June 22, 2025 • 33 mins
Glen Fisher is a survivor, advocate, and founder of The Legup Project. Glenn endured horrific abuse as a child in institutional care, battled years of addiction and homelessness, and has since transformed his pain into a mission to help others. Through courage, honesty, and tireless work on the streets of Sydney, he’s become a voice for the voiceless and a powerful force for change.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Approche production.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
This podcast contains discussions of abuse, trauma, mental health, and
family conflict. Listener discretion is advised. Welcome to Secrets of
the Underworld. I am Neil the Muscle comments and in
this episode, I speak to Glenn Fisher, an abuse survivor,
advocate and founder of the leg Up Project.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
By the age of seven, my dad goes to jail,
my mom gets put into a psych wood and we
get dumped in an orphanage. The house he puts me
into is a three bedroom house. It's got nine adults
in it, with three adult men. Two have got prior
convictions for pedophilia. It's funny. I could have my fingers
severed one day and the next day I'm out playing
with me mates and no one talks about It's just
the next day, you know. But what I do is
(00:51):
I go up to my abusers and I say, hey,
this is one day I tell the fucking world which
you did. But every person's going to know what you did.
We've got to protect our cues. Nay, you know, they're
not a commodity for people twitters and make money up.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
We'll get into the ass.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
He Grizzy, going talk me through your childhood and how
you got to being where you are, and also about
your time in King's Cross.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
So I grew up to a dad that was a pedophile.
My mother was heroinautic, alcoholic with schizophrenia. So as you
can imagine, there was a lot of violence in my
family home. A lot of essay abuse was going on,
as with an uncle that had me in and out
of institutions at a very young age. You know, by
the age of seven, my dad goes to jail, my
mom gets put into a cyclood and we get dumped
in an orphanage. That kind of stuffs then. So I
(01:36):
was seven when I got put into the orphanage. Wow, yeah,
he's seven years old. And it was kind of tough
for the first two years in an orphanage because I
not that it was hard in the orphanage. It was
just hard because you felt you were left behind. Now
you kind of feel dumped. But I get out of
there at nine, sweet life really starts to turn hard
for me. My mum attacks me once, saves my fingers,
tries to cut off my fingers with a carving knife,
and then I get attacked again by my uncle Alan,
(01:58):
and then I get Scotch taped by Uncle Pat.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
So hold on, so let's let's let's just go. Why
was your mom doing this? You?
Speaker 1 (02:05):
My mom had kid tephrenia and she was addicted to
drugs and her temperament used to change quite often. But
on this particular day, she woke up. Back in the day,
we used to have remember this to WHIPI trucks, So
WHIPI trucks to come around me eased to deliver a cigarettes, Beck's, Powder's, Vincent's,
that kind of stuff. Mum gets up in the morning,
she's scurring around for change, trying to find some money
to buy becks and Vincent's, can't find any turns it
(02:26):
on me. So I used to tie my money off me,
didn't you a little prick? And I'm like, I didn't
fucking take shit, mate, Like you know, I didn't, you know?
And she just kept going on and on and on.
She picks up a knife and just froys that and
she says, oh, catch your fucking fingers off, your little prick,
And I'm like, I just don't say nothing because I'm
always scared that she's going to lose it. But this
is the worst she ever loses. That sudden, she drabs
me by my hand and she drags me across the
carpet into the bathroom. Another woman turns up named Michelle,
(02:48):
who helps her do it, drags it to the company
and I don't know if she meant to severyone on ip,
but she hands my fingers over the sting like that,
and she says.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
You took my change, didn't you? A little prick?
Speaker 1 (02:56):
You took it, didn't you, And then bang just slashes
both my fingers.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
You know.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
The part that makes the most angry about that brain
is the fact that when I get taken to hospital,
I'm sitting in the hospital. On this side, I'm getting
stitched up. On this side they're putting eye do it
and all over my body because I've got carpet burnord
and one side of my body. The doctor turns round
to my mother and he says, what happened to this
little fella? She goes, what are you fucking saying? And
she just lost the plot. Both cowered like freaking girls.
Didn't say a fucking word, you know, Like I mean,
(03:21):
You've got to understand, this is the seventies. It's a
different era that happens today. Mates front page knews she's
a gal. You know, it's a different different keederal.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
Well, was there no one you could have called out
to or reached out to back then?
Speaker 1 (03:31):
No, it's just a different time, you know, Like I
didn't really I had my dad, and my dad was
worse than my mum.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
You know.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
My dad's in jail for being a predator and my
mom's got schizophrenia. But it's about ten years old where
things start to really take shape. My dad gets out
of jail, takes custody of me. But I don't want
to be there, you know, so I start running away
from home. You know, I just keep bolting Bolton Bolton.
But in the seventies that's an offense. It's called uncontrollable,
you know. So they start put me in place like
(03:57):
war on my yas Ma. I'll Bene Street and eventually
in an institution called Derek Darry Boyce Home in Windsor,
which is it's a rough introduction, you know, it's a
rough place to go into. You know, you've got to
march everywhere like you're in the army. A lot of
abuse going on with offices and kids, older kids. I'm
not supposed to be in that institution. Because I'm arrested
with my brother, they separate siblings, and because I'm the older sibling,
(04:18):
I get bumped up to the older institution. So I'm
in with kids. I've got facial growth and beards and
like big boys, and I'm just like this tiny little fella.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
You know.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
The whole time, every time I'm in a shower, people
are touching me. It's like always this sexual induendo the
whole time I'm there. Wow, yeah, it's just full on.
But the mast the same part of my story, bro,
is when I get out of Dererek, I run away again,
and this time I try and do what you say,
and I try and look for help. I go to
actually docks in Mount Drewitt and I speak to the
officer that I'm Brian Hubble and I say, look, I'm
(04:46):
sick of being hit, hurt, abused, you know, for facts.
Take help me, man, And he says, yeah, okay, I
can see if I can find your posta care and
he does. He finds me this Fostic family living in
Mount Drewert. The house he puts me into is a
three bedroom house. It's got nine adults in it. They
put me into a back bedroom with three adult men.
Two have got prime convictions for pedophilia. One yeah, like
(05:08):
two prior convictions. One abuses a two year old boy.
The other one abused a girl who was in their custody.
It doesn't take much to work out what happens, you know.
I just can't take it anymore. Made after being abused
everywhere I go, I'm abused here and understood.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Fuck is when you got into that house? When was
it that you knew who they were?
Speaker 3 (05:24):
Like that? Did you know that when you were going in?
Speaker 1 (05:26):
I had no idea? And that's the thing. Docs didn't either,
like they had some kind of responsibility to know the
people being in that home or do some kind of
brackgown trick. But they don't, you know, And I get it.
It's hard to place kids. And I'm at that age now,
thirteen year old. I'm hard to place. But yeah, I didn't.
They didn't. And I wake up in the middle of
the night and I'm being touch and I'm like, fuck,
I'm jack of this man. I like this time I
(05:48):
go off. You know, I'm getting older, I've gone more vocal,
and I end up going back to my mother. But
my mother's now moved to South Australia with another boyfriend
who's also a drunk, who just like four day trip
to South Australia, just drinking at every pub, fight and
just jackie it. I tried to take on my mother's
boyfriend because he tries to hit her and then she
rings the police on me for trying to fight him. Yeah,
(06:09):
So she puts me on a bus to Oxford Street
to meet my real dad. When I get there with
my brother, I'm walking behind my dad. My dad turned
around says, where the fuck you think you're going? She's
not coming with me, mate, fuck off? JIGETI Foster family,
thirteen years old, nowhere to go. I end up on
the street to King's Cross.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
Was there any good times with your parents? Like? Can
you think of anything? Or was it just hell for you?
Speaker 1 (06:30):
You know?
Speaker 3 (06:31):
I was thinking about that the other day.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
I get upset when not trying to think about that,
to be honest, But there was one memory I have
with my dad. We're at a rodeo once when we
were a kids, and took me to a rodeo and
these two kids were fighting, punching on and they were
surrounded by all these men, you know, and it was
the bravest thing I've seen my dad ever do. He
walked in the middle and he pulled these kids apart,
and he says to the men, he said, if you
want to fucking fight, fight each o. I said, leave
the fucking kids out of it. And I remember the fear, like,
(06:54):
even though all that stuff my dad done to me,
I was still afraid that someone was going to hurt
my dad, you know. I remember that when he went
in the bullwag and two was a kid and he
drove off. The pain I felt of losing my dad
despite the crimes that he did, you know. But yeah,
there's not a lot of good memories, mate, No, I
can't really think of any. It was just drinking, drug use, violence, screaming, yelling,
and like twenty two times I was removed by docks
(07:15):
before the age of seven. That gives you an indication
of how bad it was, you know.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
What a our grandparents and old things like that, they
didn't evernks.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
Mother's mum was an absolute drunk. My dad's dad died
when he was very young, and his mother was just
an old really nasty.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
I'm being the seventies like it's hard for neighbors or
anything like that's even come and help you for anything
that you needed.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
And you know what, living in Mountain drew that a
lot of the people that I O befriended had a
very similar upbringing. Their parents were violent, drunks, you know,
were kind of accumulated together. That makes sense. I've sort
of found those people. I was always sort of at
the bottom of the chain. I was a small, runty
kind of kid, you know, and so it was normal
to me, you know, like it's funny. I could have
my fingers set it one day and the next day
I'm out playing with me mates and no one talks
(07:57):
about It's just like it's the next day, you know.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
So you just had a brother, that's it.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Just how I had two brothers and a sister, but
only one brother I was close to. I left the
age at my home when I was ten, and so
they were like six and five, so I never really
got to know they get abused as well. I can't
tell other people's abuse, you can understand, Yeah, yeah, I
can't share that story. All I can say is that
I was and you know, it happened everywhere I went.
