know
Speaker 1: the nature of the person that you are or whatever,
Speaker 1: do you think if there was one person in your life? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it was an uncle and auntie, just someone that
Speaker 1: could have helped you and steered you through, do you
Speaker 1: think your life would have been completely different?
Speaker 2: Nah?
Speaker 4: I don't actually reason being is I was full that
Speaker 4: unforgiveness and having unforgiveness in his like swallen rat poison
Speaker 4: and expecting the other person to die. And I believe
Speaker 4: that all my actions and everything that I'd done was
Speaker 4: paying them back, but it was actually hurting me. So
Speaker 4: I hated my mom, I hated my dad, and I
Speaker 4: made sure that I made whatever decisions that I could
Speaker 4: to have a negative effect on them. And the absence
Speaker 4: of having mum and dad. I mean, I've never played
Speaker 4: I've never played sports. The one thing I did with
Speaker 4: the sports is I've never played sports. I've never been
Speaker 4: on a family holiday. I've never been able to run
Speaker 4: up the corridor and jump into bed with Mum and
Speaker 4: Dad for cuddle. I mean, no one taught me how
Speaker 4: to lift the toilet seat to do a piss, you know.
Speaker 4: I mean, yeah, I just I was just angry. He
Speaker 4: blamed everybody else and no matter who it was that
Speaker 4: tried to help me. My grandma, I took off, my uncle,
Speaker 4: I took off my other Gramdmar, I just took off.
Speaker 4: I just yeah, I was just I just want my
Speaker 4: mom and my dad. There was no substitute.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's that like almost survival to the anger that
Speaker 1: you just you hate the world.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you hate the world, and you look at the
Speaker 4: drugs and substances that cover it out, and you try
Speaker 4: to have a good time and trying to find a
Speaker 4: substitute for what you didn't never had, and I never
Speaker 4: found it.
Speaker 1: Talk us about the drugs you're living the life of crime.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about your crime, but just talk
Speaker 1: us about the creep into the world of finding peace
Speaker 1: with your drugs or finding something you're looking for with drugs.
Speaker 3: How'd you fall into that?
Speaker 4: So after I spent three months in long Wall for
Speaker 4: the first time when I was nine, they put me
Speaker 4: in another children's home. I met some of the kids
Speaker 4: who were in Long War in the children's same and
Speaker 4: that's when I was introduced to drugs when I was nine,
Speaker 4: with cones first, then math, speed, then myth later on. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I just started the drugs from there, being institutionalized from
Speaker 4: the age of nine to eighteen, and that was just NonStop,
Speaker 4: no conviction, just kept doing what I'd do and I
Speaker 4: went started breaking the house, of stealing cars, fraud high
Speaker 4: speed chases. I'd be locked up for six months out
Speaker 4: for a month, back in for eleven months, out for
Speaker 4: a day, back in for another. I spent seven birthdays
Speaker 4: in a row in a lot more two years in Riverbank,
Speaker 4: and my my crime and all my stuff started slowing
Speaker 4: down when I hit probably the age eighteen nineteen.
Speaker 1: So what was drugs doing for you? Did you, like,
Speaker 1: did you even have a sense this was dangerous for you?
Speaker 1: Like it was anyone sort of gown? What are you doing?
Speaker 1: Did you ever think what am I doing?
Speaker 2: No? Not that day.
Speaker 4: I was just having a hell of a lot of fun,
Speaker 4: sleeping with her. I can sleep with grab a holder,
Speaker 4: can grab a hold. I just have a lot of fun.
Speaker 4: Young and stupid. Absolutely, I'm stupid, unteachable everyone else.
Speaker 2: What do you know? Old people use it? You mean,
Speaker 2: I'm just young and stupid.
Speaker 1: When when did you realize in your life that you
Speaker 1: became dependent on drugs so that it really got you,
Speaker 1: Like at first you're thinking I can try this, I
Speaker 1: can walk away from When did you yourself go shit,
Speaker 1: it's got me.
Speaker 4: Probably around nineteen I was. I mean, I'd stop doing
Speaker 4: the petty crime stuff. I mean I'd buy stolen goods
Speaker 4: here and there. But yeah, I just couldn't do without drugs,
Speaker 4: you know. And I've moved like literally every three months
Speaker 4: in my whole life, right up to the age of
Speaker 4: thirty one.
Speaker 2: I'd go from town to town to town.
Speaker 4: I think, if I just go to Caggooley, right, I
Speaker 4: just go to Cagooley, I'll just gout there and work.
Speaker 4: But when I got to Cagiley, because of my personality
Speaker 4: and who I felt comfortable with, everybody that I felt
Speaker 4: comfortable with was doing what I did want to do.
Speaker 4: So I'd start off with a packet, get to an
Speaker 4: We'll get to an ounce, and that's how I'm going
Speaker 4: to go. And so then I took off to South Australia.
Speaker 4: I detox and then I run into somebody else. I
Speaker 4: start off with the packet, getting an able, get to
Speaker 4: an ounce. And if I wasn't on the math, I'll
Speaker 4: be on the chill and it wasn't on the chore.
Speaker 4: I'll be on a drink and I wasn't on the drink,
Speaker 4: then I'd be on the prescription medication. I needed some
Speaker 4: sort of chemical or substance to feel normal. But the
Speaker 4: problem is my tolerance. You start off with one, then
Speaker 4: you go to two, and then two goes to four,
Speaker 4: and it's just it's just like a snic, a never
Speaker 4: ending cycle. I didn't realize all my childhood stuff or
Speaker 4: the pain or the anger or the guilt, the shame
Speaker 4: or the I didn't realize all my childhood stuff was
Speaker 4: having in effect. I mean I was looking for something
Speaker 4: to try and mask or cover it.
Speaker 1: It's interesting you say that you could travel anywhere or
Speaker 1: go or try to break away, but the kind finds kind.
Speaker 1: You end up with the people that you've ran away
Speaker 1: from there in another town.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Like I said, you can take the prisoner out of prison, right, Yeah,
Speaker 4: but you've got to get the prison out of the prisoner.
Speaker 4: And when you go to prison, you've got to learn
Speaker 4: to project the image that people perceive and what you
Speaker 4: do in jail and who you've got to become. Even
Speaker 4: if you're a good person, I mean, you're blake walking
Speaker 4: in your slot. You've got stamp over his lies. It's
Speaker 4: intimidation's bulliants.
