From the high ranks of bikie gangs to serious drug crimes on the streets of Cabramatta, how do you turn your life around when violence and crime are the norm?
Physically and sexually abused as a child and coming from a broken home, Brent was 12 years old when he ended up living on the streets and getting involved with crime.
“I wanted to fight everybody, I wanted violence. I wanted to just be the most feared, most aggressive person that I could be so no one would ever come near me or no one would ever hurt me again,” Brent tells this week's Insight.
Brent committed his first armed robbery when he was 10 and entered the prison system around age 12. Strangely, he found comfort in detention.
“It was like well, I’m here seeing the boys, it’s all good. I’m here with the family and it came to a point where you wanted to try and get to certain boys homes, because your mates were at certain places, so it would be like I’m going to catch up with the boys and depending on the crime you did, you’d either be praised as you come in or laughed at,” he says.
As the seriousness of his crimes escalated, Brent joined a bikie gang and rose through the ranks, finding comfort in its camaraderie. But when he was arrested for commercial importation of drugs and sentenced to 6 years in prison, he found himself at a crossroads.
Tony set out on a similar path when some of his family members became associated with the notorious gang scene in Cabramatta in the 90’s. Born in Australia to refugee parents who didn’t speak any English, Tony had trouble communicating with them and sought acceptance and mentorship in all the wrong places.
“It was just like a thing that everyone was involved with. You either affiliated with gangs, you are smoking drugs, selling drugs. I eventually got grafted and did what they did,” Tony says.
At 14 and already a member of a drug gang, Tony was hooked on heroin, selling drugs and had a number of offences on his record. It would take him a near death experience to lead him to his faith and ultimately, help him turn his life around.
Zak was very young when his father, El Sayyid Nosair, was sent to prison for his involvement in the assassination of Meir Kahane, an ultra-Orthodox Rabbi who had founded Jewish Defence League.
Tony, on Insight Source: Insight
Three years later, Zak was shaken to his core when he found out his father also helped plot the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing from his prison cell.
“I have lots of memories of my father as being a kind and humorous man, he wasn’t radicalised when he came to the United States. He was born in Egypt and came to the United States for the same reasons that many people immigrate to other countries. He started a family and was very clear that he loved us very much,” Zak says.
As a kid, it was difficult for Zak to reconcile the image he had of his father with a terrorist who took innocent lives. When his father was sentenced to life in prison for the World Trade Centre attack, Zak distanced himself and began to reassess his belief system passed on from his father.
“I certainly grew up fearful and hateful of people who did not fit into a very narrow idea of what it meant to be good. And that’s the essence of indoctrination. You isolate someone from those you wish to teach them to hate and then you teach them all of these terrible things so yes I showed hatred toward Jewish people, toward gay people.”
It was making friends with the people he was taught to hate that would eventually change Zak’s perspective.
“It was the surest way for me to realize that what I had been taught was a lie the first time I made a Jewish friend. I was sixteen years old and you know we were not natural enemies. Our religions did not seem to matter and this was contrary to everything that I had been taught. But it was the first time in my life that I thought perhaps the things that I had been taught to believe were in fact a lie,” Zak tells Insight.
This week, Insight looks at how people break through cycles of crime, violence and disadvantage | Breaking Free - Catch up online now:
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