(08:24):
As a kid, I had the misfortunate made of looking
like a pretty girl. When I was a kid, I
had long blonde hair. I was very effeminate looking, and
that made me a target, you know, to mean, everywhere
I went. It's like I had it fucking written on
my forehead. I remember walking in the day of kings
Cross and I wrote this in my book, and the
first thing I said was, this is it. No one's
going to tell me what to do, no more, no
one's going to abuse me. I'm done. And I wish
(08:46):
that was my story, but it's not.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
You know, do you.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Think your parents ever wanted kids for the way they've
treated you?
Speaker 3 (08:53):
No.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
I think that my mother, she had four kids at
a very young age. She's living with a violent, abusive,
narcissist you know, who's also a pedophile. Must have been
hard for my mum. She grew up in violent alcoholism,
So you know, I believe she wanted me. Like so
one thing you're talking about good times, I don't remember them,
but I have a baby book for the first two
years that's been filled out, so there's some kind of
(09:13):
love there. You know, she must have cared about me
somewhere along the line. But then a second kid to
third kid, a four kid alcohol, you know, Heroine, we
probably became a burden to her.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
Was the only abusive to his own kids or abusive
to other kids.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
My dad was charged with offense to another kid as well.
So he's been charged twice with predatory charges before you
were born a while year after. Yeah, so I don't
know that he should be back from that. The police
were very they didn't want to give me a lot,
but it was funnily a screw was the person that
gave me the information in jail. He came and visited
him when I was in jail and went to take
me out on leave and they said, mate, he can't
(09:47):
take out, And they called me into the office and
he sat me down, mister Clark, and I remember him
telling to me and it was like I knew, but
I didn't know the conviction was what it was. And
he said, mate, your dad's been charged twice for this offense,
you know. And it was kind of a sobering moment,
but I kind of knew, I just didn't know for sure.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
It was always suspicion, you know, as song was the
last time you've seen you do so.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
Funnily enough, I hadn't seen my dad since ninety two
when I got out of jail. But about just before Christmas,
just you're gone. I got a call from my sister
and she said, your dad is dying. He's got Leuis
Dementiy's been put in the hospital. So I how did
you feel about that?
Speaker 3 (10:23):
Though?
Speaker 1 (10:24):
So when I went there, I had all this stuff
I was going to say, Neil, I was going to
do you said that some packing this and packing that,
you know, and I wanted to get answers, you know.
And I walked in the door and I've seen this
frail old man, eighty year old. He was little, like
you know. My memory of this is Monstar. It's just
this tiny, little skinny man going around the bed and
he looks at me and he goes, oh wow, you're tall.
(10:44):
And I was like, I was like forgiveness. I just
felt this forgiveness in my heart. You know what, this
man's going to die. He doesn't remember what's happened.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Like I don't know for sure what like what your
dad was going for or and stely like that. You see,
I haven't spoke to my mom for over seventeen years.
She disowned me because of what I did for a
liven and she said to like. The last words were
she said to me was You're dead to this family. Okay,
so I don't exist in my mother's eyes anymore. But
the thing is I've always kept I'm very stubborn, and
(11:15):
if anything like that were to happen, I'm so stubborn
I couldn't care because if you can say that to
your son, you don't exist to me. And that's why
I was saying to you, like, did you go there
with hatred?
Speaker 3 (11:25):
Did you go there? Yeah? And you said you said forgiveness.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
You know what I mean that be I found forgiveness
when I got there, when I sat down on the
bed next to him, and I just thought, you know what,
what's the point. There's nothing he could say that's going
to undo anything could happen. There's nothing that can change,
you know. It is what it is. I'm about to
lose him. What I didn't know, Neil, is that my
brother was also in hospital on the other side, only
about a clometer prom him with a brain tumor. Wow,
(11:48):
he also died. They died within days of each other,
and no one told me that. I actually got told
about three months after his funeral by his wife. You said,
why weren't you ready his funeral? I said, who's funeral?
If you said your brother Jason, I fucking lost my shit.
You know, Jason was the only one I was really
close to, you know, and we had a four and
out in eighty eight in the cross. He slept with
(12:09):
the girl I was with. We just had a baby,
me and this girl together. I never did like you stubborn,
that's it. You're bucking need to me, and I wish
I could go back on that, you know, like I
ended up making after that, marrying the most beautiful woman,
having five amazing kids. You know, like you did me
a favor. But that's not how I saw it in
my head. I saw you betray me. B Yeah, you know,
especially a brother, our brother, that's right. Yeah, you know
(12:31):
there's a million people as well. Just don't go in
my one, and I won't over of yours.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
Did you go see your dad's funeral? No, you didn't know.
I couldn't do that. No, you're just more forget. Forget.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
I forgive the forgiveness of them, Like at the hospital
and that you thought that's it.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
It's a closure now, Yeah, its closure.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
I remember sitting on the bed next to him, and
I just briefed out and I just thought, nothing, there's
no point saying all what I want to say. It's futile.
And I just let it go. And I was kind
to him, you know. I sat there and we gave
him lollies and with my sister and you know, and
I said, does he need anything? And she said no,
I've got it covered. And I said, all right, I'm
out of here, and then I left and that chapter closed.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
You know what about your mother?
Speaker 1 (13:07):
So my mother died in two thousand and fourteen. I
think I've been per sema. She was in hospital for
a year. I only found out after she died.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
As well, you.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Think you could forgive it if you had to go
to the hospital and you knew about that.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
That would have been a harder one. I think I could.
I have now. I'm at a point now where I've forgiven.
But but that's not about them, that's about menial. That's
about me saying, you know what, you're no longer hold
space in my fucking head. I'm a father now, and
I need to worry about being a dad and a
granddad as opposed to karying all that anger, because that
anger is toxic bro. Yeah, you know, that's the stuff
that gets us in trouble. You hold your kids so
(13:40):
thirty six, thirty one, Jesus twenty six, twenty five, and twenty.
Speaker 3 (13:47):
Do they know about your past with your mother and father?
They do?
Speaker 1 (13:49):
How do they feel about that? We don't talk a
lot about it.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
A lot.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
I keep my kids a lot out of what you've
probably noticed on my social media stuff to protect them
because of the nature of what I speak about. But yeah,
at different point, I've had conversations with different ones, you know,
and they know, you know, I live. One of my
sons lives with me, Josh who plays football, beautiful boy,
and they know, they just, you know, it just sort
of un said stuff, you know.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
They just they've met your brothers and sisters who were left.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
They no, never I will never ever, would have never
allowed them to go near my children. That was something
I said in my head. My dad would never meet
my children, my brother. So, one of my sons met
my dad and he walks up to him and he
says to me, I really could have done better with
you with your dad and my son six foot five
grades you fucking think think, mate. You know, you're like
(14:37):
Is that the best you've gotten? And I was like, yeah, all.
Speaker 3 (14:39):
Right, you know, so tell me about when you went
to King's Cross. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
I arrived in Kings Cross in nine and eighty two.
I took the streets really quickly. It's one of the
things that happened for me was I wasn't tough, I
wasn't anything else, so just me, you know, and I
turned up and I just met all these other street kids.
Started living in squatch, you know. I remember the first year,
we're playing bluddy chasing's on the street like bloody children,
do you know, running up and down, ignorant to what's
going on. Really, you see it the bikers and the
(15:05):
in a year, you know, the Cross. But to me
it was just like colorful, you know. I used to
call it the weed and the wonderful. But it wasn't
until I got a girlfriend. My first girlfriend and ain't
was Linda. I try not to get upset when I
talk about her. And you'll see way in a minute.
But we end up moving into a refuge. The refuge
was actually opened, so you'll be surprised us on this board.
It was founded by a children's magistrate and old Blackmore.
(15:26):
It had seven other judges on board. It had five
men working there, all of who are pedophiles whom I've
now put in jail. And also it had Bob Hawk,
the Prime Minister was also on this board, not involved
in any the abuse, but involved in this refuge. He's
complicit in the fact that he knew and did nothing.
But what ends up happening is we all movie in
a whole pot.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
Where's a refuge? So where's the refuge? Liverpool Street? Fortune?
Speaker 1 (15:49):
I Liverpool Street? So you know where's Austin's Hospital is?
Come back on the street to Liverpool Street. It's almost
the line on that corner. It's actually called West Street
that runs through. Yeah yet West Street. Yeah, so on
that corner bush Shop, and we moved in and lived
there and then all this abuse starts to transpire. And
you read my book, or if you've heard my story,
you know what actually happens is I walk into the
(16:10):
office one day and the guy Simon Davis, who runs
a place, he's drinking alcohol and he's playing the guitar
and he's singing all these songs and he says, Oh,
come in, have a drink. So I sit down. You know,
I'm fourteen now start drinking scotch with him. Another guy
comes in named Paul Jones, who've also had convicted, hands
me these tablets called reds. Back then, they're called reds, right,
So I take a couple of them the next thing,
(16:31):
and I wake up in the morning. I'm semi acred,
and I'm starting to get all these snippets of what's happened,
you know, and I'm like, fuck, I lose my shit.
