The public has had a long held fascination with detectives. Detective sy a side of life the average person is never exposed to. I spent thirty four years as a cop. For twenty five of those years I was catching killers. That's what I did for a living. I was a homicide detective. I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys. Instead, I'm taking the public into the world in which I operated. The guests I talk to each week have amazing stories from all sides of the law. The interviews are raw
and honest, just like the people I talk to. Some of the content and language might be confronting. That's because no one who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged. Join me now as I take you into this world. Peter Lyndon James, welcome back to part two of my Catch Killers.
Thank you as you'd be back well.
I got to say in part one, hearing your story in the way you articulate it in so much detail, you've virtually took me on the journey you've been through, and it's pretty heavy what you've been through. For those that didn't hear Part one, Peter told us about his life, there was a lot of pain and problems in his childhood, his parents separated, he ended up in the detention centers from the age of nine. Basically, and the whole thing,
all the theme I picked up, Peter. The whole time you just wanted to be loved by your mum or your dad, and you felt like you'd have been abandoned, and that put your life on a path that led to drugs, crime and everything else in between. We finished off part one and you were talking about this was the moment that, after all this time, twenty six years, have been a slave to your addictions and hating yourself, hating the world, you had an epiphany. I would say.
You described meeting three random people on one particular afternoon and all three of them steering you towards God and a better life. For whatever reason, that seemed to resonate with you got you at the right time. Do you want to take it from there, Peter.
Yeah, mate. So basically, after that encounter with three people, end up getting home and I and I said to the missions, I can't do this anymore, and I just grabbed my wife or grabbed my kids, chumped in the car and we drove around. I ended up booking our hotel, and I just wanted to get away from my house and all that crap. And I went to sleep and I woke up three o'clock in the morning and I had a dream, I mean my dream, and I heard God tell me its Peter, I've got a plan and
a purpose for your life. And I remember just the same feeling I felt when I was sixteen in Riverbank. His presidence was all over me. I wake my messas up. So I just had a dream from God. You like, whatever, that's nice, rolls over, goes back to sleep. But anyway, when we wake up in the morning, it was a Sunday morning. It was actually September the eleventh. But I said to Missus, I said, we've got to go to church. She goes what I said, We've got to go to church.
I ain't never been no church. Well I got church. I had got dressed up, She got dressed ug other kids, and we drive around looking for a church. And I spent there the all day looking for church. And every time I put it in a church, I heard this voice, not that one. I went to Freeman, I went Armadah, went to Golds and there's all these different churches and
I didn't know which one was which. And then Morley, I'll come up and cried Mere Street and Morley and I a quarter to five, and I heard a voice in my head saying that one. So I went up walking into this church. Part me car up, walked out the front doors, and the kids went that way, and we went this way and because I've got this king's kid's church thinking, and I walked in the second I walked in, Mate, I was shaking, crying, and his preacher
was preaching. He says, how dear that I'm circumcised Philistine to fire the armies a living God. And I was like, mate, And then he gave this older carps and for those who want your life to change and come out, and I made. I was up the front and a half a second flat. My wife come with him because she didn't want to be left in the seat. When I asked Christ in my heart, and I'm telling him from that day forward, I changed. I heard his big voice again.
It says, Peter, I want you to give up everything you own and follow me. And oh my god, I was a mess. I was on bail for handguns powder part and I nod old drive out a lot all this stuff. I literally went out to Ginger and Carrying Park, about an hour and a half out of Perth. I
moved in the carrivan park. I gave away everything that I owned, all all the stuff I WoT with drug buddy and cars and bikes, and I got out of the house and I detoxed myself over probably two months, and i'd go in down to Perth to go to court, that i'd go back home again and I just slept and I wrote my first part of my life down in dot Point. And anyway, fast forward ay and I having to go back to jail. I got four months
in prison, went to jail. I spent a couple months in Casah Casuna, then went to Carnett And then when I was in jail, I felt led to go to Bible College. I went to sixteen different schools myself. I don't even made grade six. I can't even read running writing mate, but I felt I had to go to this Bible college. So one particular one stood out. I went to start a Bible College, and yeah, I ended up doing three years Bible College, done for a ministry
diploma in theology and advanced to Plombing in theology. I started a business. When I started a Bible college, I started doing normal stuff. And three years of Bible College finished in two thousand and five, and then I've become a full time volunteer up at a Kasha prison as a volunteer chaplain. I remember the first time I walked in a Kaisha prison when I'd seen all these fellows I grew up with, and I say, Lindon James, what are you doing here? Brother? And I got the keys,
you know. But I spent five months, five years in there, three days a week, going around trying to disciple people and help them change their life, like they changed mind. But I've seen Casha prison go from four hundred to seven hundred prisoners I wrent over over a period a few years. Today it's two thousand and two hundred plus prisoners. But everything that happened to meet like a child. They were going in our, in our, in our, in our.
