The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - The Man Wrongfully Convicted Of A Murder He Didn’t Commit: Raphael Rowe

Episode Date: November 10, 2022

Raphael Rowe is the host of Worlds Toughest Prisons on Netflix, the worldwide-hit show that takes us inside the toughest penitentiaries on the planet. It’s a world he knows well, wrongfully convicted of murder, he spent twelve years in maximum security prisons before he proved his innocence and was released. In a conversation that goes into more depth about how he survived twelve years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit than he ever has before, Raphael bares all about the son he’s never spoken to, how he kept going against all the odds, what the experience taught him about life, and about himself. But what’s striking about Raphael’s story is it’s often the simple things that get us through the difficult moments. A good relationship, exercise, self awareness. Raphael really illustrates how control over basic components of self and social awareness help people survive in even the toughest environments. Raphael: Instagram - https://bit.ly/3UAADV1 Twitter - https://bit.ly/3zN84vK  Website - https://bit.ly/3E4N9Xz  Follow me: https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo

Quick one. Just wanted to say a big thank you to three people very quickly. First people I want to say thank you to is all of you that listen to the show. Never in my wildest dreams is all I can say. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd start a podcast in my kitchen and that it would expand all over the world as it has done. And we've now opened our first studio in America, thanks to my very helpful team led by Jack on the production side of things. So thank you to Jack and the team for building out the new American studio. And thirdly to to Amazon Music, who when they heard that we were expanding to the United States, and I'd be recording a lot more over in the States, they put a massive billboard in Times Square for the show. So thank you so much, Amazon Music. Thank you to our team. And

thank you to all of you that listened to this show. Let's continue. I was destined to spend the rest of my natural life in prison for crimes I didn't commit. We're going to talk to you about Raphael Rowe. Who's a presenter, journalist, documentarian. This is prison, sir. You're going to hear a story. It was only a short period after my son was born. Two months, in fact.

My life changed forever. On 15th December 1988, a series of terrifying crimes took place along the newly built M25. I was being accused of a murder and a series of aggravated robberies. They fabricated evidence and changed things to fit me into the crime. Fucking hell. They convicted us and I was destined to spend the rest of my life in prison for the crimes I didn't commit. When I was in the isolation cell, stripped naked, bleeding and bruised, I screamed and I shouted through the pain that I was suffering.

Nobody heard my voice. At that moment, something started to grow in me that made me become the person that I am today. What is that thing that started to grow in you? Hope. Free after more than a decade behind bars. What is a mistake that you know you've made that you haven't yet fixed? The consequences of my actions has meant that I've never been able to discover anything about my son.

If I put a button in front of you and said, you press this button and it raises those 12 years. I'll never, ever get those years back. Would you press the button? Take me back. If you've ever heard this podcast before, I'm a huge believer that in order to understand a person, you have to really understand their context and their earliest context you're from a council estate um

your home life to me from reading through your autobiography seemed to be incredibly defining so take me back to those earliest years and give me the context I need to understand the man that you were in your early 20s I'll go back even further and take you to the kind of environment that I grew up in. So I grew up in South East London, Camberwell to be precise, just at the bottom of Cold Harbour Lane, which is the kind of junction between Brixton and Camberwell before you get to Peckham. So that kind of circle of, or that triangle as I like to describe it in South East London. And it was quite a typical working class environment, council estate. And the privilege of it was that we were all the same. Nobody had anything.

And the other thing about that council estate and the environment that I grew up in, it was a bit of a kind of cul-de-sac, you know, in these kind of estates where you've got block after block, there are little roads in, little roads out onto this estate and that little patch of grass in front of our blocks of flats. And it was quite diverse. You know, I was from the mixed race family. My mum's white, my dad's black. You know, the floor below my flat, we had the Chinese family. Below that, we had the kind of overweight family. And opposite them, we had the smelly family so there was the Scottish family over in the other block in the Irish family so it's a real mix of cultures and personalities and characters and parents and I'm not going to say that weren't

there weren't issues and problems of course there was and you'd always have the shouting but there and I'm not going to make it sound mythically like it was a great time because it wasn't but when you're a kid you don't recognize the problems that your parents are facing. You're not being able to pay for the electricity, not being able to buy the things that kids want, new trainers and stuff like that. So it's quite stable, but unstable at the same time, because there was also a lot of crime, but not crime that was obvious to young guys like me and the girls. And, you know, having a camp in the bottom of a block of flats would be our highlight. You know, we go in there, put dead mattresses in there and bits of blankets. That was my kind of environment. So I kind of grew up in this council estate that was very diverse, had lots of different cultures. And it made me

comfortable. My home life was slightly different you know my dad is jamaican he was strict he came from a very strict family back in jamaica so when he was in the uk kind of brought that chip with him didn't quite integrate into british society was a laborer had a strong jamaican accent still has a strong jamaican accent because he never kind of never really kind of integrated himself now Jamaican accent because he never kind of, never really kind of integrated himself. Now, whether that's because he couldn't, because he couldn't read and write, whether that's because he wasn't accepted because he was a black man who came in on the windrush, or whether it's because he didn't want to, I've never really found out because I've never really had that conversation with my dad.

So that's the context. That's what I was growing up in a council estate that was working class and very poor. If I was, if I was in the walls of your home at that time, what would have I, what would I felt seen, experienced as it relates to the relationship you had with your, your parents? Was there affection? Was there, was there, was there love? I think there was love, but it wasn't open love as in no cuddles. I love you kind of conversations. Nothing like that took place. My mum oozed care and consideration and, and love towards me and my three sisters. My dad was very strict. He was also a drinker. I wouldn't say he was an alcoholic, but he liked to consume alcohol and that made him aggressive. And so in my

household, occasionally my dad could be physically abusive towards me and my sisters, as well as my mother, to the point where sometimes it got so extreme that we felt we had to flee the home. So it could be quite brutal and he'd take it out on us. So it was a challenging household. That wasn't all the time. You know, my dad could also be a joy. You know, he could be the life of the party. If there was music playing and he was slamming dominoes and he had friends around, we'd love it because we were being exposed to this adult world that seemed exciting and welcoming and very different because there was a mix between the black culture and the white culture and for me despite the negatives in those walls that you talk about there was also a lot of positives I think my dad's discipline was born out of the idea that he thought that

was the way to get us to do the things we needed to do to improve our lives. He had no ambitions, he had no aspirations or anything like that. And he didn't give us any of those ambitions or aspirations. But I'm sure that he wanted me and my sisters to do better than he did. I hear that. It's a conversation I've thought, you know, a lot about my own mother, who was extremely, she's from Nigeria. My dad's English. Her approach towards disciplining kids is very,

would be frowned upon, I guess, is a way of saying it. You know, I got it all. Some things I've actually never said, but I got it all. And, you know, as I've grown up, I've wondered, was that, you know, great parenting? Was it intentional? Was it, you know, or was it just like a lack of control? I think it's a lack of education.

I, as an adult, Steve, I made a beeline to Jamaica with my dad. I needed to understand why he was the man that he was, somebody that had never given me a hug, never given me a kiss. During my time in prison, I witnessed things with other families, white families in particular, where they'd come up to visit their son and at the end of the visit, they'd hug each other, they'd kiss each other and they'd walk off of that visit and that inmate who I observed getting that affection was in a good mood I never got any of that I would from my mum but never from my dad my dad had a beard and I remember on one visit on one occasion sort of reaching out for him in the way that I saw other

people do because I'd never experienced that to give him a kiss and it was a kind of really awkward moment not only was his beard itchy and difficult but I know that he wanted it but didn't want it so when I went to Jamaica I went there to see what his life was like and I learned so much about why he was the man that he was in the house that I grew up in and it taught me a lot of lessons about why my dad was the way that he was. I can, in some respects, understand that as it relates to you guys. You know, maybe he had learned the wrong way

to get kids to behave in a difficult environment, in a difficult area. I think sometimes parents, wrongly in my opinion, but they think that a more harsh approach is the right one. But then as it relates to your mother, being violent towards your mother, that to me seems a little bit more difficult to understand using the same explanation that it's a mechanism to help kids. I don't think in my household it was anything to do with helping the kids. I think it was something

he witnessed in his own household as he was growing up. I know from what I heard when I went to Jamaica, that my dad's dad was violent, that he was abusive towards my dad and his siblings, and no doubt to my dad's mother who died when my dad was very young. So I think it comes from a place where he witnessed that and it was the norm to him and he brought that into his own life and couldn't control it you were kicked out of school at secondary school in my first year at my secondary school an incident happened with a teacher where she called me a thing you know you think you know you shouldn't be here kind of thing and i went home crying and i remember my mum going to the school having an altercation with the teacher and slapping the teacher. And as a result of my mum being protective,

now to other people that may seem like she's assaulted a teacher, but the teacher insulted me first verbally, not physically, but verbally. So my mum, being the protective mother that she was, came to the school and slapped the teacher in her face for calling her son a thing. And I got expelled. So the consequences were I got expelled and went to another school, which is now the charter school in Red Post or in Dulwich, but it was then called William Penn, an all boys school. And I survived that school for just a few years before, you know, my problems surfaced more and more and I was

expelled from that school. What were your problems that surfaced? I think I just couldn't settle. I think it was, you know, I wanted more than what the school were offering me. I don't think the schools in those days could identify what kids like me who grew up on council estates needed. Education was one thing, but we needed more. I had, as I've said, a troubled home life. Not so much that the schools needed to intervene. I wouldn't argue it was anywhere near as bad as that as it is in some kids' lives today and in the past. But I needed more support,

and I don't think I got any of that from my schooling. And that just allowed me to do the things that I shouldn't be doing, which is bunking off of school, not going to my lessons, getting into fights, hanging out with the wrong kids. And those wrong in the lessons that they're being learned, you know, end up being kicked out of school. So I was kicked out of my second secondary school at the age of 15, 16. And they put me in what they call an intermediate school, which is basically a kind of building where they put all kids that they deem to be, you know, irresponsible or not responsive to the education system. But what you're actually doing is just putting a bunch of kids who are already struggling in life and trying to discover who they are or deal with their problems in one environment and you just breed even more problems. And how did that manifest itself for you? I think I started to get in trouble with the law.