But what ends up happening is in nineteen eighty three,
in August, who gets closed down the refuge? Right, all
those kids are pretty much all the boards are being abused.
My girlfriend and I move out, and then someone I
go to Adelaide. I'm a breakdancer, so I used to
be a breakdance on the streets to the cross. That's
(16:52):
what it's to how I made my money, right, And
I go to Adelaide to do a breakdancing competition, and
while I'm in there, we win. I come first place, right,
I win this competition. I'm so ecstatic. I'm walking down
the stairs like so puffed.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
You know.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
I've got two hundred dollars and I've got all this
stuff going on at the bottom of the stairs. Is
one of my mates, Johnny Chapman from the Refuge, and
he looks sombra, you know, he looks sad. And I said, hey,
you doing mate, you know, give him a big hugan
he just doesn't kind of move, and he goes, bro,
I've got something to tell you. I said, what's happened mate?
He goes, your girlfriend's been murdered Mae. And she's sixteen,
(17:23):
you know, like just turned sixteen. And what happened was
two guys gave a heroine, both of them rape her
and just leave her, leave her there, you know. And
they get convicted, right, They get caught, convicted, get twenty
years and then they appeal and they gave before a
judge named Judge Yeldham. I don't know if you go
haded Yeldham, but Yeldham was a predator. Judge used to
(17:43):
abuse kids in the train stations. He was actually called
before the Woodraw Commission and then it took his life
just before the thing happened. He was unknown predator in
the streets. But what I do is I go up
to my abuses and I say, hey, I said, one
day I tell the fucking world which you did. I said,
one day, I'm going to fucking write a book. And
I said, every fucking person's going to know what you did,
and I wast going to hold you accountable. And he
(18:03):
laughed in my face, right the two than me laughing
at me. He said, you're an MPJ. You'll be dead
by the age of twenty one. And he said, you
can't even read and write. You're a literate. Are you
going to write a fucking book? I stowed that away.
Problem is then made as I pick up Heroin, I
become a heroin addict and all the things at Heroin.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
What did you think you picked up on the Heroin for?
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Was that to clear your mind and to let yourself
go a bit because of the stress and not all
the trauma that you've gone through.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
I think so. I think that when I first started,
I started using speed, so I got used to using
the needle. I was stealing for bikers in the cross
for about a year, but it scattered me, mate. I
was a fucking scatter, you know. And then all of
a sudden, the first time I used gear. It's almost
like I wrote in my book, like the answer to glean,
it was like there's peace and this cuve over my
body because I was getting flashbacks and all this stuff
going on in my head. As soon as I took it,
(18:48):
it was like it all stopped. It was like it
all stopped. But it's an illusion. It's one off. You
spend the next thirty years trying to chase that feeling.
You never get it. Spend more time in withdrawals and
chasing the dragon than you do on it.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
You know.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
But I'm a big believer that a lot of addiction
and alcoholism is untreated trauma. It's usually an undercurrent of
something untreated, either the mental health trauma, you know, DV,
whatever it is. And that's definitely my story. But problem,
my whole life changed the mate I start doing arm robberies,
I start robbing dealers. I start like I just became
a menace. And I got to a point where I
(19:21):
didn't give a shit. Like my mates were dying around me.
I'm literally watching friend after friend after friend, and I
know it's my turn coming. I'm dropping, like I kept
dropping all the time. I started taking pills, and I'm
becoming more brazen, you know. I used to go out
and do robberies and go to my dealer, and then
I got sick of the fucker's mate.
Speaker 3 (19:36):
They're always fucking me around.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
Yeah, a ten minutes fucking an hour later, like fuck
these guns, you give it to me, And I'm surprised
I didn't get in trouble, especially in ninety four.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
I robbed he.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
I won't say who, but a dealer who worked for
someone who was pretty I'll tell you later on. And
I got him around the corner, right. The funniest thing
is that we come around the corner of the back
of the pussy Cat, you know, the arm colored street.
We go behind the steps up there, and as we
walk up there, he walks in and I go bang,
and I you by the right, and he's got all
these balloons in his mouth. It's a bit about and
I'm with another guy who's supposed to be keeping cocky
(20:09):
for me, helping me and my girl. Anyway, the guy
says green stretch, stretch, and you say my name, Abra
and aver right, do you know where we are? And
then runs off. This leaves me pasted right, and then
my girl says, Glenne's armed. He pulls out this fucking
big machedie out of the back of me. Man I
managed to grab his arm throwing up the thin. But
for the next couple of months, every time I went
to the cross the score, I'm playing chasings like you'd
(20:30):
see me in over the place.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
It was fucking crazy.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
I'm lucky I didn't die, you know, if not from
an over days from someone you know, say look enough,
you know I deserved it, to be fair. I was
that bad at that point in time, and I just
didn't care. I had so much pain, so much anger,
you know, and it's like everyone else's fault.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
You know, you're no going back to when your girlfriend died.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Were you able to see it like Burrier or anything
like that, or you couldn't you didn't.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
Have access to do it.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
So what happened was I hit choked back from Adelaide
to go to her funeral. I got arrested in Golden
I was carrying nunchuckers, and back then nunchuckers is a
section thirty, which is the same as carrying a firon,
And so I was arrested for section thirteen and I
was kept in the cells for two weeks, and I
missed her funeral, Jane Neil. I never went to see
her grave until about three years ago. I just couldn't
do it. Really, I just couldn't go there. I just
(21:18):
got like it made it real, you know, like going
and seeing it would have made it too real for me,
and I just couldn't get out there. But I went
there three years ago out of that film. It was painful,
but it was needed. Yeah, because I've carried her. She's
the reason I wrote this story. You know, I wanted
people to know that this isn't the meat story. This
is a wee story. There were a lot of little
kids running around the streets of the Cross in the
(21:39):
eighties being abused heroin addicts. Many of them died, and
I wanted to make sure that her Bam band Italian,
all them kind of girls that I knew growing up
were remembered, you know.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
Gone back to when you were in Kings Trosty, you
were living there and you know all these guys were
you know, especially that time when you had your first
drink and they gave you them red pills. What was
gone through your thoughts and did you want to retaliate
quick or did you just let it go by your
time to get them back for this or did you
run away?
Speaker 3 (22:07):
But like you know, because it's all happening again.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
For you seem to go to places and you're just
getting abused and abused and abused.
Speaker 3 (22:12):
I would have lost my shit. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
The problem was, I'll be honest with you, I'd been
groomed my whole life. So it got to a point
where I've been taught my body was a commodity. That's
just the truth of it. And I hate that's my truth,
but that's the truth.
Speaker 3 (22:23):
You know, You're right.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
I had revenge on my mind. The problem was that
the police back then, we was so fucking corrupt that
if you entered the police and spoke about this kind
of stuff to them, they were more likely to go
to the abuser, extort money off them, and then come
back and lock you up. And I've seen, I've literally
seen that happen. I did drive around once with freemates
looking for somebody armed, and I was set and I
(22:46):
was ready to go to jail for life. Luckily for me,
I never found him. You know, that was in Avalon.
I drove around Avalon for hours with these three mates,
you know, like I did a snatch and grab off
a guy someone. I was the driver, but I wasn't
even supposed to be doing it. I stole look harf
for someone else to do a crime, and I'm the
driver and I'm him to get my money. You know,
you're going to do this cry where this guy is
(23:07):
coming from one place to another. They're going to grab
this money and then I'm going to get my kick
and they all go that way hours. They always got
an excuse, neil, Oh, there's time, there's someone there, there's something.
I grabbed this guy. Man, he wouldn't go of it.
I ended up breaking the strap, but as ida it.
He's like yelling at me. He's bigger than me too,
but I managed. I'm quicker than him, so I managed
to snap it. But getting the car drove off. I
(23:30):
actually got extra coin out of that too.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
How long were you? How long were you on the
giar for?
Speaker 2 (23:35):
Like?
Speaker 3 (23:36):
How long would the ta ket to get off it?
Thirty years? Wow? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (23:39):
So I started using in nineteen eighty five and I
got clean in twenty ten.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
Wow. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
So I went into rehab in two thousand and nine.
The reason I got clean was started to impact my family.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
You know.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
Now I'm a dad, I'm responsible. I don't want to
see history repeat. That's the one thing that I think
is important in my story is that I make you know,
this stuff goes from family to family to family trauma addiction,
you know, and I just don't want that to happen
in mine. Were you on it when you had your
first child? Were you still use on methadone? I wasn't using.
What actually happened was in nineteen ninety six I had
to give evidence to the wood Draw Commission against two
(24:13):
abuses who I had locked up in jail. And in
doing that, I had to go to Sydney every day.
And I started off by just going to court every
day and then I detour to the Cross and that's
when I picked up again in ninety six, you know.
Speaker 3 (24:25):
And was that intimidating for you to go to the
Royal Commission? Was that tim It was?
Speaker 1 (24:29):
And it was a letdown, bro because they sealed all
my files in both commissions. I went to the Royal
Commission institutional abuse as well, and the Royal Commission into
the wood Draw Commission. It was intimidating.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
Do you think they took you seriously at the start
when you went in?
Speaker 1 (24:43):
No, When I gave my statement, I could see them
with their armsolder by this like's a fucking good story,
brocause it's a lot. My story is a lot. But
when they came back, they were almost ecstatic. I said,
we've been around the country. We've spoken to every single kid.