In twenty ten, I finished the prison and then I become a full time volunteer, so I had no income. I thought now that I've done twenty six years in prisons institutions, I've done three years of Bible College, I've done five years as a prison chaplain. I wanted to try and see how I can put all that to use and help people change your life in a way that I could do it, because everything I've seen is not working. Everyone is on a different page, the Sites accouncilors,
the Department of Justice, the government. So I thought, OK, I'll buy a house. I spent two and a half years from two thousand and ten to twenty twelve, floating around all the different rehabs, taking people to rehabs and seeing rehabs take them from an illegal drug to a legal drug that would take him off the speed, to the antidepressants, and dishing out value like lollies.
So Peter, at that time in your life, like you talk the prison and then your studies and then as a prison chaplain, and then you wanted to make a difference, and you're going to we finished off or we talked a little bit about how to take the prison out of the prisoners. Were you seeing the addictions? Like where you're steering towards? Is that what you wanted to do? You wanted to help people with addictions so you could break that cycle.
No, I wanted to do I was trying to work out what the root cause of it is. I mean, why they are like they are. But the addiction is just the mask that helps them to copeing to live life. And so it is the addiction. And so I floated down all these different rehabs. I'd volunteer on the streets and yeah, I just seen a massive need. I'd take them to these rehabs. And like I said, that just take them from a legal drug to a legal drug.
They think that Sarah Paks, the metazepine, the value, the xanax and all this stuff would help them, but it doesn't help them their addicts. I mean, they want the kick and the chemical.
Do you think taking them from the legal drugs putting illegal drugs, put them on the legal drugs is just masking the problem and setting them up to.
We're taking heroin addicts off a heroin and we put them a methodone on the box own and we're chaining them to a chemist and they're going to go to the chemists every day for the seven dollar dose where we reduce the crime rate. But we're just legally dishing out heroin, right, call it the box, call it methadone. Where we're legally dishing that out their teeth, the riding their bones, that calcium that live at their organs. I mean,
there's not one person. I've got one hundred and sixty people in Shulam that lived me from one to three years, and not one person is on any medication at all in any way, shape or form. I've got to take them. I've got to take the medication of to deal with the root cause of the issue.
Okay, so that's that's the approach. Okay, Shallam house. When did that concept come in that you're going to When did the name come in? When did it you decide to set up?
So twenty twelve, I just spent two and a half years doing all this voluntary stuff and I drove past bandyat Woman's prison. There was a house for sale, and I own my own house. I lived around the corner. My wife was running a guarding business, and I went to look at this house and I thought, well, maybe I could just buy my own house and put fellas in that and just do it my way and have a crack at it. And so I bought this house and I started with a few fellas and I just
started discipling them. But it wasn't until I bought the house and put the fellows in the house that I realized that I started to have rules and no phone, no TV, no blend of work, and by better just evolved. So, yeah, I bought a house.
What you're doing there, Peter, and just so people can understand, and you lived it, but just breaking it down, You've got yourself out of the prison. You've you've broken the cycle, you've cleared the addiction, you've studied, you've worked in the worked in the prison, you've seen the house, you bought it, and you want to help people break break these addictions, so you bring them in. And then it was you were virtually using your experience from your studies and life experience,
going Okay, that's not working. We're going to get them to get rid of their phones. We've got to do this. We're going to Is that is that? Is that how it evolved?
Yeah, but that's how evolved. So I ended up developing a five stage program over the course of probably six seven years. But as I developed the stages, you know, I mean it's like stage one, two, three, four, five, the numbers grew. I went from four to seven, seven to nine, then nine to sixteen, and they and the systems and structures you need. When you get sixteen and then you go to thirty, you've got to change. And so the more you get, the more you got to implement.
So now stage now it's thirteendars late. I've got one hundred and sixty.
How did you get those people in the first place? How did those people come to you?
I was like the pied pipe. I don't advertise. I've never advertised. I just started discipling people. I call it discipling, and they just kept coming. I've never they just kept coming.
Discipling in a religious sense or discipling it just in the practice in a living life.