I started to commit petty crimes, shoplifting, breaking into cars, burglary. Some people might think that burglary is more serious than what it was. But when you're a 16, 17 year old, you know, it was just a means to an end. So that's how it manifested itself. I started to get into trouble with the law. I remember the first time a police officer brought me home after I got caught nicking curly whirly chocolate bars from the co-op around the corner from my house. And it wasn't that I needed the curly whirly,

because I already had a drawer full of chocolate that I'd pinched earlier. But it was more about, I don't know, you know, coming home from school, going in the shop, knowing that I could do it and get away with it was the driver. I didn't need the chocolate. But I got caught and I remember a police officer bringing me home. And I remember standing in the front room with my dad who was fuming and I knew I was going to get beaten for what I did because that was his reaction to my behavior. And the police officer, I think, was sympathetic in sort of saying, you know, this is not a serious offense,

but it is the beginning of something that could become serious. And he was right because I continued to get into trouble with the law, doing nothing more serious than what I just mentioned, burglaries, shoplifting in particular, for clothes and things that I wanted that I didn't have, the material things that we didn't have around us in those council estates that were becoming more and more advertised, you know, advertisements, you know, dairy. Maybe I was nicking the chocolate bar because they had at the time the dairy milk chocolate ad where the guy slides through the window and gives these lover a bar of chocolate and that was my temptation um so that's how it manifested itself mixing with people who were already going down the wrong path getting together

and doing that wrong path together 17 you you get arrested for that for burglary i got i got arrested for burglary when i was 17 um and i went to court i got arrested when i was i think 18 maybe 17 18 for assault i i had an altercation with a mechanic who attacked me with a spanner because i was giving it the big i am but he was a man i was a boy and he attacked me but i managed to wrestle the spanner from him and hit him with the spanner. So I was done for grievous bodily harm and went to court and got a prison sentence, which was over a young offender's sentence, which was overturned. So I spent just a few days in custody, but then was out on probation. That was about as serious as it got the knives show up in your story a few times um you stabbed someone in the bum that was on top of you punching you and then you got stabbed

yourself 18 years old i lived in a world at that point and kids live in that world today where carrying a knife was normalized. It was an extra, an extension of who you are, an extension of your personality, an extension of your character. But most importantly, I think it was something that we did, and that's me and my friendship group, and even the enemy friendship group, if you like, where they were trying to show authority. This is something you fear. You don't just fear the person, but you fear the fact that that person may be carrying a knife and may be willing to use the knife. And I did. I used the knife and I did I used the knife I remember being conscious of the fact that using a knife could cause serious harm that didn't stop me but it did make me realize that by using that knife I could harm someone really seriously hence the reason I stabbed this individual in the

buttocks the bum rather than anywhere else um but that full circle came around and i was attacked and had the same people not by the same people no um you know i moved around in a group of guys and there were lots of different groups of guys in lots of different areas and we were quite we had quite a reputation at 17 18 18. My best friend was a known fighter. He could look after himself. And I was a bit of a follower at this age. I was a bit of a follower. And he had such a freedom in his life. He grew up in the care homes. His dad came to England with my dad. So I knew him from when he was very young and growing up in the care home system he was he just had this sense of freedom that I wanted and I wanted it because as I say my dad was quite a you know disciplined guy and so if I wanted to go out he didn't want me to go out now whether that was because he wanted to be mean to me or whether it was because he was trying to protect me from what I wanted to go and do which is to go and hang out with guys who had no life really,

but just hanging out smoking weed and chatting up girls. That's what our life evolved around. But in that environment, there were men, young boys, who wanted to challenge us or we wanted to challenge them. And so inevitably it kind of leads to you carrying a knife and in my case using a knife and having a knife used against me and from what i read i believe in your autobiography they kidnapped you one day and took you to a park beat you up etc the the boy who i stabbed in the

bum he had a older brother who was quite a known criminal in the area in Peckham in southeast London. And he and his friends who were older than me and my group of friends came to my flat, kicked off the door and took me in a car to a park. I was bundled in the back of the car. I was taken to a park. I was stripped naked. I was beaten black and blue. I thought I was going to die. I thought that was kind of, you know, what was going to happen to me. I thought I was going to die when these guys,

these big guys were kind of threatening me in the car, what they were going to do to me. They stripped me naked and they beat me black and blue. And then they left me in this park. Now it was in Peckham, but I didn't know where it was because I was in the back of the car, couldn't see where I was going, ended up stopping, being dragged into this park, stripped naked and beaten. And this is the violent environment that I was now involved in, caught up in. But I will say this, even though that world may sound to people like a really violent and disturbed world, that's not who I was. I was caught up in it and I was involved in it. But I know I wasn't that person because it's not the person my parents were bringing up. My sisters, you know, are law-abiding

citizens I was the black sheep of the family I was doing things because other people were doing things and I was with those other people that's not me Steve blaming other people for what I did and the involvement that I got in that was free will but it just wasn't who I was I just didn't recognize it at the time I can completely relate to that. I think growing up around certain environments where people are shoplifting, breaking into things, you know, in the environment that I was in, in Plymouth, you know, if I recounted some of the things that we did below the age of 18 in Plymouth, some of the things that made the newspaper, there was one day where a hundred of us got together with weapons and we were going to march

over the bridge and attack the neighboring area and all these you know things we did because of the environment it's not who i am but in an environment we can bring out any side of us ourselves in an effort to really conform and to fit in um and as a method of defense we join the crowds and that's kind of what i've heard when i when i talk about those sort of first 18 years of your life and those things and you you know you answer these questions how does it feel I have this heat glow through my body right now as we're talking about it because I'm kind of projecting myself back to that moment and the person that I was the environment that I grew up in my household my friendship group and the lack of guide and guidance and support that young men like me wanted and I you know I'm not a kind of bleeding heart person who sort of says oh well there should

have been people there catching us there should have been people there guiding us no there shouldn't have been um but maybe understanding that environment as you just say, you know, following in that environment is not always a choice that we make because it's the only choice. It's a decision that we make because there is no alternative because you don't know of any other alternative. And so talking about it now, it makes me heat up inside, not in an angry way or in a passionate way, but as a reflection of the person and the life that I led and what got me through that as well. I think that's also important because in that moment, at that time that I was kicking someone or being kicked or I was fighting with someone or I was breaking into a house or shoplifting, it's the only thing I knew. It was the only thing I knew to get money to pay for the things that I wanted. It was the only thing that the people around me knew. You know, rolling a joint and smoking a joint was a bit of fun. We didn't think, as you're not supposed to think when you're a teenager of the consequences. And for some

people, those consequences can lead to, you know, dire situations as it did me, or it can lead to a new direction in life because they've learned a lesson and they think, right, I want to go down a different path or they meet someone who gives them an opportunity to go down a different path. So as I think about it now, I just remember there was no alternative. They're unknown unknowns, aren't they? You don't even know what you don't know you don't even know that you don't know about the other paths that are possible if you grew up in that context where you know there's no relatable role models there's no one you can model yourself against that's living uh other than what you said which is the tv you get to see some people that look like you that come from where you come from on the TV.

But what I mean, how many seats are there at that table? I just wonder whether there were people around, but I wasn't exposed to them in the same way that there are. I mean, OK, social media technology is, you know, given us different platforms. But I just wonder where they were when I was in that predicament, my own predicament, my own environment. Where were these people, whether it was the school teachers as I say they were not guiding me in the right direction yes their job is to just educate and to impart information and I should have been sucking up that information like most of my peers I suppose because not everybody who grew up in the same environment that I did

went on to lead the same life as me so there must have been something within my personality and there definitely was that made me become the person that I become and go down the path that I went down. But I do wonder where those people were at the time. Maybe they were just living their lives outside of the council estate, and so they didn't come into where I was. Because I saw very few people become successful that were in my immediate circle. When you got stabbed, they slashed your face, didn't they? You still got a scar from it. I have a scar down the left-hand side of my cheek.

I was attacked. This was part of the, you were kidnapped, taken to the car. That was a different incident. That was a different incident. That was a different incident. I was going to visit an ex-girlfriend. We'd had a bit of a rocky relationship. I remember going to visit her in Brixton and there were some guys attacking an elderly woman and being the kind of person that

I was. And this is why I say there was something in me even then that cared. And I tried to intervene and it led to me getting into a fight with these guys. I didn't know they were holding a knife. I didn't have a knife with me at the time and they beat me. One of them held me down. He stabbed me in my temple and then cut the side of my face open. After the fight, I got up, literally held my cheek together and made my way back to my best friend who took me to a hospital and I had my face stitched up by the hospital you're 18 at this time 18 at that age 18 were you looking out into your future what are you saying nothing nothing absolutely nothing just the existence that I was in at that very moment. At that point, it was about revenge.

It was about finding out who did to me what had just been done to me and how me and my group of friends could go and seek revenge on those individuals, especially my best friend who was my kind of leader, if you like. He was the one who was more angry than anybody. That's all it was about at that very moment didn't see beyond that that's what my existence was at 18 as well something your life changes in a interesting way when you um you find out you're having a baby yes another one of my girlfriends who was also a young girl who grew up in the same estate as me, never really had any kind of feelings for each other at any point,

ended up in bed one night. She got pregnant and gave birth to my son. At that point, our relationship, which didn't exist in the first place, became even more of a challenge because I was still a young man myself. And all of a sudden I'd become a dad and I didn't know what a dad was. My dad wasn't, as much as I love my dad, he wasn't a role model in how to become a good dad. There was no one sort of saying to me, this is a huge responsibility now, son, and you've got to go off and do the right thing, not just for you, but for this young man that you brought into the world.

And I was also just caught up in my own existence and my own world. I had nothing to offer my son, no guidance, no money, no life, probably love, but I didn't quite understand what love meant at that point to share with this new thing that had come into into my life and so our relationship mine and my son's mother broke down didn't exist and that was the end of that did you think she had been trying to trap you i think I was at that age quite, um, quite popular among the group of people that I was hanging around with and, um, had a bit of a reputation. Um, and yeah, I think, I think she, you know, she didn't protect herself and I didn't protect myself and so when we made love and had sex didn't even recognize or realize that she might fall pregnant but at the time one of the one of the things that came between us was me thinking that the reason she got pregnant was because she

wanted to trap me into a relationship where she could have me and no one else could and that became a bugbear of mine it just made me feel that this wasn't somebody getting pregnant because we loved each other and we wanted to bring a child into the world and have a happy ever after. I felt it was a trap that I was being brought into this situation because she wanted me. And that's how self-centered I was at that age. And this was actually when I was

just before I turned just 20, actually not 18, but just before I turned 20, because it was only a short period after my son was born, two months in fact, that I was first arrested and charged with crimes that I didn't commit and ended up in prison. So it was only two months after he was born that my life changed forever. Well, you weren't there when he was born. I think I read in your story. I was at the hospital the day after he was born. So I got there the day after he was born and did what any parent dad would want to do, which is hold their newborn son, daughter, and try. And I'm glad I did actually,

because I think that was a moment that I bonded with him and recognised this was real, as opposed to the months leading up to it of pregnancy. So I was there the day after he was born and then had limited contact over the next two months before I ended up getting arrested and imprisoned. And then that was the end of our relationship. And this is why I say I felt that the mother of my son tried to trap me because during that period it was, I don't want anybody else to come and visit you if you want to see that, you know, there were ultimatums made to me that I would not be able to

see my son unless I made certain decisions in my life to cut other people out of my life. And, and that kind of reinforced this idea that I'd already had, I was being trapped into a relationship I didn't want to be in. I didn't love the woman woman we had a sexual relationship and that's all it really was and I feel really bad saying that because a son come out of that and and you know he's a grown man now but I still don't have any relationship with him as a result of my actions not his nothing to do with him and probably not even his mother um but really it comes down to the person I was at that time in my life when was the last time you spoke to him? I've never spoke to him.

I've never had the privilege of having a conversation with him, apart from when he was still in his nappies, being brought up to see me on a visiting table. Have you tried? When I came out of prison, I made an application through the courts against my better judgment to try and get access to my son. And I remember turning up at court on one occasion as the hearings were progressing. And I think this was the court, you know, the solicitors and the lawyers and the people that were involved in this kind of child custody case was making it clear to me that my son didn't want to see me.