They've parrot of what you've said. They wanted me to
wear a wire. How about that, mate? They said to me,
we need you to put on a wire to go
up to one of your abuses. So I'm not doing it, mate,
(25:03):
It says, there's not a chance in trying it. You know,
who's got to wear a wire?
Speaker 3 (25:06):
Mate?
Speaker 1 (25:06):
Even that's the way we're raised, right, And then he
comes back to me and he says something that actually
turned me. He said, you know, every abuser that abused
you will go on to abuse possibly another seventy two children,
he said, And if you don't speak up, are you
going to continue to keep abusing children? And I went
home and I talked over with someone about it, and
I was like, I need to speak up.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
So I did.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
I had to put on a wire and meet up
with this pedophile in Paramatta and I did date and
then they gave me a dodgy phone, and you know,
I had to record all the stuff. So I ended
up putting four of it in jail. I got one
Paul Chapman Jones, he got eighteen months. Then I've got
a guy named Ken Fogney, he got eighteen months. The
one with the wire was her named Grant Morris. He
got two years eight months. And then just recently I
(25:46):
had one extra dieter back from the Netherlands. His name
Simon Davies. He got ten years. He's the guy who
ran the refuge and abuse are still inside now Simon
Davies is and then he's going to be extra dided
back to the UK when he gets out. He's a
fucking grab bro. I mean eighteen months. You know how
it was to do years going through the walkarounds and
(26:07):
all the shit you got to do getting caught. And
here the judge a one of them was connected for
twenty children. He got eighteen months twenty times to run concurrent,
So make that make sense. I got two years eight
months for an arm robbery I didn't do, and then
I went to jail like it's funny because I did
all these crimes right that I actually did do. I
never got caught for one, and then I get set
(26:27):
up by a King's Cross police for an armed robbery
I didn't do because I started talking, you know, and
they charged with extortion, demand of money, with ministers, assault robbery.
All of them dismissed, and then armed robbery. Couldn't beat
that one, and they got me for the arm robbery.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
Wow. Has anyone like reached out to you from the
past from the.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
Yeah, so the guy I robbed, he reached out to
me and said, hey, young and bra and I thought,
I know, here we go and he gave his no. Bro,
I was fair in love them or he said, I've
changed my life around. And he said, I just love
what you're doing.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
Bro.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
He said, you should be so proud of who you are.
I said, dance man, I said, I really appreciate that,
and I actually rang it. We had a conversation, you know,
which is good because I was a piece of ship
doing that t him because he said to be he
got in trouble from his person, you know, like for
doing that ship and that was my intention. And yeah,
I've had a lot of people reach out to me, man,
like a lot younger people. A lot of people reach
out to me. I get hundreds of messages. You probably
(27:16):
do as well, you know, people sharing their journeys and
stories with me, and they're like, the most common question is, hey, bro,
do you remember.
Speaker 3 (27:23):
Do you remember such and such?
Speaker 1 (27:25):
And I'm like, sometimes I do, and I'm like, I'm
not going to say because they're ah, and I don't
want to tell you that.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
Have you ever have you been back and just on
the walk by yourself like I have. It's like what
you get in the army, you know what you have flashbacks? Yeah,
and that Sometimes I've just gone for a walk and
to the places that of things have happened to me
in the past.
Speaker 3 (27:42):
Have you have you ever done that? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (27:44):
I've done videos around the boys homes, Derek. I've done
a lot around the Cross. I do so the most
commonplace I get recognized is King's Cross. When I walk
up the cross now they call me, hey, can I
get yeah, man, it's I struggled with it at first.
I actually do tours of the Cross. I take people
around and show them that have read my book. They
want to come with me and it's it's fantastic, But
(28:05):
I struggled with it at first. Some of the places
they go to, like the refuge. I don't know if
your name, but Channel sevent did a documentary on me
called the Rise in Paula King's Cross. It hasn't come
out yet, but the day we went to the refuge,
it was literally being ripped down and Channel seven were shattered.
They're like, oh, man, I really wanted to get it.
And I said, but I've got hundred the fato of
the refuge. I said, this is actually a good thing.
I said, you're talking about the Rise in Paula King's Cross.
This is actually good what it's about. This is the
(28:28):
fall of one of the most horrible, heinous places in
King's christ. A lot of people used to blame the clubs, right,
That's not where it was at, man. It was basically
on the streets in the park, up the wall. That's
all the bad stuff. Were like, I mean, look before
John and all that stuff happened back then. Some of
the clubs had children, and I've got a lot of
friends who were young girls who were dying in these clubs.
You know, they were working and stripping at the age
(28:48):
of fourteen, fifteen and sixteen. One of the things I
respected about John was when he came forward, he actually
changed that. He said, I don't know a lot about
his story. I really don't, but I do know that,
but it no longer was allowing these young children to
be in these places of me abused, and that's something
I respect, you know, like we've got to protect our kids.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
Man.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
You know, they're not a fucking commodity for people to
ause and make money off.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
When was the turning point for you that you just
you know, you say like you said, you mad your future,
your future wife, and I like that and everything changed.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
But when did it change? When did you mentally change?
Speaker 1 (29:20):
And that this is yeah, that's not been as long
as you think. So about fifteen years ago, I went
into a deep depression after all the court cases, I
separated from my wife. I ended up moving into the
Blue Mountains and for ten years, Bro, I just sat
on a lounge. I literally just watched TV every day,
getting takeaway food. My kids would come and visit me
at my home. You know, there was no leaving. And
(29:41):
I ended up meeting another guy online and went to
Melbourne to an event that he had and we sat
down with a group of influence one night and he goes, bro,
you've got a hell of a story, he said. You
need to share your story, bro, he said, And I
started to realize that the more I shared my story,
the more it lost its.
Speaker 3 (29:54):
Power over me.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
Because what we can do is we can become so
consumed to the anger of what's happened that we become
a victim. And that's what I was. I was literally
a walking victim and wore it like a shield, like
a badge even, you know, And I started to realize, man,
the only person who can change me is me Jack.
Speaker 3 (30:09):
And that affected that your the way you and your
partner were together.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
Absolutely absolutely, you know, like I was always suspicious, you know,
like I mean, she shit, I was blessed eighteen years together,
the most beautiful woman. But when we went to rehab,
and we went to rehab together, it was like we
were two different people. Our whole relationship had been based
around addiction, you know, when we got clean, you know,
and we had we had responsibilities. Now we've got other
people who depend on us to be parents, you know.
And she's still my best mate to this day, thankfully.
(30:35):
But yeah, absolutely, you know, if I if I met
her the way I am now, it would be a
whole different thing. You know, I would see the value
in what I had. Back then, I was a victim.
Everything was unfair, you know, and I think once we start,
a lot of people walk around allowing their past to
destroy their future because they become they become their own
worst abuser. You know, they go through all this stuff
(30:56):
and it's like I used to say to people, if
you've been through what I've been through, YouTube up too,
and like that's not a reason, but that's an excuse.
Speaker 3 (31:01):
You know, ten years is a long time has been
locked up and like yourself, and.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
Then I was consumed and I may now it's changed.
I'm off all I'm clean, as you know, I'm clean.
I train every day. I run a business called the
leg Up Project, you know, going around.
Speaker 3 (31:15):
I'm an author.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
I've done multitude of podcasts and you know, I've been
all out Australia now doing different events. It's incredible what's happening.
But so many people reach out to me and they say,
please keep going brow you inspire me. You know if
I've had people message me and say I've got clean
because of you. One lady messaged me along I said,
I've got my child back because of you, Glenn. She said,
I posted a big thing about being a victim. I said,
get off the fucking land, stopped being a fucking victim.
(31:37):
And she said, I watched the video, she said, I
got angry at you. She said, who the fuck are you?
She said, I watched it again and again and again,
and she said, fuck. Can I realize you were right?
What you were saying was actually right? That you know,
she was a victim to her own self and she
lost a child and everything was unfair. And I said,
how about looking at you know what your part in
this is.
Speaker 3 (31:54):
What did you do? You know?
Speaker 1 (31:55):
And she said, yeah, I was fuck And she said
now she's got a child back, you know, And those
things warm my heart. Any regrets in life, oh lots.
But I regret not going and forgive you my brother.
I regret leaving my girlfriend alone in Hing's cross going
to Adelaide.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
Do you think that was? Do you think that was?
If you've never gone to Adelaide, things would have been different?
You think that?
Speaker 3 (32:18):
Probably not? No, Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
I mean, you know, she'd started using heroin and I hadn't,
you know, And that was part of the reason why
I we'd separate. It was I said, what the fuck
are you doing, you know, putting needles in your arm?
I don't want that shuit you know a breakdownser but
I think it's also the reason why I started using.
I wanted to understand it and it caught me, you know,
and caught me quick. I think those are the two
biggest regrets I think. Yeah, I regret parts with my
(32:42):
wife as well and my children. You know, I wish
that I had this knowledge at the start.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
We also we all say that, bro, I would said
that same all the time. I know now what I
did back then, I'll be a different person absolutely, you
know what I mean. You only know what you know
that when you do know do better. I live and
learn absolutely.
Speaker 3 (33:00):
So what would you in one word, how would you
describe yourself? Loyal?
Speaker 1 (33:04):
Wowkod Yeah, very loyal person view. If I'm a friend
with someone, I'll die for you. And that's that's fairing
from manding. I'm very very loyal, but I demand it too,
you know. That would be the word I.
Speaker 3 (33:15):
Want to say.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
Thank you for coming on, mate, like that is like
a full on like life and journey, you know what
I mean, And I praise you for coming through the
whole that you come through and now to what you
are today.