So originally I called it. Someone says to me, right, it says, what are you going to call it? And I probably shot myself with this football calling it shalom. But back in nineteen ninety nine, I was, like I said, I was doing sixteen days no sleep, looping out. But I remember I was walking down Savannahs on the coast and I walked into the caravan park and his old dude there and he had this word shalom on the on the caravan and he made me a cup of coffee and we had a chat, but I always maybe the
name of Shaalob. And two in two thousand and twelve, two thy thirteen, someone says, what are you going to call it? You've got to give it a name. I had the name Shalam, So I googled. I managed to do it. You googled what does what does shalom mean? It's the fullness of everything that we as human beings should a spider be. And so I called the place Shalom discipleship house, and discipleship and means mentoring. It's coming alongside, and so coming alongside, I had to teach about it.
You take away their coping mechanism, the drugs and the substances. They've got to learn how to communicate, express how they feel, deal with life problems, finances, car, employment, whole heap of stuff. It's not just a matter of taking away that their brains haven't matured properly. My brain didn't mature properly, and so I just discipled people.
Okay, So it's a complicated situation, isn't And we're speaking to people that would not have any experience that what goes on in these rehab centers, Like do they just get locked in the room, and yeah, the perception is go cold turkey. But there's a lot too, a lot to be considered. Can you tell us one story just it can be a combination of people that come through your program. Just talk us through the stages that someone goes through when they're trying to break this addiction in Shallam House.
Okay, so we don't actually have one program for everybody. Everybody has their own program, individual program. And so the first stage one and we put four stars next to their name and they're paired up with another resident and that we pair them up because they could be detoxing off of alcohol or drugs or substantus. And so wherever they go they're paired up to stop and picking up cigarette butts, et cetera. But over that four weeks we
have lots of different departments. Our mentoring department will do it with their family history is the mum, dad, brothers and sisters, uncles and narnis. They might have four kids to the first wife, two kids to the second wife, and that shows us where all the damage has been caused.
So you're breaking down a person's life and going literally, okay, well look at what you got going on here? Is a bigger thing than just the addiction. You've got all these issues in your life, and that's the type of stuff you're looking at.
Yeah, the whole family. We've got to identify mum and dad. They've split up when they were a kid, step mom, and everywhere they've done damage because we need to repair all that structure, not just the person. When we take the person in, we also take on all the family. So over that first four weeks, my counseling department, along with my psych we'll map that out. And then I have a finances team and everyone graduates SHALLYM one hundred
percent debt free will manage what their finances are. It could be a car, they're paying off a mortgage, they have loans. We want to freezle them, so we want to see what their financial history is.
Can I just slay you down just on that. So I'm seeing that you're looking at. It's not just the addiction, it's their life, like the home. You might clean someone up from heroin, but then they go out and they are one hundred thousand dollars to the bank or whatever, and they're just going to collapse again.
So that's great.
It's a holistic approach to helping these people.
That's correact. So you've got the family, then you've got the financial situation, and then you've got the general could be a car on the side of the road, it could be a house that needs cleaned up, something that needs to be fixed, and put the rest so they can focus on the rest of the rehab and also direction what do you want to do with your life?
So over the first three months we find out what do they want to do with their life, We find out what their financial history is, what of the general stuff is, and all the family where's all the mess because generally when they come to us, no one wants
anything to do with them. They're all homeless, and so over the course of the program, when they get the Stage two part of the program, which is generally after three months, every resident is eligible for two days a week paid work with an employer on the same pages of the rehab. And so we have hundreds of employers that we interview and we ask the employer to take an active part in the residence employment. In other words, don't stick them with somebody else who's using drugs and substances,
don't put them with somebody else where they're doing. We want you to put them someone who's going to speak life into them. And we can tell when we give our residents and we set them about two days a week paid work, we can tell if they're putting into practice what they've learned by our feedback from the employer. And we can also tell if the workplace is having a positive negative effect on the resident by their attitude back in the house.
So the thing you're looking for there, per they're just a gain. So I understand that two days a week. After three months they get two days a week, you can find them paid work. You've got employers that have said, okay, we'll take people. It might be a builder, it might be a builder or whatever. But you look out that you don't get a black that's just come off years of drug abuse teamed up with someone working in the building site that likes a smoker at lunchtime.
We don't have all that. We're pretty strict.
We make sure filter it through.
Yeah, so we've got everybody on the same page.
Okay.