Speaker 2: And all that.
Speaker 4: And when you live in that environment for three, six,
Speaker 4: twelve months and then you get out, there's only certain
Speaker 4: people you feel comfortableund I mean, you're a geek straight out.
Speaker 4: You projected image that I perceive that you're normal, and
Speaker 4: my mum and dad, family holiday has done all this
Speaker 4: normal stuff. I mean I feel uncomfortable around you. You mean,
Speaker 4: you feel I feel like you're better than me. So
Speaker 4: I go hang around people I feel comfortable, but they're
Speaker 4: all smashing picks in their arms and smoking pipes and
Speaker 4: pop and Pillso it's not just about rehabilitations, reintegration, resocialization,
Speaker 4: having to learn about having normal conversation with normal people
Speaker 4: who do normal stuff. But you never go there because
Speaker 4: it just brings up all your insecure or your crap.
Speaker 4: So you just go where you feel comfortable because it's easier.
Speaker 1: It makes perfect sense the way you're explaining that you're
Speaker 1: going to gravitate towards an area or a group of
Speaker 1: people that you feel comfortable with. Let's break it down.
Speaker 1: Your experience in the juvenile tension centers, the boys' homes,
Speaker 1: whatever we want to call them. They have a hundred
Speaker 1: different different names for it. What's how could that be improved?
Speaker 1: And I know, well I can say in New South Wales,
Speaker 1: I know corrective services are trying to make it make
Speaker 1: a difference, but you looking you've experienced it, is there
Speaker 1: anything that they could have broken the cycle in that environment?
Speaker 2: Or mate?
Speaker 4: I mean, I've been part of the system, water of
Speaker 4: the state, you name it, ever since i was a
Speaker 4: nine eight year old kid.
Speaker 2: I was flagged.
Speaker 4: I was sat in front of hundreds of psychiatrists, counselors, doctors,
Speaker 4: child psychologists, parole officers, community corrections, and those people don't
Speaker 4: realize the power that they have with that pen. And
Speaker 4: most of the people that I've sat with is just
Speaker 4: as screwed up as what I am. Even now, I
Speaker 4: have twenty counselors and I have to interview two hundred
Speaker 4: to get one. But the system, right, they always talk
Speaker 4: about reducing the ricis of them. Rate my house, we
Speaker 4: just don't allow swearing, we don't allow gossip, we don't
Speaker 4: allow drugs. We don't mean the system itself. Now I
Speaker 4: have a psychiatrist, psychologist, child psychologists, I have twenty counselors.
Speaker 2: I have the work life, home life.
Speaker 4: I have all my own team all on board, and
Speaker 4: we work together as a team to help people change
Speaker 4: their life. The system they're not working together as a team.
Speaker 4: I mean, one does it this way, and then this
Speaker 4: one does it different, and this one does it different,
Speaker 4: and so you're just throwing around the system. But when
Speaker 4: you take away the coke un mechanism, you've got to
Speaker 4: deal with the roots. So your picture over here, we've
Speaker 4: got Bankshire Hill, which is a youth detention center. You're
Speaker 4: pitting kids in a prison culture. I mean, if we
Speaker 4: started a new unit twenty one and you start by
Speaker 4: developing the culture, I mean, and honesty and highness and
Speaker 4: all that sort of stuff. When you put a person
Speaker 4: in that and you keep maintaining those rules, the person
Speaker 4: changes adapts. If the prisoners and all that bad culture
Speaker 4: is stronger than the good culture, the good culture is
Speaker 4: going to get it wiped out. But if the good
Speaker 4: culture is stronger than the bad culture, the bad culture
Speaker 4: is going to get wiped out.
Speaker 2: That's why Shalon works. I got one hundred and.
Speaker 4: Sixty living residents to stay with me between one year
Speaker 4: to three years. And I just don't tolerate swearing. I
Speaker 4: don't tolerate roosters. I'll chop rooster's heads off out the street.
Speaker 4: And it's not okay to gossip, it's not okay to
Speaker 4: drop behind somebody else's back. And thirteen years, I'll have
Speaker 4: not one police car, not one ambulance. I mean, you
Speaker 4: want to live under my house. I want love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness.
Speaker 1: And the stuff the stuff you're talking there and will
Speaker 1: unpack it in detail. But that's the type of thing
Speaker 1: that could be brought bought into the prisons in the
Speaker 1: chemis centers.
Speaker 2: Change the change the culture, set the culture.
Speaker 1: And I just okay, we'll talk more on that, but
Speaker 1: I just want to get a sense, like the crimes,
Speaker 1: what what do you look back at your crimes now?
Speaker 1: Like I'm saying, a person that's got the interests of
Speaker 1: society and come to terms of everything that's gone on,
Speaker 1: do you look back at some of the crimes that
Speaker 1: you're committed. Is there any crime that you've looked back
Speaker 1: and gone how I don't even recognize that person.
Speaker 4: Most of them the main from from the from credit
Speaker 4: card for it. They may using other people's identities, from
Speaker 4: stealing people's bobcats. I mean it's like I got a
Speaker 4: lot of regret. I mean I stole one Blake's bobcat,
Speaker 4: had it delivered to the house, and went and sold
Speaker 4: her on him and that wiped him and his family out.
Speaker 4: I mean, I've had ex girlfriends where she inherited some
Speaker 4: foreign notes. The foreign notes were nothing, but the value
Speaker 4: in those just because there were a grandfather's The value
Speaker 4: to her was not about the money. It was about
Speaker 4: all these my grandpops. And when I turned my life
Speaker 4: around twenty years later, I hadn't seen her for twenty years.
Speaker 4: I actually found her and apologized that she broke down.
Speaker 4: She'd been carrying that for twenty years. I've done a
Speaker 4: lot of stuff that I'm ashamed of. I've slept with
Speaker 4: hundreds of prostitutes and broken her house and just done
Speaker 4: stuff that's just not good. I mean, selling all the
Speaker 4: drugs in that. This is not good. I mean, I'm sorry,
Speaker 4: I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: No, it's thanks for your honesty. Have you allowed yourself
Speaker 1: to forgive yourself? I say this, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: sit here in judgment of anything you've done. Looking at
Speaker 1: the start you're having life. So have you allowed yourself
Speaker 1: to forgive?
Speaker 2: I have?