His mum didn't want me to have a relationship with him. And I just felt at that moment it would be wrong of me to force this situation. So I walked out of the court and left it there. And so I've had no contact and I've not attempted since then to make contact. There was this kind of little bit of me that felt in time when he's ready, he will come looking for me for us to develop a relationship. Sadly, that's not happened. Does he know who you are these days? I think so. I'm sure he does because he grew up in the same world that I grew

up in, in Southeast London. I don't know what part of the world he's living in right now. I don't know what his life is like, what his relationship's like, whether he has children, whether I'm a grandfather, I have no idea. And I'm scared to even find out, to be honest, there's a bit of me that's really scared to find out that I miss so much. It was a painful, it was a painful time during the years that I was in prison because I kept a diary every day. I'd write in that diary every other day. I'd write in that diary a message to this son of mine that I'd never met or had a relationship with, just so that he knew when I got out that I hadn't completely abandoned him. Physically, yes, I had no control over that. But in my thoughts,

he was always there. So I kept this diary in the hope that one day when I got out of prison, I could present these diaries and he would be able to see throughout the 12 years that I was in prison, that there were lots of mentions of his names and what I was thinking and what I was feeling and the pain I was going through not being able to have a relationship with him. And unfortunately, I've not been able to give him those diaries. They're in a locked box at my home at the moment. How has that been to deal with over the years, honestly?

How's that? What's that like? might have been the right decision at the time. What I didn't want to do is create a scenario where more pain was caused. And I think forcing, he would have been 12 years old at the time, forcing a 12 year old to have a relationship with a dad that he was told was not a good person, not a nice person, didn't love you, would be the wrong thing to do. And I came to terms with that there and then and accepted that if I was ever going to have a relationship with this son of mine that I'd never really got to know, it would have to be on his terms and not my term. And unfortunately, those terms, as far as I know, never materialized. I kind of accepted it. I kind of, as sad as it is and as much as I would advocate for any parent, and the funny thing

is I will stand there and say, what are you talking about? Go and meet your son or your daughter. It doesn't matter that you think they don't want to see you. It's your responsibility. I've just not been able to bring myself to do what I would tell other people to do because I'm scared, scared of maybe being rejected. You know know we all know what that might be like going and meeting this man and as you say he will know who i am he will know what i do and the success that i've made of my life um but for him not to to reach out to me maybe it's because he still doesn't want to know who his dad is sometimes it's as you've clearly't want to know who his dad is. Sometimes it's, as you clearly have, is to have empathy for their situation.

That's clearly what you've demonstrated is, you know, you don't know, I guess, what he's going through or dealing with, but you do know that if he did want to reach out, then he's probably clear on the channels of doing that. I think so. And there's a bit of me that also thinks maybe he's scared maybe he's scared that coming to me now would be too hard a thing i mean it's quite a dilemma isn't it both of us at both ends probably desperately want to rekindle this relationship and for me to introduce him to his brother and sister, you know, my kids. And I think about it on and off. I do think about it. I do think about how nice that would be, how lovely that would be. And you see other people make those things work but fear and being scared i don't know you know as tough as i am in the world that i work in when it comes to those kind of emotional feelings um i think it would be quite challenging it is challenging hence i've i've not taken the plunge i think so two months after his birth that's the day that the police kick in your door in the middle of the

night can you take me to that to that moment that day waking up in the middle of the night with these men stood above you with guns early hours of the morning i'm i'm in bed and i'm asleep and i heard a commotion four five o'clock in the morning and thought it was actually my best mate and his brother who often had arguments and started to walk down the stairs in my boxer shorts t-shirt. And then I saw men in balaclavas pointing guns at me, telling me to stand still, not moving, really loud voices

or they'd shoot me. I saw my best friend's brother being taken out of the flat at that moment, handcuffed, going backwards and my flat mate had already been moved out. And then I was told to come downstairs. I was told to lay on the floor. They put plastic handcuffs on my hands behind my back all the time, sort of shouting and threatening to shoot me if I moved, asking me whether there was anybody else in my flat. I didn't at that point really realize that they were the police because there was no police stop like you do in the movies. It was just guys pointing guns, screaming and shouting. I was disorientated and I was taken out of my flat. And it was only at that point I realised they were

police because there were other uniformed officers. These guys weren't uniformed officers. I think they'd gone to the S-17 squad or some of the firearms special squad or something. So it was only when I got out onto the landing outside of my flat and was dragged down the stairs that I first realized that they were the police and at that point I saw other tenants who were living in that hostel at the time also sort of face down on the floor and as we speak about it I remember one of my flatmates almost looking up to me with these eyes as the police were kind of knelt on his back. And you kind of never forget those images. They're kind of images that stick with you at those very moments.

And I was taken out of the flat. And it was at that point that police officers identified themselves, told me I was being arrested for serious offences. And then I was put in the back of a police van. And it was at that moment, you know, on reflection at the time, it was terrifying. It was horrible. It was wrong. And even though I was at that moment, you know, on reflection at the time, it was terrifying. It was horrible. It was, it was wrong. And even though I was involved in crime, there was nothing that warranted armed police coming to my property and arresting me. Well, at least I didn't think so anyway. But when I was in the back of that police van at that very moment, and I was in the back of the van with my best friend, Michael, Andy's brother, police officers opened the van with my best friend Michael and his brother. Police officers opened the van and

they called Michael's name and they removed him from the van and they called his brother's name and they removed him from the van. And there was something really strange about that because there was 12, 13 people arrested in that flat at that very time. They were all being bundled into different vans. But at that very moment, I was on my own. And I was on my own for the next 12 years from that very moment onwards. And there was something very indicative about what happened there to isolate me into something that I, a crime that I didn't commit. And it started at that very moment, as far as I'm concerned. How long did they interrogate you for? And when did you find out the crime that they were trying to sort of place you against? So you get taken, I was taken in this kind of woo woo woo, all the vans and the police,

taken to police stations in and around the Surrey, Canterbury, Caterham area. And I was debris um catering area and i was interrogated for two or three days it was you know after they'd taken my property and i was um i met a duty solicitor who came in to one of the police cells that i was held in who told me that i was being um i'd been arrested for aggravated burglary and other serious offenses but hadn't told me at that point that there was a murder, a series of aggravated robberies involved. So it was only during the interrogation, three days, three days. So it was on the 22nd of December that I was arrested. So on the 22nd of December, I was interrogated. The 23rd of December, the 24th of December, I was charged. So it was only during those interrogations with these police officers

that I discovered that I was being accused of a murder and a series of aggravated robberies that were in relation to crimes that had been committed around the M25 area. There was a huge amount of publicity at the time, but I was unaware of that publicity because I wasn't a kid that paid any attention to the news or had any interest in what was going on in the newspapers. But at the time, you know, the story of the M253 gang was on the front page of every national newspaper. Rewards were being offered for the arrest of these killers, these monsters, as the media were describing this gang.

But I was completely oblivious to any of that and only found out during that interrogation that I was being accused of murder, not knowing it was anything to do with that particular crime and the serious aggravated robberies. You know, I watch a lot of these police interrogation videos and I always, you can't help but wonder what you would do in that situation if you are innocent, what would say how you would be if you're triple

guessing your own body language or but in those interrogations when you find out what the crime is and you realize you have no this isn't me this I didn't do this I wasn't there what are you what are you thinking and feeling are you feeling that you're going to be out and they're gonna they've got the wrong guy and they're going to realize or are you are you terrified i think it's a combination of both you try to hide i tried to hide my fear and i think anybody would when you come from it goes back to that environment that i grew up in and my kind of experience is if you like with the police and you know people who are constantly in your face kind of thing and i think during the interrogation there was a lot of fear.

I was scared. But at the same time, I was cocky. I was a teenager. I was kind of almost for the first time in my life standing up for myself. I mean, you know, standing up for myself in a fight is one thing. Step against my peers or people. Standing up against the authority or authorities like police officers is a completely different mindset. started to tell me that I'd killed somebody, tell me that I was involved in these crimes and that people were saying that I was involved in these crimes that I knew I was not involved in. It allowed me to be a little bit cocky. Cocky is the only way of describing it, where I didn't shut up

and do a no comment thing. It's like, no, what are you talking about? I didn't do that no I wasn't there that's a lie so I was defending myself and standing up for myself from the very beginning and I think I think that that created a situation where the police themselves were having to to make my life harder more difficult in that interview room because I wasn't, I wouldn't say rollover, but I wasn't accepting what they were telling me I should accept. And that's not me saying that the police were trying to get me to confess for crimes that I didn't commit. It was more about them asserting their authority

and telling this little brown boy with dreadlocks who couldn't articulate himself like I can with you right now, that he was a murderer, that he was a bad person who'd done bad things and we've got you and we're going to lock you up for the rest of your life. That's what I was experiencing. So it was a terrifying experience and I was scared and I was on my own and I wasn't being supported by the solicitor at the time. But equally, at that moment, during that time, something started to grow in me that made me become the person that I am today. What is that thing that started to grow in you? hope and resilience and determination and this ability not to allow

someone else to dictate who you are what you're going to become what you should do what you shouldn't do it's as if they were planting seeds within me my physical body and in my mind that would grow over the next few months and years that I was wrongfully imprisoned, convicted of a murder and these crimes that I hadn't committed. I didn't realize it at the time, but on reflection, I realized in those moments where I'd always been a follower, followed my friends, followed the environment that I was in, got involved in things that if you'd asked me to do it on my own, I would never have done it because I'd been too scared to do it. You know, burglar house on my own, you're joking. I couldn't do something like that. But when my mates were doing it, yeah, I'd follow and get involved.

When we were going in shops together and shoplifting, I'd get involved, ask me to do it on my own and I'd be quite scared to do it. And so for the first time in those interrogations and during the early remand period, I became, I would say, a young man. And that's where the seeds of a young man for me started to grow when I was put in a predicament where there was no way out apart from drawing within myself the strength that I needed to get out. And for context, the crime that you were being accused of, what exactly was that crime? So there was a murder where an elderly man was attacked with his boyfriend in a field.

And during the course of that attack, he died of a heart attack, having suffered a beating from this gang of three men. The same three men that were involved in that attack, that hijacking of a car where the car was hijacked by three men, the man was beaten. The same three men then turned up at the property of some wealthy people in Surrey, broke into their home, tied up the occupants, attacked and stabbed one of the occupants. And then they fled that crime in the cars from that property and went to a third scene all in one night, all over the 15th, 16th of December, 1988. They then went to another crime scene, broke into the property of two occupants and tied up those occupants and fled with their

property. So those were the three crimes, murder, attempted murder, the stabbing and the aggravated robbery. And then the third aggravated robbery at the final scene so all of those crimes is what i was being accused of being involved in as your center sentencing and sort of the case approached were you hopeful were you hopeful that you were going to be found not guilty and be able to walk it wasn't steve about whether i was hopeful or or um know, what I felt, it was about the evidence. It was about the information that was available to everybody that was involved in this case. And by that, I mean me, my co-defendants and the lawyers that were defending and prosecuting, what was available through the victims of the crimes. And, you know, just before, and it's

important to mention, just before I was arrested and we talked about, or I talked about the headlines that were in the newspapers that I was not privy to at the time, there were calls for the police to arrest the two white men and one black man that were responsible for these crimes. And those detailed descriptions of the perpetrators who were involved in the murder and the series of robberies came from the victims of these crimes not just one victim at one scene but the crimes that i just described at three different locations each of the victims at those scenes described two white men and a black man one victim went so far as to say one of the white men had blue eyes and fair hair because they saw

that through the balaclava that they were wearing and they were up close this is not fleeting sort of csi kind of identifications where you can say where they may have made a mistake all three victims have three completely separate crimes has given descriptions to the police which were then relayed in the newspapers the news the world front page you know i came face to face with the kill for kicks gangs. That was the kind of headlines as witnesses saw the men attempting to burn the cars from one of the robberies. The two white men standing by the car terrify me. So I called the police. You know, these were witnesses outside of the victims who identified white men. So the fact that myself, brown guy, brown eyes, dreadlocks, my best mate, black guy, brown eyes, dreadlocks, and my third co-defendant who was arrested slightly later than I was, African black guy. None of us fit in the descriptions that the victims and the witnesses knew were responsible for these crimes. Yet I was charged. I was tried. I stood in the dock when the victims