Speaker 3 (33:27):
It's it's very inspiring me. I appreciate it. And I
wish you all the best in the future. Thanks, thanks
a
Approche production.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
This podcast contains discussions of abuse, trauma, mental health, and
family conflict. Listener discretion is advised. Welcome to Secrets of
the Underworld. I am Neil the Muscle comments and in
this episode, I speak to Glenn Fisher, an abuse survivor,
advocate and founder of the leg Up Project.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
By the age of seven, my dad goes to jail,
my mom gets put into a psych wood and we
get dumped in an orphanage. The house he puts me
into is a three bedroom house. It's got nine adults
in it, with three adult men. Two have got prior
convictions for pedophilia. It's funny. I could have my fingers
severed one day and the next day I'm out playing
with me mates and no one talks about It's just
the next day, you know. But what I do is
(00:51):
I go up to my abusers and I say, hey,
this is one day I tell the fucking world which
you did. But every person's going to know what you did.
We've got to protect our cues. Nay, you know, they're
not a commodity for people twitters and make money up.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
We'll get into the ass.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
He Grizzy, going talk me through your childhood and how
you got to being where you are, and also about
your time in King's Cross.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
So I grew up to a dad that was a pedophile.
My mother was heroinautic, alcoholic with schizophrenia. So as you
can imagine, there was a lot of violence in my
family home. A lot of essay abuse was going on,
as with an uncle that had me in and out
of institutions at a very young age. You know, by
the age of seven, my dad goes to jail, my
mom gets put into a cyclood and we get dumped
in an orphanage. That kind of stuffs then. So I
(01:36):
was seven when I got put into the orphanage. Wow, yeah,
he's seven years old. And it was kind of tough
for the first two years in an orphanage because I
not that it was hard in the orphanage. It was
just hard because you felt you were left behind. Now
you kind of feel dumped. But I get out of
there at nine, sweet life really starts to turn hard
for me. My mum attacks me once, saves my fingers,
tries to cut off my fingers with a carving knife,
and then I get attacked again by my uncle Alan,
(01:58):
and then I get Scotch taped by Uncle Pat.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
So hold on, so let's let's let's just go. Why
was your mom doing this? You?
Speaker 1 (02:05):
My mom had kid tephrenia and she was addicted to
drugs and her temperament used to change quite often. But
on this particular day, she woke up. Back in the day,
we used to have remember this to WHIPI trucks, So
WHIPI trucks to come around me eased to deliver a cigarettes, Beck's, Powder's, Vincent's,
that kind of stuff. Mum gets up in the morning,
she's scurring around for change, trying to find some money
to buy becks and Vincent's, can't find any turns it
(02:26):
on me. So I used to tie my money off me,
didn't you a little prick? And I'm like, I didn't
fucking take shit, mate, Like you know, I didn't, you know?
And she just kept going on and on and on.
She picks up a knife and just froys that and
she says, oh, catch your fucking fingers off, your little prick,
And I'm like, I just don't say nothing because I'm
always scared that she's going to lose it. But this
is the worst she ever loses. That sudden, she drabs
me by my hand and she drags me across the
carpet into the bathroom. Another woman turns up named Michelle,
(02:48):
who helps her do it, drags it to the company
and I don't know if she meant to severyone on ip,
but she hands my fingers over the sting like that,
and she says.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
You took my change, didn't you? A little prick?
Speaker 1 (02:56):
You took it, didn't you, And then bang just slashes
both my fingers.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
You know.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
The part that makes the most angry about that brain
is the fact that when I get taken to hospital,
I'm sitting in the hospital. On this side, I'm getting
stitched up. On this side they're putting eye do it
and all over my body because I've got carpet burnord
and one side of my body. The doctor turns round
to my mother and he says, what happened to this
little fella? She goes, what are you fucking saying? And
she just lost the plot. Both cowered like freaking girls.
Didn't say a fucking word, you know, Like I mean,
(03:21):
You've got to understand, this is the seventies. It's a
different era that happens today. Mates front page knews she's
a gal. You know, it's a different different keederal.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
Well, was there no one you could have called out
to or reached out to back then?
Speaker 1 (03:31):
No, it's just a different time, you know, Like I
didn't really I had my dad, and my dad was
worse than my mum.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
You know.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
My dad's in jail for being a predator and my
mom's got schizophrenia. But it's about ten years old where
things start to really take shape. My dad gets out
of jail, takes custody of me. But I don't want
to be there, you know, so I start running away
from home. You know, I just keep bolting Bolton Bolton.
But in the seventies that's an offense. It's called uncontrollable,
you know. So they start put me in place like
(03:57):
war on my yas Ma. I'll Bene Street and eventually
in an institution called Derek Darry Boyce Home in Windsor,
which is it's a rough introduction, you know, it's a
rough place to go into. You know, you've got to
march everywhere like you're in the army. A lot of
abuse going on with offices and kids, older kids. I'm
not supposed to be in that institution. Because I'm arrested
with my brother, they separate siblings, and because I'm the older sibling,
(04:18):
I get bumped up to the older institution. So I'm
in with kids. I've got facial growth and beards and
like big boys, and I'm just like this tiny little fella.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
You know.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
The whole time, every time I'm in a shower, people
are touching me. It's like always this sexual induendo the
whole time I'm there. Wow, yeah, it's just full on.
But the mast the same part of my story, bro,
is when I get out of Dererek, I run away again,
and this time I try and do what you say,
and I try and look for help. I go to
actually docks in Mount Drewitt and I speak to the
officer that I'm Brian Hubble and I say, look, I'm
(04:46):
sick of being hit, hurt, abused, you know, for facts.
Take help me, man, And he says, yeah, okay, I
can see if I can find your posta care and
he does. He finds me this Fostic family living in
Mount Drewert. The house he puts me into is a
three bedroom house. It's got nine adults in it. They
put me into a back bedroom with three adult men.
Two have got prime convictions for pedophilia. One yeah, like
(05:08):
two prior convictions. One abuses a two year old boy.
The other one abused a girl who was in their custody.
It doesn't take much to work out what happens, you know.
I just can't take it anymore. Made after being abused
everywhere I go, I'm abused here and understood.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Fuck is when you got into that house? When was
it that you knew who they were?
Speaker 3 (05:24):
Like that? Did you know that when you were going in?
Speaker 1 (05:26):
I had no idea? And that's the thing. Docs didn't either,
like they had some kind of responsibility to know the
people being in that home or do some kind of
brackgown trick. But they don't, you know, And I get it.
It's hard to place kids. And I'm at that age now,
thirteen year old. I'm hard to place. But yeah, I didn't.
They didn't. And I wake up in the middle of
the night and I'm being touch and I'm like, fuck,
I'm jack of this man. I like this time I
(05:48):
go off. You know, I'm getting older, I've gone more vocal,
and I end up going back to my mother. But
my mother's now moved to South Australia with another boyfriend
who's also a drunk, who just like four day trip
to South Australia, just drinking at every pub, fight and
just jackie it. I tried to take on my mother's
boyfriend because he tries to hit her and then she
rings the police on me for trying to fight him. Yeah,
(06:09):
So she puts me on a bus to Oxford Street
to meet my real dad. When I get there with
my brother, I'm walking behind my dad. My dad turned
around says, where the fuck you think you're going? She's
not coming with me, mate, fuck off? JIGETI Foster family,
thirteen years old, nowhere to go. I end up on
the street to King's Cross.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
Was there any good times with your parents? Like? Can
you think of anything? Or was it just hell for you?
Speaker 1 (06:30):
You know?
Speaker 3 (06:31):
I was thinking about that the other day.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
I get upset when not trying to think about that,
to be honest, But there was one memory I have
with my dad. We're at a rodeo once when we
were a kids, and took me to a rodeo and
these two kids were fighting, punching on and they were
surrounded by all these men, you know, and it was
the bravest thing I've seen my dad ever do. He
walked in the middle and he pulled these kids apart,
and he says to the men, he said, if you
want to fucking fight, fight each o. I said, leave
the fucking kids out of it. And I remember the fear, like,
(06:54):
even though all that stuff my dad done to me,
I was still afraid that someone was going to hurt
my dad, you know. I remember that when he went
in the bullwag and two was a kid and he
drove off. The pain I felt of losing my dad
despite the crimes that he did, you know. But yeah,
there's not a lot of good memories, mate, No, I
can't really think of any. It was just drinking, drug use, violence, screaming, yelling,
and like twenty two times I was removed by docks
(07:15):
before the age of seven. That gives you an indication
of how bad it was, you know.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
What a our grandparents and old things like that, they
didn't evernks.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
Mother's mum was an absolute drunk. My dad's dad died
when he was very young, and his mother was just
an old really nasty.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
I'm being the seventies like it's hard for neighbors or
anything like that's even come and help you for anything
that you needed.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
And you know what, living in Mountain drew that a
lot of the people that I O befriended had a
very similar upbringing. Their parents were violent, drunks, you know,
were kind of accumulated together. That makes sense. I've sort
of found those people. I was always sort of at
the bottom of the chain. I was a small, runty
kind of kid, you know, and so it was normal
to me, you know, like it's funny. I could have
my fingers set it one day and the next day
I'm out playing with me mates and no one talks
(07:57):
about It's just like it's the next day, you know.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
So you just had a brother, that's it.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Just how I had two brothers and a sister, but
only one brother I was close to. I left the
age at my home when I was ten, and so
they were like six and five, so I never really
got to know they get abused as well. I can't
tell other people's abuse, you can understand, Yeah, yeah, I
can't share that story. All I can say is that
I was and you know, it happened everywhere I went.