Speaker 4: But for me, whenever I'm do an interview like this,
Speaker 4: I really don't care what you think about, or your
Speaker 4: listeners or whatever watch is on. What you see is
Speaker 4: what you get. If you don't like as your your problem.
Speaker 4: But I'm going to be real and I'm going to
Speaker 4: lead by example. I mean, if I can talk about stuff,
Speaker 4: then they can talk about stuff. I mean, somebod I'm
Speaker 4: one hundred percent transparent, and what you see is what
Speaker 4: you get. And I have I forgiven myself. You've forgiven myself.
Speaker 4: Do I regret what I've done?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Do I regret not having mom and Dad? Yeah?
Speaker 4: Do I regret sleeping by my eyes back and having
Speaker 4: to tell her and watch your tears falling in the face.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I regret it.
Speaker 4: I mean when I put my kids through and man
Speaker 4: of the times I spent in jail, I regret it.
Speaker 4: I mean, and I don't want other people to live
Speaker 4: the life that I've lived. My family, right, he's the
Speaker 4: one that's laying back right now in a prison cell.
Speaker 4: He doesn't want to be here. He is he wants
Speaker 4: to change. But the geeks and now other people, they
Speaker 4: are not listening, and they just keep slapping them in prison,
Speaker 4: and the prison doesn't fixture makes them worse. Your class
Speaker 4: addiction five categories ab CD, and there's three types seeds.
Speaker 4: These are the ones we take in shlammers and knee
Speaker 4: that hit the brick wall, and ones to do whatever
Speaker 4: it takes a change like the other. E's the one
Speaker 4: that want to go from an illegal drug to a
Speaker 4: legal drug. And the third one is what we build
Speaker 4: prisons for. We should be filtrating the three a's, putting
Speaker 4: the ones we build prison for in prison. The number
Speaker 4: two a's should be going to drug an alcohol courses
Speaker 4: until they want to change, and the third one should
Speaker 4: be going to rehab and we're not. We're putting all
Speaker 4: three e's in the one basket. We're wondering why West
Speaker 4: Australia's prison population in the last ten years has gone
Speaker 4: from seven hundred to twenty two hundred, and we've got
Speaker 4: new prisons now obviously doing something wrong.
Speaker 1: Look and we've been looking at a lot on my
Speaker 1: catch killers and we've done a lot of exploration into
Speaker 1: the prisons and what goes on. It just seems ridiculous,
Speaker 1: the recidivism that comes through and West Australia and New
Speaker 1: South Wales right across the country. If it's if it's
Speaker 1: not working, let's look at how to change it.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: I now over here and i've lived over in Perth.
Speaker 1: I understand y there's a bad crime, there's big hullabaloo.
Speaker 1: Politicians come out, We're going to get tough on crime,
Speaker 1: mandatory sentencings, We're going to do this, all sorts of stuff.
Speaker 1: That's what we get in New South Wales and all
Speaker 1: the other states across the country. But we've got to
Speaker 1: try and think a little bit outside the square. If
Speaker 1: people get sent to prison, that's said punishment. They've been
Speaker 1: taken away from society. Is it not in the interests
Speaker 1: of everyone that if someone goes in the prison it
Speaker 1: won't work for everyone. But if on the off chance
Speaker 1: you can make that person a better person when they
Speaker 1: come out of prison, I think everyone's a winner.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Well, I just had a fellow two weeks back and
Speaker 4: spent fourteen months in shilim. He's only a young fellow
Speaker 4: and got caught up doing something that he should have done,
Speaker 4: got done with the only two ounces of math. He
Speaker 4: couldn't give up the person who done it because of
Speaker 4: the repercussions, which I won't going to and but he
Speaker 4: spent fourteen months in Shilami's life changed. About two weeks
Speaker 4: ago they put him in prison for three years. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I mean it's going to undo what we've just done.
Speaker 4: He's generally since remorse completely change owned everything. After fourteen
Speaker 4: months in prison. Instead of lettinghim spend on another fourteen
Speaker 4: months in prision, they stepping in jail for three years.
Speaker 1: Well, I've seen some what I consider informed judges or
Speaker 1: magistrates or whatever that look a little bit deeper, and
Speaker 1: in a situation like that, they might make an exception
Speaker 1: and go, well, you know, okay, the book said we're
Speaker 1: going to send him back in or law says send
Speaker 1: him there for another fourteen months.
Speaker 3: But let's look at his life.
Speaker 1: That's where I cringe where people say mandatory sentence, because
Speaker 1: in all the times I was in the cops, I
Speaker 1: didn't see him one offense. It was identical to the other,
Speaker 1: like your upbringings, different to the other person and the circumstances,
Speaker 1: so it's not one punishment fits all. But I also
Speaker 1: speak to victims of crime, so yeah, these are people
Speaker 1: that robberies where their loved ones have been murdered, a
Speaker 1: kid murdered, all sorts of things, and one person I
Speaker 1: raise him quite often because he's a bit, a bit
Speaker 1: of a talk to me and I admire the stuff
Speaker 1: that he's done. Ken Marslew, his son was murdered. He's
Speaker 1: working seventeen years old, working in aizza pizza hut. M
Speaker 1: Robbers come in, they shot him, shot him in the
Speaker 1: back of the head with a shotgun, killed him. Ken
Speaker 1: was absolutely fuming. He was angry, every emotion you could
Speaker 1: think a parent would have in that circumstances. He wanted revenge,
Speaker 1: he wanted to see him punished, he wanted death penalty,
Speaker 1: wanted everything to occur. We're now twenty years down the track,
Speaker 1: and you speak the can.
Speaker 3: He goes, I still.
Speaker 1: Hold that anger. I still hold that anger. But what's
Speaker 1: going to happen if I hold that anger? It's going
Speaker 1: to destroy me. If they make prisons the whole system
Speaker 1: work to make the person better when they come out,
Speaker 1: that's not getting soft on crime. That's getting smart on crime,
Speaker 1: and it's helping victims because there'll be less victims. And
Speaker 1: it's a simple philosophy. But I think, touching on what
Speaker 1: you're being saying, I think you'd agree it makes sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, one hundred percent.
Speaker 4: I mean what does makes sense also in wa is
Speaker 4: that if you've got a criminal record, and they've actually
Speaker 4: blanketed where you can't get into the prison system anymore.