So and right from the beginning when they come in the program, and we have an extremely strong focus on reintegration and resocialization, and so our program basically is no different than you living your life. It's literally it's no different. You get up in the morning, you cook, you clean, you have your breakfast, you do your dishes, you go to work. You work from Monday to Friday, nine to five, and when you come home, you clean your house, you do your dishes, and you go to bed. And that's
our program. We work. We don't sit people in a class and filling the floor this head knowledge. We're ninety percent of it's just doney paper. You're not going to work. We actually live life together.
And you call it reintegration and resocialization.
Basically, without reintegration and resocialization, rehabilitation doesn't work.
Okay, breat break that down again. Let's just process that without without.
Reintegration and resocialization and rehabilitation doesn't work.
Okay.
I mean, because you're taking away a person's coping mechanism, you've got to teach them how to cope using different tools. You've got to teach them how to hang around geeks and normal people doing normal stuff. You've got to condition them to work Monday to Friday, nine to five, and you've got a condition to do normal activities on Saturdays, like go and kick a ball or play hockey or sports, or even during the week we go soccer. So we've
got to do normal stuff. Saturdays Sundays we go to church. Now we don't go to one particular church. We go to all these different churches. And the reason we go to all these different churches is because we have one hundred and sixty people, and that shouldn't be one church fits all. I'm not going to push religion down people's throats. I don't care if they come in an atheist and leave atheists, or come in a Muslim and leave a Muslim.
There's no relationships at Shalam. But the church side of it, we could go one. We could go to Pentecostal church, or you had this other one where they're just up on band. They've got this big band going off and his guitar and they're sitting on the half around. I think, man, don't your face gets out or the following. He could be one could be Catholic, Anglican, Pentecostal, Protestant. But it's not just about the face side of it. What they teach is love and honesty and all that. But it's
not just to me. It's rent it's having conversations with normal people. So when we rock up at a bus with one hundred people and go to these churches, everyone's got to split up and they're going to find a geek, and they're going to have so much conversation with a geek. And when they start having conversations with the geeks, they find that the geeks are just as screwed up as what they are, or they've changed their life, I mean. And that's why we do lots of voluntary We do
run for a reason, fun runs. We make sure that all of our residents come from the back of the pack. We don't want to rent the waste, We want to come behind those and supporting them. We do a lot of community car parking and volunteer stuff. So it's all reintegration, re socialization around normal people doing normal stuff, living a normal life.
And are you you're following that philosophy and that template to get them in? Is that what you had to realize about yourself? You lost that ability And I know when we talked in part one, you said you could land anywhere, but you fell back into your kind because you didn't feel comfortable talking to the geeks as you call them.
Yeah. When I started Bible College and there's one particular fellow. And when I started Bible College, I remember walking in there and this fellow went to come up and give me a cuddle, pull back, cracking one. It's like, but as a Christian thing, I want to cuddle in there. I all this stuff. And I spent three years sitting
at the back of the class. And when I couldn't feel like them, I spent four years walking in that church and I had to volunteer and doing the search service on the weekend, and I just kept saying, man, I can't be like them. I can't be like them. I don't want to be like them. And we about three years later. It's like gun on chechs when you want to go my kids working in garing to kids shirts. Amanda was volunteering, and it was one day when I just said I can't be like them, I don't want
to be like them. I heard a voice again. I says, I didn't ask you to be them. Oh thank God. So what you say is what you get, and it's just like but it was. It was. It was reintegration and resocialization, doing normal stuff, volunteering your time, and not expecting anything in return, and making a difference in other people's lives, not being so selfish about what you can get for your own.
I get it. But the way I'm looking at the way you're describing it's a very holistic, holistic approach that you're hitting all the different points. What's the average time people go into your program before they come out come out in a state where they're fit to be back in society.
They're actually back in society for the day they come in, or from four weeks up they come in. So if you pitch when a person comes in and there's a skill, there's one, two, three, four five. When they first come in, I take one hundred percent control of their life. I work out what their family structure is, I work out what their finances are, I work out what the general and alsay what they want to do with their life. When they get after the four weeks, i've got that plan.
I give them back control nineteen percent. No longer are they being shadowed. And when they get to stage two, I give them back another twenty percent. In stage three, another twenty percent.
What do they get for stage two?
Stage two you get two days a week paid work. You get a home leave every three months, and you start getting put into leadership positions and stuff. Stage three you get to have a phone and you get your car back. You can come and go off the property. You're out extended hours. That's nomal truck a lot of it's got more trust and you're in a leadership position.