came into court, looked at me and my co-defendants, who still had these dreadlocks, and I'd had these dreadlocks for years, looked at us in the dock and knew, must have known, that we were not responsible for the crimes that were perpetrated against them. And yet, when they told the jury that the descriptions of the men were two white and one black, their conviction was not as it should have been. And by that, I would argue that the police started to undermine their story to secure the convictions that they needed to secure. So when I talk about, and you asked the question, was I hopeful at this point that, you know, things would be successful at the trial? charged, let alone held on remand in a prison within a prison in Brixton for 18 months, let alone dragged into the dock to face these charges when everybody involved in the case knew

we could not and did not commit these crimes. So yes, I was confident when we were in the dock that the 12 men and women that would judge us would conclude that this is a racist unjust trial and they would be on our side but they weren't they convicted us and i was destined to spend the rest of my life in prison for the crimes i didn't commit that moment when you hear the verdict what what happens in your mind? What's that moment like? It's hard to reflect back. I know that being a young, volatile man that I was,

even though I'd learnt some self-control and discipline because I practised yoga in those 18 months of being banged up in a cell for 23 hours a day, that kept me going and practising taekwondo and doing in-cell press ups and all that so as well as physically preparing my body physically to withstand the onslaught of the trial um when i was in that dock i think i think again and i talk about those seeds that were planted in me during that interrogation time and what I discovered during the 18 months that I was in this

prison within a prison I think when that verdict came in as well as exploding and screaming and shouting and my parents family and supporters were angry I just wanted to fight everything and everyone for what was happening to me I'd already put up a lot of resistance, but there was a little chink that made me believe that it just couldn't happen. They couldn't convict me and send me to prison for crimes I didn't commit of such a serious nature. So as well as being volatile at that very moment, I continued to be volatile for the next God knows how many years.

And the only person that suffered was me. I was the only person that suffered spending years in isolation, segregation, being beaten physically by, but I didn't recognize that at the time. So when I heard that verdict, it put a seed in me again that said, no, I'm not going to, I'm not going to let you do this. I'm not going to sit back and suffer this. Why should I? Why should my family, why should you get away with this? No, I'm not going to allow that to happen. And that became that seed that grew me in the years that followed. And what was the sentence? I was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder. I was sentenced to 15 years for the attempted murder. I was sentenced to 12 years for the attempted murder, aggravated robbery. I was sentenced to 12 years for the assault on the guy that was with the guy that died and another 12 years for the final robbery, totaling life plus 56 years, I think, if my calculations are right. But in reality, my sentence was life

never to be released. Because when you get a life sentence, if you maintain your innocence, and you don't conform to the regime, and jump through the hoops of accepting guilt, you don't get released. Not when I was locked up in prison. I think things may have changed now because people recognise that the system gets things wrong and people have been released despite the fact they've continuously protested their innocence. Many years after, you know, their convictions or sentences have been served. Life sentence in this country can mean anything from 12 years to 30 years.

But I was destined to spend the rest of my natural life in prison for crimes I didn't commit. You know this podcast is streamed in prisons. Did they tell you? I have a lot of supporters in prison. Really? I do. Actually, I think people admire the work that I do,

having come out of prison from that predicament and go on to try and advocate for prisons, prisoners, but not just people who, but also representing the families and the victims and everybody and anyone that's in prison. So it's great to know that any prisoner listening to this story, sitting in a cell, believing that they're innocent or even guilty but not seeing a light at the end of the tunnel, take it from me, there is a fucking light at the end of the tunnel if only you use your time constructively. If you sit on your bed, sit in your cell, look at the bars and don't do something to change the person that put you in prison, especially the guilty ones,

they're just going to end up back in prison or your destiny is going to fall flat if you have any destiny. Use the time constructively. That would be my argument to any guy in prison listening to this because you can. You have at your disposal what a lot of people in this world don't have and that's time. Fuck me, they have some time. Not just for reflection but to use it constructively. I went to one of the prisons that streams the podcast. So we did a deal with Her Majesty's Prison Service

where they have a screen in their cell and they can watch this podcast and these conversations. And I got to go a couple of weeks ago, two weeks ago, I think it is maybe three weeks ago and meet the prisoners, talk to them, go inside their cells. They told me about the different episodes they'd been watching.

I get feedback as well on the episodes, which is amazing. But it was a really, you're totally right what you said about the time thing i could see how they have the thing that so much of you know in terms of time that we find in our very busy lives we're always trying to find a couple more minutes more they were using their time in the most amazing sometimes incredibly inspiring ways i got handed business plans that i literally have upstairs. You know, I saw crafts, things they'd made out of soap that I couldn't believe were, were possible. Um, but it, but, but at the same time, there was, um, a real feeling that these, these young men were at a very important crossroads.

And that's, I think that's what sort of stunned me into silence as I left was I could see the crossroads quite clearly. And it goes back to what you said at the start of this conversation, where I felt with some of them that were, that wanted to better themselves, or at least told me they wanted to better themselves. They were lacking like role models in the context back home or information on how to, once they returned to the environment they'd come from, how create that life and that was the thing that i really struggled with i almost felt a responsibility leaving there thinking how can what can i do to help that young kid who's handed me this business plan which is amazing because

clearly he spent so much time on it but i know that when he leaves the system he's going to fall back into an environment where there isn't entrepreneurs and there isn't anybody to tell him how to start that business or whatever it might be. But you know, support my foundation. That's what you should do. But the important thing is during my time inside, I didn't study the law, but I got to know what the law was all about because I needed to fight my wrongful convictions by understanding the law. Journalists were writing stories about me being a monster. The Sun newspaper was calling for hanging to be brought back. And if they had their way, I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you today because I would have been hung, strung up for a crime I didn't commit. And then pardoned 10, 15 years later when they

recognized my innocence. Fortunately, I was shrewd enough, and this would be my message to prisoners, to be shrewd enough that I studied a correspondence journalism course in prison because I knew I needed the media to tell you and other people on the outside world that I was innocent. So I studied a correspondence journalism course in prison because I knew I needed the media to tell you and other people on the outside world that I was innocent. So I studied the media to understand how the media worked so that I could plant stories in newspapers, national newspapers, challenging issues to do with prison or disclosure of evidence or conviction. So not specifically about my case, although that was my ultimate motive. It was about understanding how journalists work and then using those journalists to get my message out there. And so that would be my argument, that guy's giving you their kind of business plan. Why give it to you? Why not take that business plan, understand it themselves and do it for themselves? Yes, they do need somebody to offer them a space or a piece of opportunity, but they need to do it for themselves. And that's what I learned during those early years or late years that I was in prison, that you cannot rely on one person to dig you out or help you out of the situation. You have to do

it yourself, which is why I say these seeds that were planted in me from the beginning, they grew into the resilience, the determination, you know, hope, which is, you know, everyone has a story, don't they, about hope, you know, how we listen to other people. It's self-determination that you can only find when you discover yourself in a situation that you cannot control. You have no control over, but you can control what you do for yourself. Giving you their business plan, hoping that you will do something for them would be great but you can't do it for everyone so they have to do it for themselves if i'd asked you then say a couple of years into your um your sentence if you were going to spend the rest of your life in prison what would you have said to me no i was never going to spend the rest of my life in prison for a crime I didn't commit.

I was not going to come out of there in a box. I was not going to let them kill me. And there have been and was occasions where prison officers beat me so badly, the easiest way to get through it would have been to die. I was not going to spend the rest of my life in prison because I was going to fight for my freedom. Initially, I thought it was the physical fight that was going to get me there, confronting the prison officers, fighting prisoners, getting involved in volatile and violent situations was my way out. That was really just me escaping the reality of the suffering

that I was going through, inflicting pain on others, being inflicted pain on me was a way of kind of dampening that pain, that suffering. It wasn't until I started to educate myself around the areas I needed to educate myself and also grow up and become more wiser and listening to the wiser guys who had spent many, many years in prison and were telling me, don't do it the way you're doing it. You will not get out. Some high profile miscarriage of justice individuals who have been successful in their own campaigns were telling me,

you can't do it the way that you're doing it you need to you know get the tools pens and paper I remember having my first tick tick typewriter and a tick tick tick in my cell that's what we're dealing with there was no internet there was no emails there was no mobile phones or anything like that I was doing it with the raw materials you know tick tick tick made a spelling mistake how came the tippex I'd go through the tippex and sit because I had time wait for it to fucking dry and then I could tick tick over it again and sit because I had time, wait for it to fucking dry. And then I could tick, tick over it again and carry on writing the document that I was writing. So you can imagine one piece of paper. I'm writing an application to European Court, 200 pages long.

Can you imagine how long that took me on a bloody typewriter? Because there were no computers and no access to anything but that typewriter. Can't remember who I got that typewriter from or where it came from, but I'm truly grateful because not only did it give me the tool to fight my wrongful conviction, but it allowed me to understand myself and to learn for myself how to use new words, how to articulate myself, how to express myself, how to win an argument, how to change a situation. And that's what I did in that time that I was. And we're talking seven, eight years into my prison sentence now. So no, I was never going to spend the rest of my life in prison because I was going to fight for my freedom until I was freed. And I did, and I won. One of the things I read was, was how one day you saw someone had taken their own life

in one of the cells near yours. You know, the, the burden of having to deal with, you know, being convicted for a crime you didn't commit is one thing. But then being exposed to these kind of things as a young man, these are images that I imagine don't ever sort of leave your mind, unfortunately. No. This was an elderly black guy, been in prison probably 20 years for murder. He was hoping that he would get released and he got a letter. You know, people ignored him. He's the kind of guy that you kind of walk past most of the time

and you might give him a little bit of burn, cigarettes for him to smoke or something, but he's one of those guys that you kind of, you know he's there but he's not imposing or anything. But he got that letter from the parole board that denied him the next opportunity to be released. And after 20 odd years in prison, he knew that he was destined to spend probably another five or ten years in prison. And he took his life.