Speaker 4: It's literally any person with the criminal record. I was
Speaker 4: at one of the prisons here, Kasha Prison, from two
Speaker 4: thousand and five to ten, three days a week, as
Speaker 4: a volunteer. In twenty ten, they just thought that and
Speaker 4: lived experience people who actually generally sincerely have turned their
Speaker 4: life round, do have a lot to give.
Speaker 1: Well you should and get in touch with me. I
Speaker 1: can source it if we need to. Because over in
Speaker 1: New South Wales, I've seen a lot of people come
Speaker 1: here that the burn in situations like yours, done time
Speaker 1: in prison and they're opening their minds up to bringing
Speaker 1: them back and working in. In fact, had a blot
Speaker 1: that had done five years that then ended up working
Speaker 1: as a welfare officer in the prison and seeing people,
Speaker 1: the prisoners that he was sharing the cell with. He's
Speaker 1: come in as working for Creative Services that's down in Victoria.
Speaker 2: So well that's great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I lived experience because half the time, if you're
Speaker 1: in that environment, you got to bridge up. You can't
Speaker 1: show weakness. And you know you're not going to listen
Speaker 1: to as you call them, a geek or a straighty
Speaker 1: one to eighty come in and say this is how
Speaker 1: you should live your life. But if you walk in
Speaker 1: the door and go well, this is what's happened to me,
Speaker 1: and this is my story and this is what I
Speaker 1: think you do, people will sit and listen. It just
Speaker 1: makes just make sense, doesn't it.
Speaker 2: Ond Per I'm actually a geek now Greek.
Speaker 4: To me, he's like a normal person, a productive member
Speaker 4: of society, free for inancers of drugs and substances and
Speaker 4: do normal stuff. I mean, so I am actually a geek.
Speaker 4: But an image like these fellows is on the end
Speaker 4: of these cameras here they look like geeks.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, no, I know what you're saying.
Speaker 1: But to get to get to those people, to listen
Speaker 1: lived experiences is something. And yeah, being a geek because
Speaker 1: you describe yourself. I had a mate that was in
Speaker 1: the bikies for a long time and he's okay, and
Speaker 1: I respected it to a degree. He was I'm an
Speaker 1: outlaw and I don't have a job. I don't pay taxes.
Speaker 1: I'm bike here, we're a one percent on the patch
Speaker 1: and that's what I do. He changed his life around,
Speaker 1: turned his life around. He contacted me years and years
Speaker 1: later and said, you know what, mate, it's not bad
Speaker 1: being a sevilan, working, paying taxes, being part of society.
Speaker 1: And I love.
Speaker 3: Seeing those turn around because he just did not see
Speaker 3: it at the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 1: Okay, with the drugs and the time in prison, how
Speaker 1: long did you bend in prison?
Speaker 3: All up?
Speaker 4: So I say to people that I spent twenty six
Speaker 4: years in prison.
Speaker 2: Even when you're not in prison, he's still in prison.
Speaker 3: I understand what you know.
Speaker 4: Even though from the age of nine I was literally
Speaker 4: my whole child was incarcerated from the age of nine
Speaker 4: to eighteen, and my first char lagon was in nineteen
Speaker 4: ninety one, and then I've made the rounds of all
Speaker 4: the prisons and down here in Perth, and as a
Speaker 4: bumb Recarnet Warlo okay show, even when you're not in prison,
Speaker 4: you're still in prison. You can, like I say, you
Speaker 4: can take the prisoner out of prison, but then you've
Speaker 4: got to get the prison out of prison. I've never
Speaker 4: added up exactly time I've done, but it wasn't until
Speaker 4: two thousand and two thousand and two on my last
Speaker 4: lagon is where my life actually broke for you and
Speaker 4: I started a change.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's an interesting concept and I haven't heard it
Speaker 1: put that way, but the way you've articulated explains it
Speaker 1: very well that yeah, it doesn't matter with you're serving
Speaker 1: a twelve month sentence here and then you're out for
Speaker 1: six months and doing eighteen months very imprison.
Speaker 3: You're just outside the lagon.
Speaker 4: Right and yeah, hit the brick wall ends in a
Speaker 4: big finale, you get three years back.
Speaker 2: Then they have you only.
Speaker 4: Do two thirds get a third in remission, so you
Speaker 4: only do it really a year, and so your detox
Speaker 4: all of the drugs. Your family can start seeing your change.
Speaker 4: You start putting meat back on, and you tell them
Speaker 4: everything they want to hear.
Speaker 2: On the visits.
Speaker 4: You're not drunk, you're not using drugs, you're not getting alcohol.
Speaker 4: But when you get out, as soon as you get
Speaker 4: out of jail, you celebrate the fact that you're doing
Speaker 4: a lag. And the first thing you do is you
Speaker 4: go get on and you have a shot, or you're
Speaker 4: go and have a beer, and then one beer tunes
Speaker 4: into two, and then someone rocks up with some gear
Speaker 4: and then you have a shot. Second you get out
Speaker 4: of jail, they do they celebrate the fact that they're
Speaker 4: on a lagging. And that's why I say at Shaloon,
Speaker 4: we don't take people straight from Jarl unless they do
Speaker 4: full time. They ring me up, say can we come
Speaker 4: to Seloon, and I say yeah, when you do your
Speaker 4: full time, walk out it, walk out the front gate,
Speaker 4: go to our care, don't drink, don't use drugs and
Speaker 4: give me a call and I'll send a helicopter to
Speaker 4: pick out.
Speaker 2: And it's like they don't. They go out and get
Speaker 2: on first.
Speaker 4: But the second you stick that pick in your arm mate,
Speaker 4: or you smoke that pipe, you pop that pill, it's
Speaker 4: like get it on a train even though you're not
Speaker 4: in prison.
Speaker 2: You're in prison.
Speaker 4: You've just stuck it and the train it starts picking
Speaker 4: up speed, it starts getting faster and faster.
Speaker 2: And you know they're about to hit walling up. I
Speaker 2: can jarl again.
Speaker 4: Then one day you look up and all the doors
Speaker 4: are shut, no conductors, no people bang it HiT's a
Speaker 4: bit wall.
Speaker 2: You're back in jarl again. I mean again. It's the
Speaker 2: prison culture.
Speaker 4: You take that prison culture with you when you get out,
Speaker 4: and you hang around that prison culture because now that
Speaker 4: prison culture becomes your standard normal and you feel more
Speaker 4: comfortable around those types of people, then you do the
Speaker 4: other types of people. You've got to get the prison
Speaker 4: out of the prisoner. If you don't get the prison
Speaker 4: out of the prisoner, it ain't going to change.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it makes sense.