Stage four. And so every stage you go from two days a week, Stage two, three days a week, Stage three, four days week, Stage four, five weeks, Stage five, and then you move off site after you stage five to graduate and give you the idea of the finances side right, and when we back out a person's life and we actually create a MyGov number for every resident, and over the three month stage up to the stage three we consolidate taxation, superneration, child support, medicare, We put it all
into the MyGov number. We also consolidate all this superneration from all these different accounts into one account. We get everyone's taxation all up to date, so SUUP has done, taxation has done, is medicare done. And by the time we get the stage three the program, we hand them back the MyGov number and we've literally fixed up the whole financial history everybody, everybody it comes through Shalom, they graduate, they all are one hundred percent debt free. We get
every resident off of centill It within four months. Centrall it was set up by a government for people in short term needs of crisis, not for people to live off a bloodshof. But we literally get everybody off essentially within four months and all they ever pay is round the bucks.
A thousand questions. I've got the finance to run something like this, whether it's the finance has come for you. I know there's a lot of volunteer work and that, but there's costs associated with what you're talking about here.
Yeah, so people probably would believe the scale of Shalom. So we've got two centers or two and a half centers, one in Cavalry, one in Perth, and the Perth is split up over probably six and seven different properties, so one hundred and sixty residents. Men's program, a women's program, and also a families program. So when girls get six months into the program, the children come in and join them, and most residents are with us on an average between one year and three years.
Okay, long time, in a long time.
You can't again because you've got you've got to do the rehabilitation to integration. And the good thing about Shalim is I look back at my life and if all of those people who had the skills and knowledge to help me change my life work together, my life would have changed. And well, I've done at Shalom. I'm a facilitator of other people's gifts. I have my own child psychologists, psychologists, counselors, psychiatrists,
and I just facilitate. And the only people I'm missing to get on board now is the Justice Department, the Corrective Services Department and the prison's department. If I can get them three on side, I've got the circle and I can make a massive differences, not just within the prison system and of course system.
Those three government departments shown interest or is there any negotiations?
Yeah, Well, a couple of weeks back, I had the Police Commisioner and also the Corrective Services Minister, and I've told them what I need on board, and so they said they're putting together where I'm going to come in and do a presentations, but they're going to get the Chief Justice. See, we get the Chief Justice and I'll just do another presentation to three of them. Hopefully we
can start with a trial. Every department of Slum has policies procedures, standard operating procedures where registered Drug and Alcohol Agency in Australia, New Zealand and we've been ordered for years. We've got extremely high level governance. It's the work site for sal whole of Shalom, the officers as well as the work truck. So we have departments in the offices. Resident Care has four style ID services which gets everyone
one hundred per points. I have eight IDA it gets two staff because most people don't come with an ID. The MIGUV department, so we're our own in house sentlling agency, so we look after all in centling on site. We don't have to go down to the sendling. And we also have the medical department which is as registers nurse. We have four people there and Finances department which gets everyone debt free. We have a program manager which oversees all that office and an office manager which sees oversees
a program manager which oversees those offices. Then we have a separate department called Shalom Works. We have seventy vehicles, trucks, bobcats, so we have a mechanics business. We have a steal fabrication business, Hardscape, soft gates, fencing, painting, tiling, bob gating, limestone, and we also have an education department, so we do a lot of online training for mental health. We have teachers that help people go from year nine to year ten. We do a lot of online training with aveling helps
from getting work at the heights and skilled tickets. We have a labor hire company we have and we use all these all these businesses. We don't make money. We make people.
That's philosophy and.
That's something we're not interested in money. And one of the challenges that I had being self employed, how do you integrate how do you integrate the quality of how do you integrate business and quality of workmanship while using people who come from a drug effective background, who have no skills. So all my trucks are paid staff member on it, and then every day we put four or five residents to each truck leader, so we could send out five, six, seven trucks and doing all different types
of tasks. But it's not about making money. It's about teaching people. They teach him how to tile and paint, and so we asked the fellows that do a directions chat after two months, what do you want to do with your life? Do you want to be a baller maker Tyler Paynter Carvener and for those or you want to be an office admin. And so if you walked into my office now in that resident care my whole organization, I'm not joking Now almost are residents in the program
or were residents in the program. The whole of the whole, of the whole of the organization is used to teach and equip and train the residents to find out what they want to do with the live and when they've found that, we empower them and get them jobs in the direction they want to go.
So you've got one hundred and fifty hundred and sixty people in the program at the moment, that's correct. And how many people have in the program? How many people have you got supporting that program working?
What do you mean both roughly supporting?