(08:24):
As a kid, I had the misfortunate made of looking
like a pretty girl. When I was a kid, I
had long blonde hair. I was very effeminate looking, and
that made me a target, you know, to mean, everywhere
I went. It's like I had it fucking written on
my forehead. I remember walking in the day of kings
Cross and I wrote this in my book, and the
first thing I said was, this is it. No one's
going to tell me what to do, no more, no
one's going to abuse me. I'm done. And I wish
(08:46):
that was my story, but it's not.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
You know, do you.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Think your parents ever wanted kids for the way they've
treated you?
Speaker 3 (08:53):
No.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
I think that my mother, she had four kids at
a very young age. She's living with a violent, abusive,
narcissist you know, who's also a pedophile. Must have been
hard for my mum. She grew up in violent alcoholism,
So you know, I believe she wanted me. Like so
one thing you're talking about good times, I don't remember them,
but I have a baby book for the first two
years that's been filled out, so there's some kind of
(09:13):
love there. You know, she must have cared about me
somewhere along the line. But then a second kid to
third kid, a four kid alcohol, you know, Heroine, we
probably became a burden to her.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
Was the only abusive to his own kids or abusive
to other kids.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
My dad was charged with offense to another kid as well.
So he's been charged twice with predatory charges before you
were born a while year after. Yeah, so I don't
know that he should be back from that. The police
were very they didn't want to give me a lot,
but it was funnily a screw was the person that
gave me the information in jail. He came and visited
him when I was in jail and went to take
me out on leave and they said, mate, he can't
(09:47):
take out, And they called me into the office and
he sat me down, mister Clark, and I remember him
telling to me and it was like I knew, but
I didn't know the conviction was what it was. And
he said, mate, your dad's been charged twice for this offense,
you know. And it was kind of a sobering moment,
but I kind of knew, I just didn't know for sure.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
It was always suspicion, you know, as song was the
last time you've seen you do so.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
Funnily enough, I hadn't seen my dad since ninety two
when I got out of jail. But about just before Christmas,
just you're gone. I got a call from my sister
and she said, your dad is dying. He's got Leuis
Dementiy's been put in the hospital. So I how did
you feel about that?
Speaker 3 (10:23):
Though?
Speaker 1 (10:24):
So when I went there, I had all this stuff
I was going to say, Neil, I was going to
do you said that some packing this and packing that,
you know, and I wanted to get answers, you know.
And I walked in the door and I've seen this
frail old man, eighty year old. He was little, like
you know. My memory of this is Monstar. It's just
this tiny, little skinny man going around the bed and
he looks at me and he goes, oh wow, you're tall.
(10:44):
And I was like, I was like forgiveness. I just
felt this forgiveness in my heart. You know what, this
man's going to die. He doesn't remember what's happened.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Like I don't know for sure what like what your
dad was going for or and stely like that. You see,
I haven't spoke to my mom for over seventeen years.
She disowned me because of what I did for a
liven and she said to like. The last words were
she said to me was You're dead to this family. Okay,
so I don't exist in my mother's eyes anymore. But
the thing is I've always kept I'm very stubborn, and
(11:15):
if anything like that were to happen, I'm so stubborn
I couldn't care because if you can say that to
your son, you don't exist to me. And that's why
I was saying to you, like, did you go there
with hatred?
Speaker 3 (11:25):
Did you go there? Yeah? And you said you said forgiveness.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
You know what I mean that be I found forgiveness
when I got there, when I sat down on the
bed next to him, and I just thought, you know what,
what's the point. There's nothing he could say that's going
to undo anything could happen. There's nothing that can change,
you know. It is what it is. I'm about to
lose him. What I didn't know, Neil, is that my
brother was also in hospital on the other side, only
about a clometer prom him with a brain tumor. Wow,
(11:48):
he also died. They died within days of each other,
and no one told me that. I actually got told
about three months after his funeral by his wife. You said,
why weren't you ready his funeral? I said, who's funeral?
If you said your brother Jason, I fucking lost my shit.
You know, Jason was the only one I was really
close to, you know, and we had a four and
out in eighty eight in the cross. He slept with
(12:09):
the girl I was with. We just had a baby,
me and this girl together. I never did like you stubborn,
that's it. You're bucking need to me, and I wish
I could go back on that, you know, like I
ended up making after that, marrying the most beautiful woman,
having five amazing kids. You know, like you did me
a favor. But that's not how I saw it in
my head. I saw you betray me. B Yeah, you know,
especially a brother, our brother, that's right. Yeah, you know
(12:31):
there's a million people as well. Just don't go in
my one, and I won't over of yours.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
Did you go see your dad's funeral? No, you didn't know.
I couldn't do that. No, you're just more forget. Forget.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
I forgive the forgiveness of them, Like at the hospital
and that you thought that's it.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
It's a closure now, Yeah, its closure.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
I remember sitting on the bed next to him, and
I just briefed out and I just thought, nothing, there's
no point saying all what I want to say. It's futile.
And I just let it go. And I was kind
to him, you know. I sat there and we gave
him lollies and with my sister and you know, and
I said, does he need anything? And she said no,
I've got it covered. And I said, all right, I'm
out of here, and then I left and that chapter closed.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
You know what about your mother?
Speaker 1 (13:07):
So my mother died in two thousand and fourteen. I
think I've been per sema. She was in hospital for
a year. I only found out after she died.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
As well, you.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Think you could forgive it if you had to go
to the hospital and you knew about that.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
That would have been a harder one. I think I could.
I have now. I'm at a point now where I've forgiven.
But but that's not about them, that's about menial. That's
about me saying, you know what, you're no longer hold
space in my fucking head. I'm a father now, and
I need to worry about being a dad and a
granddad as opposed to karying all that anger, because that
anger is toxic bro. Yeah, you know, that's the stuff
that gets us in trouble. You hold your kids so
(13:40):
thirty six, thirty one, Jesus twenty six, twenty five, and twenty.
Speaker 3 (13:47):
Do they know about your past with your mother and father?
They do?
Speaker 1 (13:49):
How do they feel about that? We don't talk a
lot about it.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
A lot.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
I keep my kids a lot out of what you've
probably noticed on my social media stuff to protect them
because of the nature of what I speak about. But yeah,
at different point, I've had conversations with different ones, you know,
and they know, you know, I live. One of my
sons lives with me, Josh who plays football, beautiful boy,
and they know, they just, you know, it just sort
of un said stuff, you know.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
They just they've met your brothers and sisters who were left.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
They no, never I will never ever, would have never
allowed them to go near my children. That was something
I said in my head. My dad would never meet
my children, my brother. So, one of my sons met
my dad and he walks up to him and he
says to me, I really could have done better with
you with your dad and my son six foot five
grades you fucking think think, mate. You know, you're like
(14:37):
Is that the best you've gotten? And I was like, yeah, all.
Speaker 3 (14:39):
Right, you know, so tell me about when you went
to King's Cross. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
I arrived in Kings Cross in nine and eighty two.
I took the streets really quickly. It's one of the
things that happened for me was I wasn't tough, I
wasn't anything else, so just me, you know, and I
turned up and I just met all these other street kids.
Started living in squatch, you know. I remember the first year,
we're playing bluddy chasing's on the street like bloody children,
do you know, running up and down, ignorant to what's
going on. Really, you see it the bikers and the
(15:05):
in a year, you know, the Cross. But to me
it was just like colorful, you know. I used to
call it the weed and the wonderful. But it wasn't
until I got a girlfriend. My first girlfriend and ain't
was Linda. I try not to get upset when I
talk about her. And you'll see way in a minute.
But we end up moving into a refuge. The refuge
was actually opened, so you'll be surprised us on this board.
It was founded by a children's magistrate and old Blackmore.
(15:26):
It had seven other judges on board. It had five
men working there, all of who are pedophiles whom I've
now put in jail. And also it had Bob Hawk,
the Prime Minister was also on this board, not involved
in any the abuse, but involved in this refuge. He's
complicit in the fact that he knew and did nothing.
But what ends up happening is we all movie in
a whole pot.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
Where's a refuge? So where's the refuge? Liverpool Street? Fortune?
Speaker 1 (15:49):
I Liverpool Street? So you know where's Austin's Hospital is?
Come back on the street to Liverpool Street. It's almost
the line on that corner. It's actually called West Street
that runs through. Yeah yet West Street. Yeah, so on
that corner bush Shop, and we moved in and lived
there and then all this abuse starts to transpire. And
you read my book, or if you've heard my story,
you know what actually happens is I walk into the
(16:10):
office one day and the guy Simon Davis, who runs
a place, he's drinking alcohol and he's playing the guitar
and he's singing all these songs and he says, Oh,
come in, have a drink. So I sit down. You know,
I'm fourteen now start drinking scotch with him. Another guy
comes in named Paul Jones, who've also had convicted, hands
me these tablets called reds. Back then, they're called reds, right,
So I take a couple of them the next thing,
(16:31):
and I wake up in the morning. I'm semi acred,
and I'm starting to get all these snippets of what's happened,
you know, and I'm like, fuck, I lose my shit.
But what ends up happening is in nineteen eighty three,
in August, who gets closed down the refuge? Right, all
those kids are pretty much all the boards are being abused.