Speaker 1: Was there any time during that and I want to
Speaker 1: well lead into when you actually decided this is it.
Speaker 1: I'm turning it turning my life around. Did you have
Speaker 1: any false starts during that period? Did you come out
Speaker 1: of prison one time and say, right, I'm going to
Speaker 1: do it right? And if you did, and you fail.
Speaker 4: Times, you get out and you go start work as
Speaker 4: a tire fid and you get a job and you
Speaker 4: think you're doing the right thing. And but I used
Speaker 4: to look for the acknowledgment of my mum or my
Speaker 4: dad or somebody, Oh, you're doing a good job, Peter.
Speaker 4: But no matter how how hard I tried, or that
Speaker 4: it was criticized, I never said, you're doing a good job,
Speaker 4: And so I got stuff ya And a lot of
Speaker 4: people that I deal with they want the acknowledgment, hey,
Speaker 4: that they're doing well, but they don't get it and
Speaker 4: they stuff it, so they just go back and do
Speaker 4: what they shouldn't do. I could rattle off heaps of times.
Speaker 4: I mean, but there wasn't anyone there to encourage her.
Speaker 4: And even now, you're not going to get that encouragement.
Speaker 4: I mean, you ain't going to look for the acknowledgement.
Speaker 4: He appears you just got to do it.
Speaker 1: If you strip the layers back, with the upbringing that
Speaker 1: you've had and the environments that you grew up in
Speaker 1: and so many other people. I would imagine when you talk,
Speaker 1: you don't get that encouragement. They have to be this
Speaker 1: overwhelming feeling of self and yeah, you.
Speaker 4: Just self flaving hate, yourself hate everybody, blame everybody else
Speaker 4: for why you are like you are. It's your mum's fault,
Speaker 4: it's your dad's fault, it's your brother's fold, a sh
Speaker 4: uncle's fault, it's a cops fault. It's everyone else's fault.
Speaker 4: But it's not my fault. That's where everyone's like that,
Speaker 4: you know.
Speaker 1: That is that start of the process where you've got
Speaker 1: to take ownership and go, well, hold, it's I can
Speaker 1: blame this person, that person upbringing, but there's one person
Speaker 1: that control.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm doing it.
Speaker 4: But you've got to come to that point where you
Speaker 4: allow because people try to tell you it could be
Speaker 4: your mum, could be your dad, but I'm not going
Speaker 4: to listen, and then their words are like water and windscreen.
Speaker 4: It could be people have got their lives together, could
Speaker 4: be your grandmother giving you a lecture or whatever. Grand
Speaker 4: I mean, you just don't listen. You've got to there's
Speaker 4: a certain time you've got to come to a certain
Speaker 4: point where you will listen. And there's two times in
Speaker 4: my life that I know that if somebody had to
Speaker 4: listen and and grab my hand, I would have changed.
Speaker 4: And so so because of the life that I've lived,
Speaker 4: I use all of my lived experience to help me
Speaker 4: to do what.
Speaker 2: It is that I do today.
Speaker 4: When I was nine, laying in that prison cell and
Speaker 4: I'm rocking a pillow side to side, cry and saying, please,
Speaker 4: if you let me out now, I promise I'll behave
Speaker 4: I know that, I know that, I know that if
Speaker 4: somebody had to grab my hand that day, that experience
Speaker 4: is enough for me. I would have turned my life around.
Speaker 4: It was different than any other experience that I had.
Speaker 4: And another one when I was in nineteen eighty eight,
Speaker 4: if somebody had reached out and grabbed my hand in
Speaker 4: I know that, I know that, I know that I
Speaker 4: would have changed. And they're the ones that I look
Speaker 4: for and the ones I take into Shilom. I worked
Speaker 4: out a method of how to find and separate the
Speaker 4: whek from the chart, so to speak, the serious for
Speaker 4: the not serious.
Speaker 1: What was the thing about those two examples, What were
Speaker 1: the two things that and you speak so strongly about it.
Speaker 1: I'm convinced what you're saying, where were you at in
Speaker 1: that stage your life that would have made the difference.
Speaker 4: When you hit the brick wall that ends in the
Speaker 4: big FINALI the last thing you do is go to
Speaker 4: rehab or I mean your brain automatically. When you hit
Speaker 4: the brick wall, you ring your mum, you ring your grandma,
Speaker 4: or you ring your uncle or your wife, and they
Speaker 4: always take it in. I eat the brick wall. I
Speaker 4: was at the bottom of myself. I had no one
Speaker 4: to ring, but I had a thought in my head,
Speaker 4: I can't do this anymore. I want to change. And
Speaker 4: I felt that thought go from my head into my
Speaker 4: heart and it was like a seed of life. Someone
Speaker 4: give me this opportunity of our mate, and I'll grab
Speaker 4: it with two hands. And there's only been twice in
Speaker 4: my life that I've had that. But no one was there.
Speaker 4: No one was there to grab my hand. And that's
Speaker 4: what I do. I look for those who are at
Speaker 4: that point. My family are laying in prison solves, they're
Speaker 4: sticking PicTel around there.
Speaker 2: I grew up with. That's why I do what I do.
Speaker 4: I'm looking for those ones who come to the point
Speaker 4: and say I can't do it anymore. I want to change.
Speaker 4: That's a seed. I can water that seed, I can
Speaker 4: make that seed grow.
Speaker 3: You want to be that hand for those people.
Speaker 4: I want to be that hand. Yeah, and I want
Speaker 4: to raise up lots of other hands, you know, not
Speaker 4: just me. I'm nearly hopefully finished at shalom. Soon I
Speaker 4: can hand it over to and hopefully they can just
Speaker 4: keep doing and I can do you.
Speaker 2: I want to make a difference.
Speaker 3: Hey, guys, have you ever wondered what goes on behind
Speaker 3: the headlines of a gang.
Speaker 1: War or shooting? Then you need to listen to crim City.
Speaker 1: Join crime reporters Mark Murray and Josh Hamrahan as they
Speaker 1: uncover the details of crimes unfolding on Sydney streets and
Speaker 1: share the stories that don't make the papers. The latest
Speaker 1: season of crim City is out now. Listen early and
Speaker 1: ad free on Crime x plus on Apple Podcasts. Today,
Speaker 1: let's talk about the time when you've gone okay, I'm
Speaker 1: out of this life style.