You're in the program, but you've got psychologists there.
They're talking about our chiatrists as the psychologists and the counselors there, they're obviously not residents, but everyone else is run by residents who have either been through the program, or who are in the program. In my offices, I move. I've moved my staff around every six weeks, so everyone knows everything.
To get full understanding, is there any government subsidy that comes with your business?
Oh no, we don't get any government funding. Or we're not actually sponsored by anybody. We are a register not for profit charity and we're a tax deductible charity. We have deja status and all that sort of stuff. But I even have a fundrational license where I can do raffles. But I've never asked for funding, never asked for a cent. I believe. I believe that the residents are where they
are because of the decisions they made. They're the idiots that had fun doing what they did, and may I teach them to take responsibility for their actions and to pay for the entirety of their rehab. Right. Okay, every resident comes through SCHLAM, they leave one hundred percent debt free. They leave with a driver's license to the car. They're working full time with the employer on the same page of the rehab. Ninety percent of the family relationships have
been restored. I mean, they're productors and members of the society. Cost nobody nothing but you can't do that in three months. It's like it's a big job.
Yeah, it's got to be a long, long process. How many people have you had come through the program since it's the inception.
Yeah, hundreds hundreds. So we've been we've been keeping stats and figures. People say, well, what's a success rate? Well, I mean, if I could change one life right and zero cost to anybody, what is the success rate? And what do you define success? Is that? Is that getting them drug free? Will we do that? Is it? Is it getting them licenses and find well? Do that? Is it? Getting an employment educator? We'll do that? I mean, is it restored? We do that. We do everything, and we
don't cost you anything for anything. So you pick what you want to define as says, we do all that. Some people, some people need the whole program. Some people I've seen turn their life around after three months in the program.
Can you give me an example of someone no names, but someone that you thought this is going to be a tough one, someone that really give us. Give us an example.
Would be a good one for you, And I'll tell you his name. His name's Anthony. But when I first started, I mean I had a heroin addict who was forty years a heroin, and another one who was just like molotophic Sue Heroin speed Benzo's alcohol. Then I've got another one that drinks hand sanitizer and listerine, and then I
got another one. They spent his whole life in Jarl ever since he was a kid, and his standard none was running the houses, baseball bat and people and blades, and he can when he's just and his dad used to be part of Underworld over wood woop, and when he was nine he's seen his dad peing this bloke and drop him in a hole. I mean, and his whole life is just career. He's a hundred mile an hour. He's just like, yeah, it was just a rooster to the max. The hardest blake that I ever had, the
second hardest. But now, I mean he was one of my first residents. I mean, he's finished his mature age apprenticeship as a plumber, a gasfitter. He's about to get married, he's got a kid, I mean, and his life was completely changed. But he took seven years, and it was with me for like newly seven years. And when he come in because he's on all these meth charges. He had to go back into jail for two years and then come back out again, and then I had to
do more, but took literally seven years. He didn't give up. I've got a couple like that.
Did you What stopped him? When you say it didn't give up? You didn't give up on him. He didn't give up on himself. What was it that you saw in him? Or you don't give up on anyone?
What's I don't give up on anybody. Yeah, I can say if you walked him my office, I got about fifty staff in one office. You walk in an office and I just love my staff. I love my and it's what you see is what you get. But I just love them to be. It's the atmosphere in there. It's all run by people who understand what it's like to go through a detox. I mean, you've been for it's all lived experience. You're not sitting to sitt next to
some nineteen year old kid. He's got his counselors to forget and pointing out your heart to some bullfed or some lady who's just full of unforgiveness bitterness, and she's like, my god, I think I need to give her counseling. Like I said before, I have to interview one hundred and twenty people to get one person a counselor, because every counselor they're just as screwed up as what my residents are, and they all want to be a counselor to give out of their own brokenness. Their piece of
paper means nothing. I'd rather go and grab the unqualified and make him qualified, because one hundred percent I want to give them relevant. I mean, I'm telling you and I was even for six years, I was a mentor to a qualified, high profile psyching per and this plate was really screwed up, and he's a psych. On a flick of a pen, they can lock you up. They don't realize these professional, so called professional people, and they get offended if I say that.
Whether I'm sitting on the wings while you're saying that, but you know, I'm not objecting, like I'm hearing what you say, and I understand exactly what I say what you're saying.