He hung himself and he killed himself. It wasn't the first time that I saw somebody die. In fact, I saved a guy's life. When I was in one of the last prisons that I was in, I became a gym orderly, somebody that helped other people, PE instructor, you could say, within prison, the only job I would do. And so I would be let out of my cell slightly earlier than most guys and I was let out of my cell doing my thing going down to the gymnasium and I was walking past a guy's cell and I saw

his legs dangling and I run into the cell and I grabbed his legs and I lifted him up and he was you know doing as you do you he was shaking and i managed to get him down didn't know what to do you know he didn't die he recovered i went to the gym on my way back he was quite rude actually because i saved his life he wasn't grateful or thankful um and it was an awkward one because i thought I saved this guy's life. I did what anybody would have done. And the strange thing is he just got on with it. He didn't, nobody knew, nobody knew what he'd attempted except me because I stopped him from doing what he was doing. I never found out why he attempted to take his own life. But you live with those stories never having an answer

and that's prison for you. There are people in there who have done horrific things and you know they've done horrific things. And there are people in there who shouldn't be there, not because they're innocent, simply because they did what they did to survive or to provide for their family but you never know why you never get the real answers because some people are just not prepared to share it what was this about the police paying some witnesses or paying someone to to give false evidence that i that reading. There was, at the time that the police were hunting this gang, a reward put up, £5,000 in 1988, a lot of money, £20,000 by the Daily Mail, making the reward £25,000. And so the theory, and I say it's theory because we've never been given the documents to prove what we know is true. So the theory is that one of the key witnesses in my case who gave evidence against me that led to my convictions was one of my ex-girlfriends. Alongside her was a white guy who was a suspect at one point, the only person in the case with blue eyes and fair hair,

which fitted the description of the perpetrator. But he was a known police informer and worked on other cases with the police. So there was a conclusion that he and this girlfriend of mine were paid that reward money to give false evidence. And that was part of the evidence that we presented to the European Court of Human Rights. And they said that the prosecution, the police and the Daily Mail need to disclose whether these witnesses did get this money,

because if they did, it would explain their incentive to tell lies. So the girlfriend, for example, just to put this into context, when I was on remand and she was my alibi, incentive to tell lies. So the girlfriend, for example, just to put this into context, when I was on remand and she was my alibi as well as a prosecution witness. So I was in bed making love with her on the night that these crimes were being committed. I was in bed making love with her at the very moment that the murder was being committed, some 40 miles away from where I lived. Despite that alibi, I was still convicted. So if you think the identification issue is outrageous, the fact that I was in bed with a girlfriend making love at the time the murder was committed, she tells the police that, the

prosecution accept that, but then say it's a mystery how I got to the scene of the crime. There's no mystery. I wasn't there. She sent me a letter when I was on remand in Brixton Prison apologising for the lies that she told. And the lies that she told for the police was that I left her at 1.30 in the morning after we made love. The murder had already been committed by 11 o'clock that night. The first robbery had already been committed by half past 12. So even on her lies, it still didn't allow for me to be a part of this gang

and a part of these crimes. So when she sent me this letter to Brixton Prison, I presented it to my defence, the prosecution, become aware of it. And we believe that she was paid a reward to say that she sent me that letter because she wanted to help me and it wasn't true. So the reward, we believe, was paid to her to tell lies for the police and to this police informer for him to tell lies. And we still believe that today, despite the fact that the prosecution using public interest immunity certificates, so these kind of secret documents, have still to this day never disclosed

who got that reward money. I wrote to the Daily Mail and said, you paid this money to these witnesses who have been told, who have told lies. You paid this money to these witnesses who have been told, who have told lies. You paid this money to a witness who was a key suspect and could be responsible for these crimes. Surely there is an onus and a responsibility on you, the Daily Mail, to disclose this information. And they never did to this day. And did you ever write to her and ask her if she received the money? No, I didn't know how to.

And I didn't, I didn't feel that was, that was necessary. I, I knew she lied. She knew she lied. Um, we got, when the rough justice program was made, they secretly recorded the guy on their show, admitted that he conspired with the police. This was one of the key pieces of new information that Rough Justice broadcast. But they secretly recorded this witness admitting to them that he'd fabricated evidence for the police in the M25 case. He didn't know that they were secretly recording that conversation for the program they were making about my case. And so that in itself became a key piece of evidence. But I never, from my conviction to this day,

had any contact with the ex-girlfriend or that guy who we know told lies. I read this other quite funny in some ways, quite perverse in other ways, story about a chaplain. You know what I'm going to say? Yes, I do. Bizarre things happen in prison for bizarre people.

And we benefit from it. Yeah, clearly. I mean, you can tell the story. For those who want to hear, this story is about a chaplain, right? So prison is a place where you don't have conjugal visits, i.e., you know, married men and women who are in prison are not entitled to have any intimacy with their husband, wife, girlfriends when they're in prison. That's just not how it works in this country. In other countries, it does. But in this country, it doesn't.

But there are some people in prison, including this chaplain in this particular prison, who had sympathy for prisoners. He had an understanding that intimacy and opportunity for intimacy was limited. could get your loved one outside, girlfriend outside, or someone you wanted to have sex with outside, write the chaplain a letter to say to the chaplain that you are thinking about dumping your boyfriend, or you get that letter and take it to the chaplain and say, I've just received this dear John, a dear John being a letter from a girlfriend or a loved one outside saying that they don't want anything more to do with you, and that you need a private visit, a visit that is not in the visiting hall with everybody else, but maybe in a, you know, quieter place. And so this chaplain was known for helping people out in this way. So he would allow people to book this private visit where they would have their

loved one come in, their girlfriends or their wives come in. But what he had was a hole in the wall. And what he did is he used to spy on people who were in those private visits, who took those opportunities to have a quick bit of sex. And he was spying on them. And they discovered that he had this hole in the wall and was watching prisoners have sex with their wives or girlfriends during these encounters. Now, I would argue that most prisoners wouldn't care less because I was one of those prisoners. And after 10 years, for the first time, I was able to have intimacy

to the point where I came in nanoseconds kind of thing. I know the detail too much, but the reality is when you've been wanking for so many years and you've not had any intimacy, it is a real hard thing not to not come in second nanoseconds but but to rekindle those kind of relationships you know how to become intimate with somebody when you've been deprived of that for so long how you and as i said at the beginning of this you know i wasn't somebody who had people coming up on the visit giving me big hugs and cuddles so it was a real real challenge just one of the challenges that you face at the end of being in prison and there are many many more the psychological as well as the the physical but I was privileged to be in

one of those rooms on one of these occasions would I have reported that chaplain that he was watching me no I wouldn't I would have used it to get another visit but unfortunately somebody did grass on him and so he was removed from the prison system and that privilege that the prison officers didn't know about stopped was he a priest or something was he he was a priest who worked in the prison and how was he getting getting these women in so this was one of your ex-girlfriends so he wasn So he wasn't smuggling them in or anything like that. So they would come through the normal visiting channels, but you would have approval from the priest or the chaplain to have this visit, not in the normal visiting hall, but in the chapel. As a religious thing? even religious but they have a chapel in prison where people can go and they can practice their religions but they would have rooms in there um you know it might be his office in on this occasion it was like a communal area that the chaplaincy and people coming in to visit him on official

visit would sit down and have a cup of tea and whatever i was in the room with my kind of pen pal girlfriend if you like at the time um I'm going to give you the graphic detail because it's important. So, you know, we're kind of doing it. We're kind of like, I'm kind of going at it. No, no second time. And he walked into the room as I was kind of mid flow, if you like, and picked up the tea and biscuits or he dropped off or picked up. I can't remember if he dropped off the tea and biscuits,

but he didn't bat an eyelid. He literally just came into the room. We were kind of about to kind of react in a way, but we didn't have any time. He just literally came in, picked up the tray or dropped off the tray and just walked straight back out. So he was well aware that anybody he agreed to give one of those visits, it would be an an opportunity and i saw it as a great thing

you know there are not many people in prison who have sympathy for prisoners or would do something to allow them a moment like i was allowed on on that occasion and after such a long time of no intimacy um i was grateful for it gutted that he lost his job i'm sure people have a lot of mixed feelings about it so i won't i won't i won't comment on uh on my own views but i'm sure people have a lot of different mixed opinions on on that and the kind of perverse behavior what was the first domino that fell that ultimately led to your release i think it was the BBC Rough Justice programme. So this is a programme that used to exist on primetime BBC One. And it was a programme where journalists investigated potential

miscarriages of justice. And I'd had journalists at this point already visit me in prison. And as you rightly say, when I made those calls or spoke to them when I shouldn't have spoke to them, I used to get punished for it because there was a policy, you know, where prisoners were not allowed to talk to journalists and tell journalists their stories, not necessarily because they were victims of a miscarriage of justice. It just wasn't allowed because it was something to protect victims. But it was really when, after journalists had started to write stories about me, so my tack, my tactic, if you like, of understanding journalism started to work.

I was getting journalists coming to meet me. They were starting to question the safety of my tactic, if you like, of understanding journalism started to work. I was getting journalists coming to meet me. They were starting to question the safety of my conviction or at least writing stories about who I was 10 years on. You know, the person that was deemed a monster, the person that was supposed to be the leader of this M25 gang, etc. But I was sitting on the toilet in my cell in Kingston prison and we had this little TV monitor. Mobile phones didn't still exist at this point so there were TVs on these little kind of boxes and there was one

circulating around the prison and it was given to me that night because the BBC rough justice program were about to broadcast an hour-long investigation into my wrongful convictions. That was the first domino, I think. That was where a credible platform like the BBC, with serious journalists who knew their stuff, took these things serious, started to question my conviction. And that led to another launch of other media outlets taking an interest. But the application I told you about that I tapped on my typewriter to European Court of Human Rights was, I think, the final straw. Because when 21 judges at the European Court of Human Rights unanimously concluded that I was denied the right to a fair trial because the police had conspired with witnesses and suppressed evidence and there were questions about the identity of the true perpetrators when those 21 judges told the british court system to re-look at my conviction that was the kind of final straw and i knew then that my convictions were going to be overturned. So take me to the moment that you found out

that you were going to be released and what the context that brought you to that moment. Well, I've just talked about the European court decision. So the unanimous decision from the judges, that judgment came down. My lawyers were kind of bouncing up and down saying, this is it, this is the moment, the appeal call and the home secretary.

I mean, I'd been on hunger strike and did many other little stunts that were quite serious to my own well-being and health to try and draw attention to my plight, if only to get journalists to tell other people what I was going through in the hope that other people would support me. And it worked, they did. And they made enough noise for the politicians and the system to understand that there was this guy who'd been in prison for many years for a serious offence that he didn't commit, who was not giving up.

And it worked because even the prison guards were now slipping newspapers under my door with the article and banging on my door and saying, good luck. You know, a couple of years earlier, they were banging open my door and dragging me down the segregation block and giving me a kick in because in their eyes, I was a convicted guilty man who was just making trouble for the prison system. And so by the time I got to the court of appeal, so I take them from Kingston prison in Portsmouth,

to Pentonville prison in London, met up with my co-defendant for the first time in many years, Michael, and the other co-defendant. We went into the appeal call and there was this three-week hearing in front of some senior judges about the rights and wrongs of the evidence, non-disclosure of evidence, payment of rewards, issue around identification. So the whole case, just between my defence lawyer, the prosecution and the judges, was played out almost like it was at the original trial, only now there was far more information. There was a European court decision.