Speaker 3: What was that point?
Speaker 1: You've talked two examples where if the right circumstances might
Speaker 1: have made the difference when.
Speaker 2: To do that. I'm going to talk about faith.
Speaker 3: Is that all right, yeah, yeah, by all meds.
Speaker 4: I'm going to talk about Christianity. So I didn't grow
Speaker 4: up going to church. I used to every time I
Speaker 4: was in a lot more in Rubank and I was
Speaker 4: locked up. You used to have to play two bucks
Speaker 4: ago to an activity, and we used to have these
Speaker 4: Christian mob come in, but they had to play games
Speaker 4: with you and all of this stuff. And I remember
Speaker 4: going on sevent years and long more. Then I went
Speaker 4: to Ruverbank. I got eighteen months hit one Hit and Riverbank,
Speaker 4: and one night these Christian great come in and they
Speaker 4: chucked on these videos called.
Speaker 2: Cross of the switch Plade, And.
Speaker 4: There was this story about this part of America who's
Speaker 4: grew up in the bronx on the streets, and his
Speaker 4: story was like mine, I mean, and you can see
Speaker 4: on the inside he wanted to be a good person.
Speaker 4: And then this corny looking preacher comes down and basically
Speaker 4: just says God loves you and all this stuff. But
Speaker 4: I did showed on in the video how he used
Speaker 4: to be. This bat's comes like all this real bad
Speaker 4: person and then this corney preacher told him God loves him,
Speaker 4: and then it shows him at the end of the
Speaker 4: movie how his life changed. You mean, he stopped hanging
Speaker 4: around the more moors or the games. And it's like
Speaker 4: and I remember going back to my cell and I
Speaker 4: got on my knees. It was the eighteenth of May,
Speaker 4: nineteen eighty six. I got on my knees and I said, God,
Speaker 4: if you're real, and I bore my eyes out. Mate,
Speaker 4: if you could change his life, he could change mine.
Speaker 4: I'm telling him. I had experience with him, and I
Speaker 4: know that he's real. But then when I got out
Speaker 4: of jail, I just went whatever and just forgot him,
Speaker 4: just kept living the life. And then in fast forward
Speaker 4: to two thousand and so that was nineteen eighty six,
Speaker 4: eight so eighty six, sorry, So fast forward to two
Speaker 4: thousand and one. I'd done three years of jail, got
Speaker 4: out of jail, and I thought to myself, I'm going
Speaker 4: to sell drugs and guns for a living and I'm
Speaker 4: not going to do I'm not going to do crime
Speaker 4: or buy hot goods to kick some of the heat off.
Speaker 4: And so I was married with my wife. I've got
Speaker 4: three kids, two to my wife. My son Peter was four,
Speaker 4: other son was one. I got jail just after he
Speaker 4: was born two weeks a week after he was born.
Speaker 4: But I got out of jail and I thought, I'm
Speaker 4: going to sell drugs for the JIT and so I
Speaker 4: just started selling eight balls then, and within three months
Speaker 4: I went from eight balls to ounces and ounces to
Speaker 4: pounds and then up getting a two and a half
Speaker 4: kilos I've met I'm selling a week and and I
Speaker 4: went really really big, really quick.
Speaker 2: Mym I'm and nobody.
Speaker 4: I'm just a common, everyday, pathetic looking crim But I'm
Speaker 4: telling me I went from the bottom of the food
Speaker 4: chain to the top of the shoe chain. I had
Speaker 4: a big factory full of cars. My house was bugged,
Speaker 4: my car was bugged. I was suffering psychosis two and
Speaker 4: a half kilos of mad I'd sold a box of
Speaker 4: dynamite to this dude and I reckon he was informant.
Speaker 4: And anyway, next day copp has come to my house.
Speaker 4: I had TRG coming through the front, back, shotguns, bullet proof,
Speaker 4: first helicopter of the roof, and I was doing sixteen
Speaker 4: days and no sleep. I have my missus laying on
Speaker 4: the floor with a shotgun to her head, with my
Speaker 4: with my two year old kid, with her in arms
Speaker 4: and stuff, and I just I just hated me, And
Speaker 4: when I really hated me, I hated.
Speaker 2: Everything that I stood for, everything I'd done.
Speaker 4: And I got done with a pan of pot, couple
Speaker 4: of handguns, and she got done with the color pot.
Speaker 4: She got handguns. All this on a record. She's never
Speaker 4: done nothing wrong. She's a country girl, you mean. But anyway,
Speaker 4: we both got out on bail. And and I've never
Speaker 4: played sports and stuff, like I said, but she she
Speaker 4: enrolled my son in and this thing called grasshop of soccer,
Speaker 4: and them days I used to have diamond rings on
Speaker 4: every finger. I was like sixty kilo, big bed, looked
Speaker 4: like skeleton, absolute goose. But she rolled him in his
Speaker 4: grass up of soccer. I'd got barwed out. And then
Speaker 4: the next time I'm over at the park. We were
Speaker 4: staying and I took my kid over because the country girls,
Speaker 4: that's what they do.
Speaker 2: I never played sports, but I go over the raid and.
Speaker 4: There's all these geeks there and the grasshoppers, like I
Speaker 4: was kick introduction to footy, and the and the dad
Speaker 4: the deer was that the dad. All these dads, these
Speaker 4: geeks were sitting there and a circle with their kid.
Speaker 4: And if the kid kicked the ball through the dad's
Speaker 4: legs and they had to roll around like an idiot
Speaker 4: on the ground. Goko you mean? And I'm thinking, man,
Speaker 4: it's not cool.
Speaker 2: I'm fried.
Speaker 4: And then his kid kicks his ball through his dad's
Speaker 4: legs and he died chi kitchiqui on the ground, and
Speaker 4: then the other he had done it. And I'm thinking,
Speaker 4: and if my boy kicks the ball room my legs, man,
Speaker 4: I'm out of here. And he kicked the ball through
Speaker 4: my legs and I just turned my back of my
Speaker 4: son and I walked off and I started.
Speaker 2: Ball of eyes out.
Speaker 4: I wouldn't give anything to make my son feel normal.
Speaker 4: I hated me. I hated how I smelled. I hated
Speaker 4: the environment I put them through. I hated that would
Speaker 4: sleep in it and wake up lunch time and they
Speaker 4: weren't at school.
