To write this report about the experiences I have had with Remedi, I will need to explain a little of my own background first.

At the age of ten I was taken in to Local Authority care, from which I was sent directly to prison for the first time. From then on, I seemed to be constantly involved in crime, I’d become used to robbing, thieving and cheating, and it reached a point where it seemed as if this was going to be the pattern of my life forever.

When I began to think about it, I realised that by the age of forty, I had done no less than eight jail sentences and the time I had actually served in prison in these sentences, when added up, totalled over twenty years. For someone who hates prison as much as I do, this was a staggering thought and it suddenly seemed to me as if I had been given a very nice gift – My life, and all I’d done with it was to throw it away in the bin. Not only wasted it for myself but for others too – the two marriages I’ve had, other relationships, my family and my children who have been deprived of having their dad there with them to share in their daily lives and growing up.

Being in prison never did anything to stop my offending. All it did, I think, was make me very bitter and totally anti-authority and that was the point I’d finally reached.

Then a turning point came. I saw two psychologists who diagnosed that I was in fact, suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and had been for many years as a result of the repeated horrific experiences I’d had as a child in the care homes, which I will not go in to here. I’d never really heard of PTSD before but I was referred to a counsellor by the prison and began regular counselling sessions, which eventually started to make me see things from another angle and look at them in an entirely different way.

After eighteen months of extensive counselling, my probation officer asked me if I would be interested in taking part in a programme through which I would have the opportunity to say I was sorry to the victims of the crimes I had committed. I can see now that things I’ve done have simply caused misery and upset in every part of society, something that had never even occurred to me before. I certainly never thought about the effects of my actions on those on the receiving end of them.

It would be easy to make excuses and say that “the system” and what I suffered as a child had made me what I was, but the hard fact of the matter is that there is no excuse, I simply never thought beyond my own actions. Then I was introduced to Remedi and was offered the chance to say I was sorry to some of these people, and the help I needed to do this.

All of my life, whatever I’ve done and whatever’s happened, I’ve had a sort of stabbing feeling inside me. I never really knew what it was or where it was or what I was feeling, only that it was there. Once I entered on the Remedi programme, it suddenly came crashing home to me and I realised that what I had been feeling all those years was guilt and remorse for the things I’d been doing and a whole bunch of other feelings related to guilt, a feeling of damnation for the things I’d done in the past. Acknowledging this was a major step forward.

Remedi began to mediate with my victims to see if they would allow me to tell them I was sorry. One was interested in hearing what I had to say. I wrote a long letter telling them I was sorry and that I wished I could turn the clock back, that I’d had enough of the kind of life I’d led and I wanted to move on and make a new start. The most important thing about writing this letter was that I truly meant everything I’d said. It was sincere and it came from inside me.

When the reply came it was to say “Thank you”, that my apologies were accepted and that this person now felt that they too could move on in life. This had an effect on me because I then truly realised the full extent of my actions and the appalling impact they must have had on the victims of those actions.

Thanks to Remedi, I am able to face the future with a sense of anticipation of the adventure of a new life ahead of me. After all this time I don’t feel the stabbing pain anymore and I feel as if I can look forward to beginning again with a much cleaner slate.

Saying “Sorry” has been a big step on the new road I’m on. It is a road that won’t be littered with the carnage of my previous trips. This time I want to leave my mark in the form of doing something good in life. I’ve been given the opportunity to start again, this time in a positive direction, not leaving the scent of misery behind me, but a shout of: “Come again, you’ll be welcome”.