Horrified. I mean, it's like their pride, who cares if I'm uneducated, unqualified? Feel I can run a rehab with one hundred and sixty people and do what we're doing. But it's all the edumacicated ones. They won't even come near shel on. They're just like, I'm not trying to proud. We're doing my whole life. We're doing well my whole life. I just want to done it and it's working. I feel like I found a cure for cancer.
How does it make you feel as an individual? Like looking, because we're in part one, we're talking about how low your life got and the things that you've done and the guilt that you carry. How does that and I can see how animated you are. You're clearly enjoying what you're doing now and getting something from it. How would you describe what you're doing now? Because you're helping people now? Yeah, random acts of kindness can really help you grow as
a person. How are you feeling as a person all the people that you're helping?
You mean, mums are being mums, they're taking him to daycare, they're reading story books at nighttime. You mean, dads are learning how to be dad's. I mean, lives are changes, they're becoming normal people. I got one year one fellow
essay who works at the mechanics part. I mean he probably with his His wife said, sent him a text, and she goes, I couldn't sleep last night, but I want to say I'm sorry for all the times that I've judged you, for all the times that I've never let you lead the home, and for all the times and she just pulled her out and he's just pulling his eyes out. Sorry is a powerful word. We've all made mistakes, I mean, yeah, and just seeing truth and love and apologies and people owning their stuff. I'm in
a system that's working. There. The rehab system that I volunteered him for two and a half years is not working how it should be. I mean, there's a lot of people, I mean, and the prison system is definitely not working. Don't start me on the prison system. But I've worked it out. I've got it.
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x Plus on Apple Podcasts. Today, I want to read this out and get your reaction that Peter's family is a drug addict, the thief, the prostitute, the adulterer, the rejected, the despise the people society spurn and dismiss. These are the people cares for. Is that an accurate description the people?
Right? If you look back over Shalom's history, when I went from when I got up to thirteen people, I put in an application to change or change reviews. Now I've been going thirteen years. I'm still not legal on the right land, but I'm in the Seign Valley. I'm on ten acres and I put an applications in to get a rehab. No one wants a rehab next door to them, and I end up getting caught up in the courts for five years. I went three times to the State of Minister Tribunal, then the Supreme Court. Back
to the start. We're not winning, but that five years, I end up going to one hundred and forty people. I've bought a hundred acre property, tried to put one hundred acre property, but the rich people didn't want the view spoiled. Now I've had to sell all these other properties. I've just bought a property ten acres and I've just moved in and I have an asked permission. No one wants rehabilitation. They think that I'm going to bring the pimp and the drug addict, and they're all scared that
I'm going to decrease their property values. Yet not once in Shalom's history in ten years, I've never had a police complaint. I've never had the police out to the property. I've never had ambulance out. We've never had any problems at all in the history of Slam. No rehab anywhere in Australia can say that.
No, well per the right. From my background in law enforcement and just knowing the world, like when you're saying that, I'm sitting here thinking it's quite amazing that you've managed to get that sort of response.
The Police Commissioner wrote a letter to the court saying we have never never had an issue. I had a problem with Slim and it's history and that's because I just if you're going to live under my house, We're just we've established the culture of what we would like as our standard on for the rest of our life. I've established the culture of what I my whole life ever desired. I want people to feel loved. I want them to feel valued. I want them to feel empowered.
And I want them to be good dads and good men and good women. I want us to be the best us we can be. It's not about religion. It's about being the best year you can be. And as you be the best year. But if you want to tell people about religion, shuch about to live it. But as you start being the best you you can be, the difference that you used to make in people's lives is completely the opposite. Now people come to us asking
for advice. I mean, with all these people who come from their backgrounds, they've grown more than their families have grown. That's what you want. Be part of the solution, not part of the problem.
You've been there, You've seen a lot of people be there. What would you say to the people that have hit rock bottom with an addiction? Is there hope for them? Because I would imagine there'd be people as we speak now, or not imagine. We know there's people sitting as we're speaking and they're thinking they've got as low as low can be with their addiction and their life. What would you say to them? What if? What would be your message to them?
And I know that, I know that, I know that there's no person on face this planet who can't change. But when you hit the bottom, you've got these options. You've got your mum, your dad, your brother, your sister, Your brain will never, never take the hard option. But when all your family members, well, you've got five options. Who've got mental health, hospital, hospital, prison, morgue or rehab. I know that, I know you can change your life.
There's no person I've seen through, whether it be heroine, speed, sex, addiction, gambling, addiction, anxiety, depression, PTSD, trauma. We take anybody and everybody and they've all changed. Why can't you change?