Speaker 2: I mean. And then and here I am, I work
Speaker 2: off my bat.
Speaker 4: And when I walked off with my son, I remember,
Speaker 4: I just said, I can't do it anymore. God, if
Speaker 4: you're real. I knew he was real because I got
Speaker 4: new when I was sixteen seven aeen. I said, God,
Speaker 4: if you're real, I need your help, and I'm balling
Speaker 4: my eyes. I gave with the missus, I said woman.
Speaker 4: I called with my wife and woe and I said.
Speaker 4: Woman gotok after the boy, and for me, that was
Speaker 4: the turning point. I'm dry he really really weird stuff
Speaker 4: started happening.
Speaker 2: She went.
Speaker 4: I over and looked after the kid, and I get
Speaker 4: out of my car and I'm going drive around me stuff.
Speaker 4: And it's like from that day for it, I couldn't
Speaker 4: get on. Every time I try to score drugs. The
Speaker 4: doors were shut. I went to go pick up off
Speaker 4: some gear off the Italian fellow I was getting my
Speaker 4: all mustache from and there's all these bloody coppers there
Speaker 4: that righted his van.
Speaker 2: And anyway, so.
Speaker 4: I'm driving around trying to do what I'm doing, and
Speaker 4: then I started hearing his voice in head saying, Peter,
Speaker 4: I want you to follow me.
Speaker 2: I want you to follow me. And I'm figuring, oh,
Speaker 2: this is be weird. It's not my car, I mean.
Speaker 4: And I'm driving along and there's a car in front,
Speaker 4: and they would tap on his bright lights and I'd
Speaker 4: see a few flashes and I hear his voice of Peter,
Speaker 4: I want you to follow me. And so I follow
Speaker 4: this car. It goes left, right, left, and then it
Speaker 4: pulls up at a park and the car just drove off,
Speaker 4: and I'm sitting there in the car looking around, and
Speaker 4: then I look over in the park over there, and
Speaker 4: there's a mom and a dad with their kids playing
Speaker 4: in the car and in the park having a picnic.
Speaker 2: And I heard it clear as day his voice again.
Speaker 2: It says, Peter, I'm offering you this. And I just
Speaker 2: sat in my car and I cried, I've never had
Speaker 2: a picnic. I'll never give my kids a pickny when
Speaker 2: I when I take my kids to the park, I
Speaker 2: got send him on the swings and I have a
Speaker 2: shot in the car. I'm throwing up. I mean, I
Speaker 2: want that.
Speaker 4: That's everything I want. I just thought I want to
Speaker 4: be normal and then setting me card of a big solk.
Speaker 2: Again for all. And then I drive off and I'm.
Speaker 4: Driving and it's like, mate, I want you to follow me.
Speaker 4: I want you to follow me. There's another car. It's happening.
Speaker 4: So I'm following. This car went left, when right and left,
Speaker 4: and then it pulls up in the next of brandy
Speaker 4: display home and it drives off and I'm looking at
Speaker 4: this home and then I heard his voice, Peter, I'm
Speaker 4: offing you this, well, Brandy Holme is a place to
Speaker 4: call home.
Speaker 2: All ever I wanted was a place to call home.
Speaker 4: And and I remember sitting there bollowing my eyes out
Speaker 4: looking at this house. I'm telling you something we is
Speaker 4: going down and for two three days, yeah, for two
Speaker 4: three days, all this weird. So and tell him my
Speaker 4: missus is something we's gone down, and she goes, Oh.
Speaker 4: I thought it was a gear because I've been I've
Speaker 4: been spent two days up in roof cavities of houses,
Speaker 4: seeking little people down.
Speaker 3: There, sitecases, drugging.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I've been over the park and one o'clock
Speaker 2: in the morning with a chainsaw. If you ain't come down,
Speaker 2: I'm chopping it down. It's like plague people that followed me.
Speaker 3: I was like some of the great moments in life.
Speaker 4: Oh mate, I've been in nutwaters, back the fround a
Speaker 4: gun on, poot down the leg.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's like little people. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 4: And I'm a missus thinking and we're going through this
Speaker 4: bloopy stuff. And I thought, right, well stuff, I'm I reckon,
Speaker 4: I reckon you mob the coppies, you're playing with me
Speaker 4: freaking ahead. I mean, because the coppers I found the
Speaker 4: listening devices. Jordan my bloom and in my brickwork and
Speaker 4: all this other stuff he's done to me. And I'm figuring,
Speaker 4: right old stuff, you mob up. So I left the
Speaker 4: car and I got a new bike, and I was
Speaker 4: on this vee and fifteen hundred cruiser, a brand new bike,
Speaker 4: full taker juice, and I got the missions out out
Speaker 4: the door and sheaves to the door and pootr out
Speaker 4: this thing and I cut through two hundred meters of
Speaker 4: dirt on this faft fifteen hundred, and I lost to
Speaker 4: whoever it was. It might have been followed me, or
Speaker 4: I thought I did. And then I'm on this vee
Speaker 4: and fifteen hundred, and I'm out near a place called
Speaker 4: near Abut in Perth, which is like and I'm on
Speaker 4: this bike and I'm hearing his voice. I want you
Speaker 4: to allow me what you follow me? And I think,
Speaker 4: oh my god. So I pulled out the side of
Speaker 4: the raid and rip the helmet apart. How do you
Speaker 4: buggers get a speaker in there?
Speaker 2: Does that? Then I couldn't find nothing, so I sucked
Speaker 2: the fel crow back in there.
Speaker 4: And then I'm booting past a nearby roadhouse and I'm
Speaker 4: sitting on about one hundred and ten or whatever, and it
Speaker 4: was a standard bike, standard pipe standing everything. But then
Speaker 4: this thing stay out of the hand of bar Stard
Speaker 4: going tune and go ah, and the bike and the
Speaker 4: shut and your balls bouncing on the tank and it
Speaker 4: was like the most surreal, perfect insynct experience ever get
Speaker 4: on a bike and I mean we go yeah, And
Speaker 4: then I went and died on the side of the road,
Speaker 4: and I was thinking, wait, what have you done to it?
Speaker 4: And then I pulled the seed off and pulled the
Speaker 4: plastic tanks off.
Speaker 2: I'm looking for that motor that you fellas are put
Speaker 2: in there.
Speaker 1: It's normally it's normally when we've connected the electrical wrong
Speaker 1: that your car breaks down or the bike breaks down.