My girlfriend and I move out, and then someone I
go to Adelaide. I'm a breakdancer, so I used to
be a breakdance on the streets to the cross. That's
(16:52):
what it's to how I made my money, right, And
I go to Adelaide to do a breakdancing competition, and
while I'm in there, we win. I come first place, right,
I win this competition. I'm so ecstatic. I'm walking down
the stairs like so puffed.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
You know.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
I've got two hundred dollars and I've got all this
stuff going on at the bottom of the stairs. Is
one of my mates, Johnny Chapman from the Refuge, and
he looks sombra, you know, he looks sad. And I said, hey,
you doing mate, you know, give him a big hugan
he just doesn't kind of move, and he goes, bro,
I've got something to tell you. I said, what's happened mate?
He goes, your girlfriend's been murdered Mae. And she's sixteen,
(17:23):
you know, like just turned sixteen. And what happened was
two guys gave a heroine, both of them rape her
and just leave her, leave her there, you know. And
they get convicted, right, They get caught, convicted, get twenty
years and then they appeal and they gave before a
judge named Judge Yeldham. I don't know if you go
haded Yeldham, but Yeldham was a predator. Judge used to
(17:43):
abuse kids in the train stations. He was actually called
before the Woodraw Commission and then it took his life
just before the thing happened. He was unknown predator in
the streets. But what I do is I go up
to my abuses and I say, hey, I said, one
day I tell the fucking world which you did. I said,
one day, I'm going to fucking write a book. And
I said, every fucking person's going to know what you did,
and I wast going to hold you accountable. And he
(18:03):
laughed in my face, right the two than me laughing
at me. He said, you're an MPJ. You'll be dead
by the age of twenty one. And he said, you
can't even read and write. You're a literate. Are you
going to write a fucking book? I stowed that away.
Problem is then made as I pick up Heroin, I
become a heroin addict and all the things at Heroin.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
What did you think you picked up on the Heroin for?
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Was that to clear your mind and to let yourself
go a bit because of the stress and not all
the trauma that you've gone through.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
I think so. I think that when I first started,
I started using speed, so I got used to using
the needle. I was stealing for bikers in the cross
for about a year, but it scattered me, mate. I
was a fucking scatter, you know. And then all of
a sudden, the first time I used gear. It's almost
like I wrote in my book, like the answer to glean,
it was like there's peace and this cuve over my
body because I was getting flashbacks and all this stuff
going on in my head. As soon as I took it,
(18:48):
it was like it all stopped. It was like it
all stopped. But it's an illusion. It's one off. You
spend the next thirty years trying to chase that feeling.
You never get it. Spend more time in withdrawals and
chasing the dragon than you do on it.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
You know.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
But I'm a big believer that a lot of addiction
and alcoholism is untreated trauma. It's usually an undercurrent of
something untreated, either the mental health trauma, you know, DV,
whatever it is. And that's definitely my story. But problem,
my whole life changed the mate I start doing arm robberies,
I start robbing dealers. I start like I just became
a menace. And I got to a point where I
(19:21):
didn't give a shit. Like my mates were dying around me.
I'm literally watching friend after friend after friend, and I
know it's my turn coming. I'm dropping, like I kept
dropping all the time. I started taking pills, and I'm
becoming more brazen, you know. I used to go out
and do robberies and go to my dealer, and then
I got sick of the fucker's mate.
Speaker 3 (19:36):
They're always fucking me around.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
Yeah, a ten minutes fucking an hour later, like fuck
these guns, you give it to me, And I'm surprised
I didn't get in trouble, especially in ninety four.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
I robbed he.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
I won't say who, but a dealer who worked for
someone who was pretty I'll tell you later on. And
I got him around the corner, right. The funniest thing
is that we come around the corner of the back
of the pussy Cat, you know, the arm colored street.
We go behind the steps up there, and as we
walk up there, he walks in and I go bang,
and I you by the right, and he's got all
these balloons in his mouth. It's a bit about and
I'm with another guy who's supposed to be keeping cocky
(20:09):
for me, helping me and my girl. Anyway, the guy
says green stretch, stretch, and you say my name, Abra
and aver right, do you know where we are? And
then runs off. This leaves me pasted right, and then
my girl says, Glenne's armed. He pulls out this fucking
big machedie out of the back of me. Man I
managed to grab his arm throwing up the thin. But
for the next couple of months, every time I went
to the cross the score, I'm playing chasings like you'd
(20:30):
see me in over the place.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
It was fucking crazy.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
I'm lucky I didn't die, you know, if not from
an over days from someone you know, say look enough,
you know I deserved it, to be fair. I was
that bad at that point in time, and I just
didn't care. I had so much pain, so much anger,
you know, and it's like everyone else's fault.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
You know, you're no going back to when your girlfriend died.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Were you able to see it like Burrier or anything
like that, or you couldn't you didn't.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
Have access to do it.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
So what happened was I hit choked back from Adelaide
to go to her funeral. I got arrested in Golden
I was carrying nunchuckers, and back then nunchuckers is a
section thirty, which is the same as carrying a firon,
And so I was arrested for section thirteen and I
was kept in the cells for two weeks, and I
missed her funeral, Jane Neil. I never went to see
her grave until about three years ago. I just couldn't
do it. Really, I just couldn't go there. I just
(21:18):
got like it made it real, you know, like going
and seeing it would have made it too real for me,
and I just couldn't get out there. But I went
there three years ago out of that film. It was painful,
but it was needed. Yeah, because I've carried her. She's
the reason I wrote this story. You know, I wanted
people to know that this isn't the meat story. This
is a wee story. There were a lot of little
kids running around the streets of the Cross in the
(21:39):
eighties being abused heroin addicts. Many of them died, and
I wanted to make sure that her Bam band Italian,
all them kind of girls that I knew growing up
were remembered, you know.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
Gone back to when you were in Kings Trosty, you
were living there and you know all these guys were
you know, especially that time when you had your first
drink and they gave you them red pills. What was
gone through your thoughts and did you want to retaliate
quick or did you just let it go by your
time to get them back for this or did you
run away?
Speaker 3 (22:07):
But like you know, because it's all happening again.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
For you seem to go to places and you're just
getting abused and abused and abused.
Speaker 3 (22:12):
I would have lost my shit. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
The problem was, I'll be honest with you, I'd been
groomed my whole life. So it got to a point
where I've been taught my body was a commodity. That's
just the truth of it. And I hate that's my truth,
but that's the truth.
Speaker 3 (22:23):
You know, You're right.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
I had revenge on my mind. The problem was that
the police back then, we was so fucking corrupt that
if you entered the police and spoke about this kind
of stuff to them, they were more likely to go
to the abuser, extort money off them, and then come
back and lock you up. And I've seen, I've literally
seen that happen. I did drive around once with freemates
looking for somebody armed, and I was set and I
(22:46):
was ready to go to jail for life. Luckily for me,
I never found him. You know, that was in Avalon.
I drove around Avalon for hours with these three mates,
you know, like I did a snatch and grab off
a guy someone. I was the driver, but I wasn't
even supposed to be doing it. I stole look harf
for someone else to do a crime, and I'm the
driver and I'm him to get my money. You know,
you're going to do this cry where this guy is
(23:07):
coming from one place to another. They're going to grab
this money and then I'm going to get my kick
and they all go that way hours. They always got
an excuse, neil, Oh, there's time, there's someone there, there's something.
I grabbed this guy. Man, he wouldn't go of it.
I ended up breaking the strap, but as ida it.
He's like yelling at me. He's bigger than me too,
but I managed. I'm quicker than him, so I managed
to snap it. But getting the car drove off. I
(23:30):
actually got extra coin out of that too.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
How long were you? How long were you on the
giar for?
Speaker 2 (23:35):
Like?
Speaker 3 (23:36):
How long would the ta ket to get off it?
Thirty years? Wow? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (23:39):
So I started using in nineteen eighty five and I
got clean in twenty ten.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
Wow. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
So I went into rehab in two thousand and nine.
The reason I got clean was started to impact my family.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
You know.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
Now I'm a dad, I'm responsible. I don't want to
see history repeat. That's the one thing that I think
is important in my story is that I make you know,
this stuff goes from family to family to family trauma addiction,
you know, and I just don't want that to happen
in mine. Were you on it when you had your
first child? Were you still use on methadone? I wasn't using.
What actually happened was in nineteen ninety six I had
to give evidence to the wood Draw Commission against two
(24:13):
abuses who I had locked up in jail. And in
doing that, I had to go to Sydney every day.
And I started off by just going to court every
day and then I detour to the Cross and that's
when I picked up again in ninety six, you know.
Speaker 3 (24:25):
And was that intimidating for you to go to the
Royal Commission? Was that tim It was?
Speaker 1 (24:29):
And it was a letdown, bro because they sealed all
my files in both commissions. I went to the Royal
Commission institutional abuse as well, and the Royal Commission into
the wood Draw Commission. It was intimidating.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
Do you think they took you seriously at the start
when you went in?
Speaker 1 (24:43):
No, When I gave my statement, I could see them
with their armsolder by this like's a fucking good story,
brocause it's a lot. My story is a lot. But
when they came back, they were almost ecstatic. I said,
we've been around the country. We've spoken to every single kid.
They've parrot of what you've said. They wanted me to
wear a wire. How about that, mate? They said to me,
we need you to put on a wire to go
up to one of your abuses. So I'm not doing it, mate,
(25:03):
It says, there's not a chance in trying it. You know,
who's got to wear a wire?
Speaker 3 (25:06):
Mate?
