Surviving a Predators’ Paradise
Glen Fisher is a survivor. When he was seven years old, he arrived home to see a police car outside of his home. His father was taken to prison and his mother went to a mental health treatment facility soon after. His mother suffered from schizophrenia and would have violent outbursts. "There was a lot of violence in the family home," Glen told Jacob Little on this week's live stream. "My mother was a heroin addict, an alcoholic and she suffered from schizophrenia. She once attacked me with a knife." Glen remembers sitting on the bathroom floor with his jumper around his bleeding hand. "She tried to sever two of my fingers," Glen said. "She did a lot of sadistic stuff to me before that, but never on that level." Glen went to live with his father, but that was also an unstable environment. "He was a nasty bit of work too," Glen said. At the age of 12, he started running away from home. This led to him being put into a youth detention facility, where he was abused by another inmate. Glen was released and told DOCS - now Family and Community Services - he didn't want to live with either of his parents. "I told them 'my mother and father are hurting me and I'm sick of being hurt'."
Glen's hopes that he would be sent to a home free of abuse and violence were soon dashed. "There were two convicted paedophiles living in the house," Glen said. Sadly, he was forced to sleep in a room with three adult males and was abused on a regular basis.
Glen eventually started living on the streets of Kings Cross. Here, he was again a target of predators. He was abused at a refuge that was run by paedophiles - a fact he says was known by police and other people in authority. When his girlfriend was murdered, Glen turned to drugs to dull the pain.
Glen found himself in the depths of a heroin addiction - once overdosing three times in one day. He saw many atrocities while living on the streets of Kings Cross and gave evidence at two royal commissions. He spoke about the sexual abuse he experienced as a young boy and the corruption he witnessed by members of the NSW police force.
Glen was instrumental in putting four of the paedophiles who worked at the refuge behind bars. He also wrote a book about his experiences - something he promised one of the perpetrators he would do years before. The abuser told him "you can't even read or write and you're a heroin addict, you'll be dead before you're 21."
However, Glen studied while he was behind bars and proved his abuser wrong. Predators' Paradise is Glen's first book. He is writing a second book and helps other survivors of institutional abuse.
You can purchase a copy of his book here.
Listen to the full live stream here.