There was a secret recording from the BBC Rough Justice programme. So all this was being played out. And there was a lot of attention from journalists, only this time on my side, as opposed to, you know, writing that I'm a monster and everything. So we've won over the journalists who were also concerned about our convictions. But even on the last day of that hearing, the judges were pretty cruel, actually, in that they didn't make a

decision there. And then they knew they were going to quash my conviction. They knew, as did the prosecutor, they knew that they couldn't withhold this conviction anymore. But what they did is they reserved judgment. And despite my defense barrister saying, well, you know, you should be freeing these men at least on bail until that judgment is made, they didn't. And so I was dragged back down to the courts and taken back to the prison where I waited for another, and this was in the year 2000, where I waited for another few months, few weeks, sorry, before I got that knock on my cell door from the governor saying, can you come down? I've got something to tell you. Your case decision is coming in tomorrow. So we need to take you back

down to London today. And I walked up those steps at the court of appeal on the very last day. The judges quashed my convictions, made some derogatory remarks about the safety or non-safety of my convictions. But it was over. My convictions were quashed. And at that moment, it's hard to describe how I felt because I didn't feel anything. I really didn't feel anything until I was taken back down the stairs. They did something that I was unable to do in all those years that I was in prison. And that was open the last door that didn't have a handle on the inside. So in all the years that I was in prison, I never opened a door for myself. So this last door down in the dungeons of the Court of Appeal in central London

was opened by a prison officer for the last time. And I knew that I was walking out of that door. Didn't think about it at that very moment, but on reflection and realizing that that door that was being opened would be the last door that I wouldn't be able to open for myself. And when I walked out of the court of appeal door and I saw my sisters, my mum and my supporters, I was able to fall into the arms of my youngest sister, who was my most, my biggest advocate, and cry for the very first time. And at that moment, the anger and the bitterness and the volatility in me and everything that got me through those 12 years

almost fell off of me onto the floor in those tears. And that changed me almost instantly. And that was probably, it was the only time I'd cried in all those 12 years since I'd been wrongly convicted. It was also the first time where I probably relaxed. You know, the threat of violence in prison is always there the dangers that come with being in prison um the lack of having anything and and all the the big things like not being able to open the door or make decisions and choices for yourself all of that was lifted from me at that very moment where I I would I'd won back my freedom. I fought so fucking hard for

my freedom at that moment. I'd won it, my sister'd won it, my mum, my dad, my other sisters, my campaigners, the journalists, all those people that came on my side. My family were always there, but all these other people that were now on my side. Together, we walked to the front of the Court of Appeal and I'm waving my fist and I'm shouting, you know, I spent all of my twenties locked up in maximum security prisons in Britain for crimes that I didn't commit, the best years of my life. I don't know what I would have become, Steve, as you asked me at the beginning. But what I do know is that in those 20 years, I could have become anything. I could have met a person and been offered an opportunity. I could have been dead. I could

have been anything. But what I was, was wrongfully convicted and imprisoned for 12 years where I couldn't love anyone, couldn't kiss anyone, couldn't hug anyone, couldn't do the things that people were doing in their 20s, developing friendships, relationships. None of that was afforded to me. So when I walked down those steps and I shouted in the media because there was interest in my convictions being overturned, that they'd stolen those years, all of that was a release for what happened next in my life. Did they ever say you were innocent, the criminal justice system? Did they ever?

By quashing my conviction, they accepted that the evidence against me was unsafe. As I said, when the judge quashed my convictions and made comments about no declaration of innocence or this is not a judgment of innocence. Well, who puts them in a position to make those kind of decisions? But it was typical of the kind of racist system that I'd experienced. We'd beaten the system.

We'd shown them that they'd locked up three black men for a crime and crimes they didn't commit, and they just could not accept that. And so their final word at the appeal court to try and damage or limit the damage that he had done to the criminal justice system was to say something that would make journalists question whether these men should be released or shouldn't be released. But the simple fact that the judges had reached the conclusion that our convictions were unsafe, the simple fact that they quashed my convictions and released me from the hellhole that I'd been in for the last 12 years was indicative that they knew because they'd already rejected my appeal many years ago. And for years

on, they wouldn't hear my appeal. So there was a damage limitation. And if they really, in my view, if they really believe people are guilty in prison, regardless of the information and evidence, they don't release them. You don't get out. The court of appeal is one of the hardest places to get your convictions overturned. So when I walked out, despite the judge's reservations and the court's reservations, I was released an innocent man. They recognised that the Home Office have a criteria

where they only compensate people who are innocent. And I was compensated for the years that I was in prison. The rules have changed now and they don't compensate people who have been wrongly convicted, miscarriage of justice victims, unless there is some insurmountable information where they have an obligation. And I don't quite know how it understands, but it was indicative when the home secretary in my case the new home secretary I think it was Jack Straw at the time um agreed to compensate us ridiculous amounts of money not as in wealthy they could never compensate me for a day of my life in prison let alone 12 years but it was again another indication and a vindication of how years have been wrongly

imprisoned when i've read through all of your research i was wondering about this i was wondering if there was ever a a first of all uh they were clear that they came out and said you're innocent which i think is really really important because it was kind of ambiguous that the statement there's no ambiguity here my convictions were quashed and I was freed as an innocent man. Judges' comments... It was an apology made. Judges' comments that made it seem like they were trying not to... Again, it was that damage limitation.

It was judges sort of saying, you know, these convictions are unsafe and we're releasing these men, but we're not saying they're innocent. Yeah, that bit, which I think is a bit of an arsehole thing to do if you've just admitted that the case can't does it can't stand but that's the system we work under you know to convict three black men when the crimes are committed by two white one black man that in itself is indicative of how unfair our system is and that was another indication and an apology i was trying to figure out if there was an apology from someone i got an

apology about a year and a half ago from a senior police officer who i interviewed on my podcast um for the metropolitan police and he that's the only apology i've ever had i've never had an apology from the courts i've never had an apology from the criminal justice system per se but i did get an apology it was more of a kind of like rafael loved he beat you and i'm really sorry what happened to you so from that side of the world that was probably the only time someone said sorry to me. But I don't need sorries. I don't want sorries. They can't give me back my 12 years of 12 million sorries.

It just doesn't work for me. And then the last point was compensation, which was obviously, as you've said, they can't compensate. They don't compensate. It's a policy. They do not compensate. But I mean, even if they gave you a gazillion pounds, it doesn't compensate for taking 12 years of a round. They don't give you a gazillion pounds, trust me. But they gave you a decent compensation,

as in like a big monetary number? They give you, I won't say the figure, but they do give you, you know, tens of thousands of pounds. Okay. Which is an amount that they deem to be, depending on your circumstance, if I was you and ended up in prison because of all the loss they probably have to give you lots of money probably wouldn't give you anything that you're

worth or that you've earned so it's relative to it's relative to what your circumstance is and then they charge you for bed and board fucking hell so i spent 12 years in prison for a crime i didn't commit and then out of my compensation they deduct bed and board bed and lod lodgings. So from my fucking compensation, they then took, so they give me a lump sum. So let's say they give me a hundred thousand pounds from that hundred thousand pounds. They calculate how much it would have cost me to pay rent in a single room in a flat. And then they deduct it from your compensation, psychological, psychiatric, any kind of help that you need mentally or even physically or even your health that has deteriorated during those years in prison, they then put that within your

compensation. They don't give you extra to go and get psychological or psychiatric help, which is something that I think anybody who's come out of prison wrongly convicted needs or even somebody who has mental health issues before they go into prison. But that's not factored in. I was very fortunate that I fell into another institution, the BBC, and started a career there that I didn't have time to see a psychiatrist or a psychologist. Biggest mistake I ever made because I think it would have done me good. What are those scars?

You talk about psychological scars. What are those scars? I think it's the things that we are entitled to as human beings, love, emotion, being able to be open and honest with the person that you love and care about, being able to talk to the person that you love and done because I have been so protective of what I say to people out of fear that they will misuse that information to get me into trouble or just having a conversation with somebody that they turn that into something that it wasn't. He said this to me when I didn't. So there has been this innate fear in me over the years I was in prison and when I first got out of prison. And there's also the inabilities to do things, make choices for yourself that are really challenging.

You know, I remember when I started my relationship not long after I got out of prison, I just couldn't make a decision for myself. I really struggled to make simple decisions for myself and felt like a child again, turning to the person that I'm supposed to be developing a relationship with, a girlfriend, and asking them things that they laughed about at the beginning.

It was quite funny because they kind of got it that I'd been deprived of those abilities for so long but then it becomes quite quite stressful quite challenging to be able to stand there and sort of say you know well what should i do i don't know what to do because someone's always made those decisions for me you know do i take from curly whirly or the marathon you know know, you think it's simple stuff, but when you've not been able to have a choice because there was only one thing on offer, i.e., you know, happy baked beans as opposed to Heinz baked beans,

and then all of a sudden you've got happy baked beans, Heinz baked beans, and all the other bloody baked beans or all the other coffees, and you're used to one, being able to, and I still struggle with that. I know people do in life struggle with it, but it's heightened when those decisions are taken away. And I liken it to, you know, the lockdown period. You know, people say to me, oh God, that lockdown period

is equivalent to being in prison. You do have a handle on the inside of your bedroom door. You can open that door and walk out your bedroom door. You do have a handle on the inside of your front door. You can step outside. In prison, I was never able to to do that and neither are other prisoners and i'm not saying you shouldn't feel sorry for people like that it's just let's not compare things that are very different and that's not me in the slightest steve saying that people that

struggle during the lockdown period and even now as a result of covid and what it did to them financially etc i'm not undermining that one little bit but what i am saying is that those period and even now as a result of COVID and what it did to them financially, et cetera. I'm not undermining that one little bit. But what I am saying is that those psychological challenges that I had to overcome now I'm out of prison and also running parallel to my new developed career as a journalist, somebody who never held a mobile phone until I come out of prison, no access to the internet, never used a computer, never held a microphone, did lots of interviews with journalists, but not on the other side and bluffing my way initially with all these esteemed journalists who'd spent their whole life

trying to get to where I got to within 12 months of getting out of prison. What does that say about the BBC? I don't know. What I did have was determination. What I did have was this ability to look the other man or woman in the eye who thought that I wasn't good enough and that I didn't have the skills or I didn't have the appearance because I still had my dreadlocks, brown skin, brown eyes and dress very differently, sounded very differently. Not only did I have my South East London accent, but I also had the prison slang that came with that South East London accent when I became a reporter on the Radio 4 Today programme, where there are

people who say you can only be on that programme if you speak the Queen's English. I'm far from speaking the Queen's English. My vocabulary has changed over the years. But I was sitting alongside some people who were supportive, but they had a difference. It might have been that they were gay and were hiding their sexuality. And so there was a kind of kindred that we didn't even know we had, but for some reason they accepted me. But as I say, I was often sort of referred to in the media at that time as this kind of convicted prisoner working in the BBC Today programme.

It didn't matter to me. And I was very lucky that Greg Dyke at the time was making big statements about the BBC being hideously white. And he was very supportive of the fact that the BBC had employed me. And that helped. After this remarkable career you've had following um following that day of your release in terms of your journalistic career working at the bbc then going on and having this mega hit netflix show that everybody loves and that is shot and produced

in a very original way in terms of like empathy and such have you watched it yes i've watched it yeah and most of my team have watched it i think pretty much all of them okay it's good and they've um we're in a car last week watching it on the way to uh maybe on the way back from the prison we're in we were getting we were spending the day in and holly and my team was yeah is holly here today oh she's yeah she was very excited to say the least at us having this conversation today. Oh, great. You travel all over the world going to prisons, meeting prisoners and seeing the conditions.