Speaker 4: But anyway, yeah, but I'm so looking for whatever he
Speaker 4: was put in there. The bloody play with my head
Speaker 4: and and I couldn't find anything. And I was even
Speaker 4: thinking that you're bob right, it had be on surveillance
Speaker 4: and that you were filming me. At one stage, I reckon,
Speaker 4: this is a psychosis, let's loop out a loopa, And
Speaker 4: so you were filming me as I'm going through all
Speaker 4: this stuff with the house, the kids in the park,
Speaker 4: and you're going to use this as an educational video to
Speaker 4: show people this happens when you use jokes.
Speaker 1: What you're talking and I've heard it. I've heard heard
Speaker 1: it at the time when people are saying that to me,
Speaker 1: I've heard it, like you reflecting on it, going shit, Well,
Speaker 1: this was what was going through my mind.
Speaker 3: So all up on that, I.
Speaker 4: Just want to tell you this bit right, I'm on
Speaker 4: I'm on this bike. I get on the side of
Speaker 4: the road and he asked me where it is that
Speaker 4: I changed my life. It started with my son at
Speaker 4: the socer.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Then I'm on the three days of someone off from
Speaker 4: me everything I wanted. Then I'm on this bloom and
Speaker 4: bike and I'll get on the other side of the
Speaker 4: road because they had to hitch back to the roadhouse.
Speaker 2: And I've put my fun out.
Speaker 4: And there was this young couple that stopped and I
Speaker 4: got in the backseat of the car and we started
Speaker 4: driving on. They had this music plan, and out of
Speaker 4: the blue, this young fellow turns around him. He says, mate,
Speaker 4: I feel like God's telling me to tell you that
Speaker 4: he loves you and he has a plan and a
Speaker 4: purpose for your life. Out of the blue, left field
Speaker 4: and I started crying my eyes out. He said, pro
Speaker 4: let me at your car. I got out in the
Speaker 4: middle of nowhere, chuck me jacket and we let the
Speaker 4: jack on the side of the blub went in a.
Speaker 2: Bush had of silk, and I come back out.
Speaker 4: I stuck me if I'm out again, and I started
Speaker 4: hitching and then this black f two fifty pickup truck
Speaker 4: pulls up.
Speaker 2: It was a matte black flat trail of black, looked
Speaker 2: like a Kiwi.
Speaker 4: Dude had tattoos on the half side of his face,
Speaker 4: black paints ole hair and he says, pro is that
Speaker 4: you'll buy back there?
Speaker 2: I says, yeah, because I will go back and pick
Speaker 2: it up. Hey, And I said, nah, bro, somewhere is
Speaker 2: going to come down. I just got to get home.
Speaker 4: So I got in this dude's car and we started
Speaker 4: driving towards the roadhouse and he turns around him he says,
Speaker 4: made it for I got to tell you something.
Speaker 2: I said, yeah, what's that?
Speaker 4: He says, God's telling me to tell you that he
Speaker 4: loves you and he has a plan and a purpose
Speaker 4: for your life. And that's the second person's pace of
Speaker 4: five k. I bought be eyes that he drove me
Speaker 4: to the Petro station. I remember walking in to the
Speaker 4: Petro station. I pulled all my gold jewlry, of all
Speaker 4: my chains, off, all my watch, and I threw everything
Speaker 4: to being. Somebody somewhere was offering me a life that
Speaker 4: I only ever dreamed of.
Speaker 2: I just want to be.
Speaker 4: A good person, a normal person, and I wanted what
Speaker 4: they're offering. And then I rang and misses up and said,
Speaker 4: you've got to come pick me up. Bike's breaking down.
Speaker 4: Something he is going down. She goes, I got to
Speaker 4: pick the kids up from schools. So I walked out
Speaker 4: in the highway, stuck me from out, and then this
Speaker 4: old granny pulls up and she's in a Dat's in
Speaker 4: two hundred bide Dado platinum white hair, and when she
Speaker 4: spoke of false teeth and flapping them out, and she goes,
Speaker 4: I don't normally pick a hiker's up, son, but you
Speaker 4: look different. And so I got on this granny's car
Speaker 4: and we started driving and I got three k out
Speaker 4: the raid and she turns around me and she said, honey,
Speaker 4: I feel that God is telling me to tell you
Speaker 4: that he loves you and has a plan and purpose
Speaker 4: for your life, that your life's not a mistake and
Speaker 4: I just cried all the way.
Speaker 2: She drove me all the way to Bayswater. And that's
Speaker 2: how my life.
Speaker 4: I've had three strangers in the space of not even
Speaker 4: fifteen k's and then I had a big, full on
Speaker 4: account after that.
Speaker 1: Peter, that's heavy and fascinating. And you said, is it
Speaker 1: all right to talk religion. I don't consider myself a
Speaker 1: religious religious person, but I'm a spiritual person. I think
Speaker 1: in some way, I just look at look at that,
Speaker 1: the story you've told this there, and of course you
Speaker 1: right to talk about it. It's your story, that's what
Speaker 1: changes whatever was working there. And they say, you know,
Speaker 1: God acts in mysterious ways.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I can't.
Speaker 1: I can't rebut what you're saying, and you know, if
Speaker 1: that's worked for you, and it's when you break it down,
Speaker 1: it's three people showing you some kindness and consideration and
Speaker 1: it's sort of going, look, people do care about me.
Speaker 1: So it's factored in the where your life was at
Speaker 1: at that moment. So yeah, it's fascinating.
Speaker 4: I don't believe you're a fart. And I reckon when
Speaker 4: you die, and I reckon, you're going either up or down.
Speaker 4: It's either good or bad, and that's what we do.
Speaker 4: And it's just like there's just one wants you to
Speaker 4: do drugs and one doesn't want you. One they're just
Speaker 4: so good and a bad mate. And I mean, if
Speaker 4: the Church of God was like hungry Jack, should be chockers.
Speaker 4: But how do you know which one's which?
Speaker 1: Well, that's true, that's true. All right, Well look we're
Speaker 1: going to take a break here. When we come back,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about your life from that that
Speaker 1: point in time and the work that you do and
Speaker 1: showing house how you set it up, what it's about.
Speaker 1: That must have been your dream at the time. This
Speaker 1: is what I want to do and what you're doing.
Speaker 1: So I'm looking forward to our chat on the second part.
Speaker 3: Thanks mate, Cheers,