Speaker 1 (25:06):
Even that's the way we're raised, right, And then he
comes back to me and he says something that actually
turned me. He said, you know, every abuser that abused
you will go on to abuse possibly another seventy two children,
he said, And if you don't speak up, are you
going to continue to keep abusing children? And I went
home and I talked over with someone about it, and
I was like, I need to speak up.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
So I did.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
I had to put on a wire and meet up
with this pedophile in Paramatta and I did date and
then they gave me a dodgy phone, and you know,
I had to record all the stuff. So I ended
up putting four of it in jail. I got one
Paul Chapman Jones, he got eighteen months. Then I've got
a guy named Ken Fogney, he got eighteen months. The
one with the wire was her named Grant Morris. He
got two years eight months. And then just recently I
(25:46):
had one extra dieter back from the Netherlands. His name
Simon Davies. He got ten years. He's the guy who
ran the refuge and abuse are still inside now Simon
Davies is and then he's going to be extra dided
back to the UK when he gets out. He's a
fucking grab bro. I mean eighteen months. You know how
it was to do years going through the walkarounds and
(26:07):
all the shit you got to do getting caught. And
here the judge a one of them was connected for
twenty children. He got eighteen months twenty times to run concurrent,
So make that make sense. I got two years eight
months for an arm robbery I didn't do, and then
I went to jail like it's funny because I did
all these crimes right that I actually did do. I
never got caught for one, and then I get set
(26:27):
up by a King's Cross police for an armed robbery
I didn't do because I started talking, you know, and
they charged with extortion, demand of money, with ministers, assault robbery.
All of them dismissed, and then armed robbery. Couldn't beat
that one, and they got me for the arm robbery.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
Wow. Has anyone like reached out to you from the
past from the.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
Yeah, so the guy I robbed, he reached out to
me and said, hey, young and bra and I thought,
I know, here we go and he gave his no. Bro,
I was fair in love them or he said, I've
changed my life around. And he said, I just love
what you're doing.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
Bro.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
He said, you should be so proud of who you are.
I said, dance man, I said, I really appreciate that,
and I actually rang it. We had a conversation, you know,
which is good because I was a piece of ship
doing that t him because he said to be he
got in trouble from his person, you know, like for
doing that ship and that was my intention. And yeah,
I've had a lot of people reach out to me, man,
like a lot younger people. A lot of people reach
out to me. I get hundreds of messages. You probably
(27:16):
do as well, you know, people sharing their journeys and
stories with me, and they're like, the most common question is, hey, bro,
do you remember.
Speaker 3 (27:23):
Do you remember such and such?
Speaker 1 (27:25):
And I'm like, sometimes I do, and I'm like, I'm
not going to say because they're ah, and I don't
want to tell you that.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
Have you ever have you been back and just on
the walk by yourself like I have. It's like what
you get in the army, you know what you have flashbacks? Yeah,
and that Sometimes I've just gone for a walk and
to the places that of things have happened to me
in the past.
Speaker 3 (27:42):
Have you have you ever done that? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (27:44):
I've done videos around the boys homes, Derek. I've done
a lot around the Cross. I do so the most
commonplace I get recognized is King's Cross. When I walk
up the cross now they call me, hey, can I
get yeah, man, it's I struggled with it at first.
I actually do tours of the Cross. I take people
around and show them that have read my book. They
want to come with me and it's it's fantastic, But
(28:05):
I struggled with it at first. Some of the places
they go to, like the refuge. I don't know if
your name, but Channel sevent did a documentary on me
called the Rise in Paula King's Cross. It hasn't come
out yet, but the day we went to the refuge,
it was literally being ripped down and Channel seven were shattered.
They're like, oh, man, I really wanted to get it.
And I said, but I've got hundred the fato of
the refuge. I said, this is actually a good thing.
I said, you're talking about the Rise in Paula King's Cross.
This is actually good what it's about. This is the
(28:28):
fall of one of the most horrible, heinous places in
King's christ. A lot of people used to blame the clubs, right,
That's not where it was at, man. It was basically
on the streets in the park, up the wall. That's
all the bad stuff. Were like, I mean, look before
John and all that stuff happened back then. Some of
the clubs had children, and I've got a lot of
friends who were young girls who were dying in these clubs.
You know, they were working and stripping at the age
(28:48):
of fourteen, fifteen and sixteen. One of the things I
respected about John was when he came forward, he actually
changed that. He said, I don't know a lot about
his story. I really don't, but I do know that,
but it no longer was allowing these young children to
be in these places of me abused, and that's something
I respect, you know, like we've got to protect our kids.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
Man.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
You know, they're not a fucking commodity for people to
ause and make money off.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
When was the turning point for you that you just
you know, you say like you said, you mad your future,
your future wife, and I like that and everything changed.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
But when did it change? When did you mentally change?
Speaker 1 (29:20):
And that this is yeah, that's not been as long
as you think. So about fifteen years ago, I went
into a deep depression after all the court cases, I
separated from my wife. I ended up moving into the
Blue Mountains and for ten years, Bro, I just sat
on a lounge. I literally just watched TV every day,
getting takeaway food. My kids would come and visit me
at my home. You know, there was no leaving. And
(29:41):
I ended up meeting another guy online and went to
Melbourne to an event that he had and we sat
down with a group of influence one night and he goes, bro,
you've got a hell of a story, he said. You
need to share your story, bro, he said, And I
started to realize that the more I shared my story,
the more it lost its.
Speaker 3 (29:54):
Power over me.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
Because what we can do is we can become so
consumed to the anger of what's happened that we become
a victim. And that's what I was. I was literally
a walking victim and wore it like a shield, like
a badge even, you know, And I started to realize, man,
the only person who can change me is me Jack.
Speaker 3 (30:09):
And that affected that your the way you and your
partner were together.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
Absolutely absolutely, you know, like I was always suspicious, you know,
like I mean, she shit, I was blessed eighteen years together,
the most beautiful woman. But when we went to rehab,
and we went to rehab together, it was like we
were two different people. Our whole relationship had been based
around addiction, you know, when we got clean, you know,
and we had we had responsibilities. Now we've got other
people who depend on us to be parents, you know.
And she's still my best mate to this day, thankfully.
(30:35):
But yeah, absolutely, you know, if I if I met
her the way I am now, it would be a
whole different thing. You know, I would see the value
in what I had. Back then, I was a victim.
Everything was unfair, you know, and I think once we start,
a lot of people walk around allowing their past to
destroy their future because they become they become their own
worst abuser. You know, they go through all this stuff
(30:56):
and it's like I used to say to people, if
you've been through what I've been through, YouTube up too,
and like that's not a reason, but that's an excuse.
Speaker 3 (31:01):
You know, ten years is a long time has been
locked up and like yourself, and.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
Then I was consumed and I may now it's changed.
I'm off all I'm clean, as you know, I'm clean.
I train every day. I run a business called the
leg Up Project, you know, going around.
Speaker 3 (31:15):
I'm an author.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
I've done multitude of podcasts and you know, I've been
all out Australia now doing different events. It's incredible what's happening.
But so many people reach out to me and they say,
please keep going brow you inspire me. You know if
I've had people message me and say I've got clean
because of you. One lady messaged me along I said,
I've got my child back because of you, Glenn. She said,
I posted a big thing about being a victim. I said,
get off the fucking land, stopped being a fucking victim.
(31:37):
And she said, I watched the video, she said, I
got angry at you. She said, who the fuck are you?
She said, I watched it again and again and again,
and she said, fuck. Can I realize you were right?
What you were saying was actually right? That you know,
she was a victim to her own self and she
lost a child and everything was unfair. And I said,
how about looking at you know what your part in
this is.
Speaker 3 (31:54):
What did you do? You know?
Speaker 1 (31:55):
And she said, yeah, I was fuck And she said
now she's got a child back, you know, And those
things warm my heart. Any regrets in life, oh lots.
But I regret not going and forgive you my brother.
I regret leaving my girlfriend alone in Hing's cross going
to Adelaide.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
Do you think that was? Do you think that was?
If you've never gone to Adelaide, things would have been different?
You think that?
Speaker 3 (32:18):
Probably not? No, Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
I mean, you know, she'd started using heroin and I hadn't,
you know, And that was part of the reason why
I we'd separate. It was I said, what the fuck
are you doing, you know, putting needles in your arm?
I don't want that shuit you know a breakdownser but
I think it's also the reason why I started using.
I wanted to understand it and it caught me, you know,
and caught me quick. I think those are the two
biggest regrets I think. Yeah, I regret parts with my
(32:42):
wife as well and my children. You know, I wish
that I had this knowledge at the start.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
We also we all say that, bro, I would said
that same all the time. I know now what I
did back then, I'll be a different person absolutely, you
know what I mean. You only know what you know
that when you do know do better. I live and
learn absolutely.
Speaker 3 (33:00):
So what would you in one word, how would you
describe yourself? Loyal?
Speaker 1 (33:04):
Wowkod Yeah, very loyal person view. If I'm a friend
with someone, I'll die for you. And that's that's fairing
from manding. I'm very very loyal, but I demand it too,
you know. That would be the word I.
Speaker 3 (33:15):
Want to say.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
Thank you for coming on, mate, like that is like
a full on like life and journey, you know what
I mean, And I praise you for coming through the
whole that you come through and now to what you
are today.
Speaker 3 (33:27):
It's it's very inspiring me. I appreciate it. And I
wish you all the best in the future. Thanks, thanks
a
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