And also reflecting on your own experience, what have you learned about the importance of hope? You know, one of the things I wanted to ask you was, had you not taken to that typewriter and fought and not accepted the sentence? Would you still be sat there now knowing what you know about the system? Hope got me through prison. Hope, when you think about it, hear other people's stories, right? Hear other people's evidence evidence so there is an acronym for hope that we can use hear other people's experiences and that's what I do that's what I do when I go around the world

making my Netflix story I don't judge people because I know what it's been like to be judged. I hear other people's experience. That's where my hope comes from. That's what I give to people. So long before I discover that they are a serial killer in my Netflix show, long before I hear about the cruel things, wicked things that they've been involved in or have experienced in their own lives in terms of trauma. I hear their stories. I listen to what they have to say without judgment. I may judge them after I've discovered what they've done. And I do on some occasions around sexual offenses in particular. But I don't judge someone because I've been in that predicament where I've been judged so many times and people have reached a conclusion of who I am and what I'm like long before they've even had a conversation with me or taken the time to discover what I'm really like, as opposed to what

they read about me or what they think about me. And so, you know, that's one of the things that, that, that I learned at the beginning when I started to shoot the Netflix series and going around the world in prison, it wasn't an easy thing to do. You know, I spent all these years trying to get out of prison, as I've said many times. So willingly to go back in and, you know, do this for a television program. But I decided to do it because I want to educate people. When I was in the isolation cell, stripped naked, bleeding and bruised. Nobody heard my voice. I screamed and I shouted through the pain that I was suffering. Nobody heard my voice. When I was

even sitting in my cell in my prison uniform on telling people I was innocent, nobody heard my voice. What I've been able to do in this show is force people who watch the show to hear other people's voice. That's not them questioning whether they're guilty or innocent, whether what they did is good or bad. It's just giving a platform in a secret world that we hear very little of. We have all these mythical programs breaking, you know, Prison Break and other, you know, Oranges and New Blacks. We have these programs that kind of sensationalize or glorify what prison could be like. But the reality is sitting down with a man who's done some horrific things, telling his story, trying to understand why they've done what they've done,

and then finding the balance between how you then rehabilitate somebody like that. Is it possible? But also from the victim's point of view, how do you treat somebody once they've been sent to prison for punishment? Should they continue to be punished in prison should they live in these inhumane conditions where they're not fed or they're not provided with the basic human rights that we all are entitled to whether you are a prisoner or not a prisoner and that includes the staff because people that go into these environments to work

um you know they don't deserve to be treated like subhumans just because they work in these environments but they are yeah i've got a ton of respect for them you know especially after visiting that prison i i i had a huge amount of admiration for the staff that work there and what they they also um go through and a lot of them had very from the ones that i spoke to very um good intentions as to why they'd become come to work in the prison which in many respects reminded me of like many of the teachers I met when I went undercover in a school and got to meet them in teachers in rough areas um but this this also led to your foundation which could you tell me what your what your objective is with your foundation

and what your and why I? I think it's simple. I mean, it came about simply because having been to so many prisons around the globe and having witnessed so much suffering that is unnecessary, you know, regardless of what you think about prisoners, and I know there were lots of people out there who think that they don't deserve any better, although surprisingly, as a result of my Netflix show, a lot of people have written to me from all over the globe saying,

oh, my God, I believe that they should be locked up and the key should be thrown away. But having watched your show, I have a different perspective. No one should be treated like that. No one should be, et cetera, et cetera. So that in itself, and all of the messages I get are so positive. I really can't think of any messages that I've had from people. There are occasions, of course, but 99.9% of the messages that I get from people all over the globe, ask me how they can help, what they can do. In my recent Moldova episode, I interviewed two guys, one of them killed an elderly lady and a young lady, and the other one killed a woman, a police officer. And I've had an avalanche of messages from people asking to send them gifts

because they talk about you know their elderly parents having to look after them but they're going to die soon and then they and people ask and I'm thinking well there is humanity so that's what my foundation is about it's about humanity it's about treating people re-humanized and so we have this strapline rethink re-humanize and reintegrate. And for me, it's about the policy makers and decision makers, but also businesses outside of these locations where these prisons are getting involved to rethink what the purpose of prison is and what we can do to educate or skill up, train individuals that are in prison that are not being given these opportunities keys because there is no resource to provide these opportunities. If you went along to Felton the

other day, you would have witnessed programs and projects that they're probably running with the prisoners that may provide an opportunity if these guys take these opportunities to change their lives. Steve, trust me, in many of the places that I've been around the world, they just do not exist. People who have had traumatic lives that have led to them ending up in prison, doing the things that they do, have no therapy or any help. They are not afforded any education to address their offending behavior, which means they are potentially going to commit more crime when they get out of prison. And I think we should care about that and we should try and do something about that.

What can you do? Okay, a hungry man can be an angry man. So if I'm going into Papua New Guinea and there are prisoners who can't be fed, surely there is a sustainable way because they have the land in the prison. Surely there is a way that we can teach them to grow tomatoes or potatoes, and they can be self-sufficient, so they can provide for themselves. Why can't a local business do that? Why can't the government do that? So the foundation is about rethinking the policies in prison,

how to rehumanize the way we treat prisoners. I've seen some of the most horrific videos that you would ever imagine seeing. And I could show you these videos that prisoners have sent me of the murders that take place, that they're filming on mobile phones. I mean, how dehumanizing and desensitizing is that for a prisoner to send me a WhatsApp message of a video as they are killing someone in that very moment, that is barbaric. And I'm saying, why? Why would another young man like you video the decapitating and what they're doing to other young men for no other reason than they belong to another gang or because they did. And I've seen quite a few of these videos where riots were kicked off in

certain places that I've been to and I've met these individuals. And I'm thinking, why? And it's simply because these young men have never been told that gang life, violence is wrong. And I mean that when I say that, because they don't have therapists or psychologists or ngo groups charities working in these places trying to address the issues that these guys have experienced and then it comes down to reintegration doesn't it you're going to let these guys who are prepared to kill in prison back out into society where they've been traumatized by what they've witnessed. And what I gathered in some of these videos, for example, is one guy's filming it and three or four guys, five guys are standing there.

You can see that they don't want to take part in what is taking place, but they do because if they don't, they could become the next victim. And that is really sad to see. And you can see it in their eyes. You can see it in their demeanour. And so you can see them taking the weapon and inflicting a blow in a way that you can see they don't really want to be inflicting that blow. So I've seen these things firsthand in these environments, in these prisons around the world, where they don't have the means to make a difference, to change things. And so I set up the foundation off the back of the things

that I witnessed in these prisons with an intention to try and improve the opportunities for prisoners, staff, and the conditions in prison. So, for example, I was in a prison quite recently where they are trying to encourage prisoners to take up art, but they don't have any resources, they don't have any materials to provide. So I'm sort of saying, okay, if I can find somebody who's an artist who can donate this material to this prison,

and then we take it a step further, we use that art to create art therapy where some of these guys who would not otherwise step into a therapeutic room could be encouraged to go in there to do what they do, which is paint, but also address some of the traumatic experiences that they've been through or have witnessed that makes them the person that they are. So there are ways, as I've just explained, that you can make a difference. And the authorities want it. You know, i speak to the directors of these prisons who encourage me to come back and get involved in the work that they're they're doing a pot of paint you know some of these prisons are so broken a pot of paint will make a difference but you're also

not just giving them the pot of paint what you're doing is you're asking a decorating firm big decorating firm to take their skills into a prison teach these guys to paint properly so there is an opportunity for them coming out to become a decorator now that might not be everybody's ambition when you don't have anything inside a prison and that's what we're trying to offer is opportunity and the other version of hope to some of these environments forgiveness is an interesting word because it there's many layers to forgiveness. But when you look back on your time in prison, what happened to you and the people that conspired to put you there, some of them clearly very illegally, is it possible to get to a place of forgiveness? I don't forgive anybody who did what they did to me. I never will, never have, and have no

intention of forgiving those people. They don't deserve my forgiveness and I'm not a forgiving person in that sense. And there's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with that, is there? There's nothing wrong with me not wanting to forgive someone. I can understand things, but I can't understand why someone would tell a lie that destroys somebody else's life deliberately in the way that they did mine. So I have no intention in my heart or mind, and that doesn't make me a bad or wrong person. I'm in my right not to forgive someone for something that they did in the same way that, you know, someone who thinks they're in a solid relationship is treated, cheated on and they decide to break up and they can't find forgiveness for that person. Forgiveness doesn't stop you moving on. Forgiveness doesn't stop you becoming the person that you have the potential to become. Forgiveness is a word. Act actions in my book speak louder than words to say I forgive you doesn't

really mean I forgive you it might make you feel more comfortable and it might help you release the burden of the guilt that you felt for the wrong that you've done but for the person saying I forgive you for many many it will help. Of course it will. It will lift the guilt from them or lift the burden of them being constrained by this hatred for somebody. But for me, forgiveness is just a word. And nobody who did or took part in what happened to me can give me back my 20s they can't give me back the fact that i couldn't have sex for bloody 12 years even though i sneaked one in that chapel but they can't give me back the things that were taken from me because of what they done

and so i have no intention of forgiving those people but that doesn't mean that i have any animosity towards them or that I'm bitter towards them or that I'm angry. Are you angry towards them at all? I'm not. I'm not angry towards them in the sense that I would want something bad or anything like that. That's not what I can, but of course, I'm still angry about their role in what happened to me. The two police officers that interrogated me, the questions that you asked me at the beginning, you know, the fact that they fabricated evidence, made up stories and changed things to fit me into the crime rather than accept that the evidence was pointing away from me.

It makes me angry to think that they did that, Steve, and that they were prepared to do that to me, but I'm not angry any, any more towards them in, in a kind of way that disturbs how I should be thinking or behaving. I don't give them the time of day. When I'm sitting here, I'm talking to you, I'm talking to other people about my experience. Of course, there is this heat that I talk about that kind of warms my body, my ears, my mind, because I'm revisiting some of the experiences that hurt me. I'm revisiting some of those experiences that changed who I should have been. Even though, as you say, the silver lining is I've gone on to lead a

successful career. Maybe that's not who I should have been. Maybe I should have been somebody else, but I would never find out who that somebody else could have been. Maybe in those 12 years I was in prison, I discovered a love with my dad where hugging him and kissing him on the cheek became natural instead of it becoming something I forced because I saw other people doing that I had a question asked me which you just reminded me about from a guy called Mo Gowdat they do this eraser test and it's they ask people they said of the most traumatic experience you've been through in your life all the you know the most traumatic event if you could press a button and erase it would you now if I put a button in front of you and said you press this

button and it erases those 12 years and it erases the the sentencing and all that day those people that stormed through the door in the middle of the night and arrested you would you press the button would i press the button that would erase who i am no because that's what it's doing it's not erasing Would I press the button that would erase who I am? No. Because that's what it's doing. It's not erasing a trauma, is it? It's not erasing an experience. It's erasing who I am. That's what you do when you press a button like that. You're erasing the person you are and I'd never erase who I am. I'm proud of who I am.

I'm pleased about what I do, who I've become, the people that are in my life, my mission, what I've earned, what I've lost, and to press that button, I'd be erasing all of that and I wouldn't do that, even if it was to just erase that period um because i am who i am because of my life experiences and the journey that i've been on and the people that i've met along the way things that i've witnessed the things that i've learned um about others and about myself i have this um this skill is how i'm going to describe it right we all have a skill of some kind yours is making money running businesses and having a brilliant podcast studio and a great team right i learned a skill and i alluded to it earlier on where i read the character of men for

so long in such an intimate way that it does put me in a position of survival when I go into these prisons, when I look a guy in the eye who's killed five, 10 people, and I'm in a room with him on my own, or I'm interviewing him and his behavior, his characteristics. Trust me when I say this, in the years that I was in prison, I think I met every type of character man you could possibly meet. You know, because not every prisoner is the same. There are guys in there who are entrepreneurs and have earned millions of pounds, but they killed their wife in a moment of madness. There are guys in there who came from council estates like me who got caught up in knife crime and violence and drugs. So there are all types of prisoners.