Okay, it's a powerful, powerful message. What's your proudest achievement with shell on something up?
I'm just proud of all all my staff and all record my staff, and my residence, our whole place. If you came and if you want to do a video check and run into a video tour, but it's all run by residents of the program. Some have been there three months, six months, twelve months, two years, but they're all putting back, and the hard is to help other people change their life like their lives have been changed. It's coming alongside each other, learning from those ahead of you,
and also grabbing those behind. My proudest moment out of my last twenty years is my kids. I mean, I look at my two sons, Peter, who's my oldest son, and his wife Elizabeth Elizabeth. I actually didn't know your show, but I'm Elizabeth your number one supporter, and she's apparently listening to every podcast and she asked me if for good mention that.
But I look at the way over a shout out to Elizabeth.
Yeah, but she's a Peter my son. He's CrossFit, is big beard, he's twenty eight. He's the most perfect dad. Everything that I ever wanted my kids to be that I wasn't. My son's fulfilling it. Peter and his wife when they take kids out, everything drops and they spend time with their children. He's kind, caring, he's got integrity. His other's focus is just Elizabeth, and that's Elizabeth Pete and my other son Ryan and Lauren. I mean, they both singer as they do a wedding, and he's Peter's
an extrovert and Ryan's and my children. I'm proud of my children. I mean, I'm proud of my children putting them back into shlum and releasing me to release my wife after thirty years winning anniversary this year. I've been with her thirty six years. She's wangan Hill's country girl, farmer's daughter, ducks at school years. Well, I mean, she's never done nothing wrong and then she met me selling drugs at a pub. Mate. I've slept behind her back
hundreds of times. I've done all this stuff. I'm proud of my wife's to support me. I mean, I'm proud of all of us to make it what it is.
Yeah. No, it's a beautiful story and coming from coming from where you start. I'll get in the good books with the wife because there was something else and I've got it written down here that equated from your page. I get the privilege to wake up next to my wife on a daily basis knowing that she still loves me, and that makes my heart flutter. Oh yeah, send that message out to her because she's she's put up with a lot with your pleas.
I gaze upon her glory mate, and I tell her fifty times a week. She looks hot with a different tan legs and all these tan marks on a makes flutter, covered in dirt and swinging a chainsaw.
Well, the good stuff, good stuff. And I've got to say, it's nice speaking to someone that's hit the bottom like you did, and someone that's got a positive outlook on life and willing to get in there and make a difference. And it's a tough gig you got yourself involved in because you know an addict, do you trust them? You don't trust a word that comes out of their mouth
to start with. So you're literally turning them into people again because they lose that, they stop becoming people at some stage.
And I'd like to say something or the professionals, for the psychiatrists and the psychologist, the police and everyone who's listening, has anything to do with any person like you've just mentioned, they can change. I know that I know that they
can change, and I'd welcome anyone to come out. And I'm not trying to say I'm doing it any better, but for that person who's caught up in a ball right now and just wants their mum and dad, or for that person who's laying in jail and his wife stuck out the side of the road because the bat has locked them up and they can't get them on his property. Those people really need help. And when you're on the drugs and the substances, you do what you
don't want to do. But unless us professionals all get on the same page and work together as a team, we're never going to make an impact. We need a couple aside, whatever. But I know if we just come together as a team and work together as one, all those together as one, we can make a massive difference. I'm doing it at a scar like that, and I'm not costing anybody anything. Why won't that listen?
I think that's a very important message. If all those different sections are operating independently in silos, it doesn't work. So you want everyone to come together, working together and try and fix these problems. So I think that's good advice, And yeah, hopefully people will be listening. But look, I've enjoyed there, enjoyed our chat, and thanks so much for making the time. And I just want to say to you,
good on you for the difference that you're making. There's not many people that can say that they've had that much influence on people's lives, turning people's lives around. And I read that quote out because it's a people's society spurn. They're the people that it's just a junkie. You know why, We've given him a hundred chances, given her a hundred chances. You're there helping the people say good on you.
Yeah, bless you. I appreciate you, sim and let me come on really appreciated cheers.
Peter is a bundle of energy and he need to be a bundle of energy what he's doing with the show on House Rehabilitation Center, and it looks like the results speak for itself, and it's a tough gig getting people away from addiction. What also blows me away about Peter is he's upbringing his childhood and what he went through. You wonder how anyone would turn out when you've been through the childhood like that. And he's just had to let the anger go and he's turned his life around.
And I really found it an enjoyable chat and very interesting what he's doing.
Then at night,