<
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/jul/21/sydney-rehabilitation-home-rainbow-lodge-prison-ntwnfb>
"Josh* says he’s not a violent man, but he has done violent things. It was only
after a quarter of his life spent in and out of prison that he came to see the
violence didn’t happen in a vacuum.
“I had a pretty crap upbringing,” he says, sitting in the courtyard of a
nondescript home on a quiet street in inner Sydney. The 42-year-old Gamilaroi
man is warm and a fast talker.
“It was me and my brother,” he says. “I didn’t know my parents that well. There
was always drugs and alcohol in the home, so I was pretty broken there.”
Josh says his childhood was marked by run-ins with the police for breaking into
homes and theft.
“It’s sort of the lifestyle that I wanted when I was a kid,” he says. “It’s
weird because that’s what we thought was cool. Violence was accepted, drugs
were accepted.”
When he was about 30, married and with a family, his brother died by suicide.
“That’s when my whole life changed,” he says.
“That’s when I started using drugs hard, and that’s when the domestic violence
started.”
Thousands of men in New South Wales prisons have carved a similar path through
life.
But Josh is among the lucky few who have received help to change it."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