You know, I talked to various people who are fraudsters, who run, you know, successful businesses, whether it's Wall Street or some new dot-com business. I had a guy on my podcast the other day, lost billions of pounds, John Lefray, who set up the first Nutella business, which is one of the very first dot-coms before PayPal started and stuff. So I had him on my Second Chance podcast the other day. Multi-zillionaire, still a multi-zillionaire, but he did end up in prison. So you come across all types of characters in prison. And that allows me to do the work that I do in the environment that I work in at the moment, which is probably the most important piece of work that I've done in my whole journalistic career. So I'm not going to erase anything that has given me the tools

to be the person I am, love the way I love, care the way I care and make the difference that I want to make. The work you've done, the Netflix series you've produced and the work you continue to do is incredibly important work because it's shining a light and giving, as you've said, giving a voice to people that don't have that voice. Um, it's incredibly entertaining, entertaining, maybe to its detriment because it becomes a bit binge worthy. Um, but I would highly recommend anyone that hasn't seen it to go and watch it ASAP on Netflix. And I think, uh, you know, everyone's always scrummaging around trying to find a good Netflix series to watch. It's one of my very favorite and the team here

are just obsessed with it. Absolutely obsessed with um outside of that your foundation is feels like it's there's a little bit of almost coincidence to me meeting you after all the things i've described well that depends what comes with this conversation is the thing but i love i love the idea listen you're a man who's successful right and you've taken some time out of your day to go into a prison to talk to guys you don't even realize the impact that you probably made because these are guys that have probably never been in a space like the space that you shared with them or heard somebody and i know you've got a bit of a backstory yourself which is why steve's coming on my podcast but you have a little bit of a backstory where you know you wasn't born with a silver spoon or a gold spoon in your mouth you know i know i

don't know your story and i don't want to know until you share it with me because i think that's the best way of learning something if you've got a book i might be tempted to read bits of this or i can inform myself but i discover and and and so you know it's great to hear that you've taken the time to go into a prison to find out what that's like it is a secret world but it is a world that holds people like you and me, brothers, sons, you know, husbands, lovers and potential for being all those things as well, guys, that are dependent on drugs. More importantly, many prisoners suffer from mental health issues and those issues are not being addressed if the resources are not being put into those places to address those issues. So I admire the fact that, you know, you're not just watching Netflix and Inside the World's Toughest Prisons

and me getting stripped or threatened or whatever, but you're taking time out of your busy schedule, as is your team, to go into a prison, whatever your motive, I don't care what the motive is, the fact that you've gone in there and learned something, come away, felt this burden on your shoulder. I get goosebumps just because, you know, leaving there, it was, I was, I had a weird thing to say, silent,

but I remember the day after posting to my team and just saying, I need to do something about this. But it was overwhelming, I think is the feeling. That's a good way to describe it. I was overwhelmed to the point of silence because, you know, for the reasons I said earlier. When you asked me about my foundation and I said to you, look, this is what I'm trying to do.

What do you think about something where people are trying to help people or the environment? Oh my God, like I'm all for it. I, for whatever reason, have a bias to helping those that are struggling the most, regardless of why they're struggling. When I went undercover in a school in Liverpool, I got a lot of flack because the kid that i warmed to and ultimately made a big donation to and provided you know an opportunity to was the kid that was doing really badly and everyone's like well why don't you help the people that are getting straight a's i took to this young kid

called steven who wanted to be successful didn't have a father was like a in school was about to get kicked out always in the exclusion area and i remember looking on twitter and seeing all this like oh why did he help the the the you know the kid that's down and counted out that's so when i went to this prison for me as you've described the word humanity um i saw past all of that stuff and it was just like a bunch especially from doing this podcast you learn that the the home life the the foundation the environment that people grow up in that puts them there that leads to them being there and that's what I see in these people it was like you know I saw the potential and I saw the all the good

stuff and all the the negative stuff really doesn't matter to me it well I find it harder to see naturally so that's why it felt like this burden because you know the kid that given me as bit as business plan I'm looking through this and going this is just amazing if he just had a different father if he just had a different mother if he just grew up in the home that I grew up in for better or for worse he you know I said to the kid I went you this is a better business plan than I've ever done in my life and I've made hundreds of millions of business and this is a and I meant it I wasn't blown I was like I've never made a business plan that is 97 pages long and that has all this so um that was why I felt overwhelmed because it was almost I was scared at the loss of potential and talent and how that would cause a generational loss in potential and talent and I wanted to do something about it not knowing what I can do about

it I saw small things which we can talk about but um you know as it relates to skills and upskilling people and really, I didn't feel like the prison was teaching them. They're teaching them some amazing things which blew me away. But as it relates to like, I run a creative business right now. If you could train five people

to do this particular thing, I will hire them. I don't care, you know. And it was, I'm actually talking about video editing, funnily enough. They weren't learning video editing and they said, well, we've not got anyone here that can teach them video editing. We can't hire video editors fast enough in all my companies.

It's a no-brainer, isn't it? It's a no-brainer. I was saying to them, please, can you start teaching these people video editing? And then I'll take them. And they were like, would you take them? I said, yes, we'll take them from the prison when they're released. The last thing I want to talk to you about is love.

Because you found love shortly after leaving prison. You're married. You have two wonderful children with her what what does this person mean to you what has she done for your life through all of that journey you've been on the psychological challenges you faced um with coming back into society after your sentence and the journey you've been on thereafter? I think my love story is not after prison. It actually started long before I actually went to prison because the woman that I married was a girlfriend before I got wrongfully arrested, convicted and imprisoned. You know, we were both teenagers when we first met. And at that point in her life, she did have all the things that I didn't have ambition.

She was, you know, head girl at school. She was destined to go to university. She was learning different languages. She went on holiday. I hadn't even left southeast London, you know, my first time on a plane at 32. Going to, I think it was Futaventura, I saw the waves splashing and thought it was sharks. I was 32 years old. That's how naive I was.

So Nancy is her name. And we had a very brief relationship just before I got locked up. And during the time that I was on remand, she came to visit me in a horrible environment. You know, I was a category A prisoner, which meant anybody coming to visit me got strip searched to visit me. So she endured quite a lot at such a young age. But she stuck by me in that early period where everybody was telling lies. When I was convicted, big decisions needed to be made. Obviously, she needed to get on with the rest of her life. I was destined to spend the rest of mine in prison.

And that's exactly what happened. But I did have a picture, one picture of her alongside my family on my wall whenever I stayed in a cell long enough to stick it up there. And, you know, she was a teenager and she remained a teenager in all those 12 years, as did I. You know, although I was 32 when I got out and she was now in her late 20s, I was still caught up in being 20 years old. But given she was only one of a very few people who didn't turn against me, didn't tell lies, stood firm, not because she was a tough, resilient person, but because she wasn't telling lies. She wasn't persuaded. She comes from a good family who obviously didn't want to have very much to do with me now. So when I came out of prison, Steve, there was a handful

of people I wanted to say thank you to. And we talked about thank you and gratitude. So I arranged to meet with Nancy, despite her wanting to meet me and people in her family not wanting her to meet me because they thought it would just bring bad to her again because she went through a real tough time. And I don't ever know what that must have been like for her because she was interrogated by the police, as was many other people that were associated with me at the time. And that must have been very traumatic for them themselves. But we agreed to meet in London Bridge where she was working at the time. And we did meet. And when I saw her and she saw me, it was as if those 12 years didn't happen yet. We both aged.

I'd matured. She was still the very focused, determined person that she is and smart and clever and beautiful and sexy and all the things that make you attracted to an individual um and i tried to chat her up i think i tried to chat her up again in the same way i tried to chat her up when we were teenagers didn't quite work because after we'd spent some time together and it was really interesting because i was her first love and then although she'd gone on to live her life and have relationships i don't think you ever lose your love for the first person you love i don't know because i'd never been in love up until that point you know i never i'm 32 and i'd never been in love um after that brief meeting we said goodbye asked for her number like you do. And she wouldn't give me her number.

I'm still just discovering how mobile phones work. But anyway, I asked for her number. She wouldn't give me her number. She had my number. And then we were on London Bridge platform. I was on one side of the platform going one way. I was living in East London at the time, and she was on the other platform going South London, and then kind of waving before the trains come and across the platforms this is genuine across the

platforms my phone went ping I opened my phone and it was her number so and she was standing there on her phone and she sent me her number at that moment and um that's when we started another little bit of a relationship so we kind of had this whirlwind, you know, I was We started to see each other, spent more time. Then she come to spend more time at my flat, and then we bought a house together, and I fell in love. I fell in love for the very first time at 32 years old. I think I'd always been in love with her because she was so different to any other woman, girl that I'd ever met in my life.

And by that, I go back to that growing up in a council estate where no one around me had any ambition, girls or boys, no parent had any ambition, no word like university existed in our orbit. But she was the first person I'd met in my life before I went to prison where university did mean something, education did mean something, aspirations of having a job meant something to her. And it was the same when I met her. Only this time I'd heard of those things. I was aware of those things. And now it made sense why she was driven in that way. So we started that relationship and we started to live together. And then she fell pregnant with my son. And then we went to Jamaica, got married. And as I say say she's probably the first and only

woman i've ever loved we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest asks a question for the next guest and they don't know who they're leaving it for the question that's been left for you is what is a mistake that you know you've made that you can fix, but you haven't yet fixed? I think it's going back to the question of my son. I think the mistake I made was maybe walking out of that courtroom and giving up on what I should have done. I think that might have been a mistake, although I know it was the right decision at the time. But the consequences of my actions on that day

has meant that I've never been able to discover anything about my son. So if I could correct that mistake, that would be the one, I think, to go back and see what would have come of that. It would have been lovely to be able to hand these diaries over to my son, although now he can probably read my book. So the diaries probably are worthless, but they are more to him. So I think that would be the mistake I would go back and correct. Thank you so much for your time and thank you so much for everything you've created and I say that because there is a lot that you've created in your books, in the podcast, in

your Netflix shows and everything that came before that as a journalist. It's such an important work but I know that it can't always be easy. You even talked about the heat that you feel sometimes when you reflect on these really traumatic experiences. I know it can't be easy but the value that it brings to enlighten people who wouldn't ever, you know, have the, you know, they're privileged enough to never end up in prison or to be in those environments. But to just shine a light on that, I think, creates a huge amount of empathy across the world, as it does for me when I've watched your show, and I've read your book, and I've had this conversation with you today. And that empathy can only be a good thing.

And that's work that could not be more important so thank you so much and thank you for an amazing conversation um thank you for the inspiration and i i'm fully behind you and your mission because it's an incredibly important one thank you i do appreciate you saying that and i'll leave you with this thought when we make mistakes in life it doesn't define who we can become and anybody could end up in prison you get and leave me today you get into your car you pull out and before you know it you have an accident that was no fault of your own but the person in the car that you crashed dies you end up going to prison for manslaughter that doesn't make you a bad person doesn't make you

guilty of something that you intend to do anything like that's all i'm trying to say is that message is don't judge somebody because of what they've done there are plenty of people that you can judge for what they've done but in my space you know criminal justice prisons um not everybody in there is a bad person some people have just made mistakes and i think every time you make a mistake maybe you cheat on someone do what you shouldn't be doing um you shouldn't be punished for that in the way that some people are being punished around the globe in prison. So thanks for having me on. And I appreciate your being inspired by who I am and what I do as I am you, of course. And I know lots of other people are because when I say I'm going to have a chat with this guy, Steve Bartlett on Diary of a CEO, which I've listened to on numerous occasions, it's like, oh my God. So you, you, you, you know, you're a successful guy,

but there are lots of people out there who are inspired by what you do. And you know that because of the way you interact and the people that, but we must never underestimate, um, the position we're in to influence people, to help other people. Amen. Amen. Thank you.