‘Faith saved me from a life of crime’

THERE was a time when John Lawson’s evening routine went something like this – eat with family, tuck children up in bed, read bedtime story, meet gangster friends, load gun with rock salt, rob some other gangsters, return to family.

The father-of-four, 48, from Seaford, was sentenced to four years for extortion. He made a “vile” yet lucrative living as one part of a criminal gang of debt collectors for hire, working for mobsters to collect debts owed by other mobsters – none of whom would go to police.

He readily embraced criminality after his early years as a policeman’s son in South Africa, learning to fight in British tenements, and earning hundreds a week helping run sex shows in seedy Soho.

Today he spends his life in a very different way – an increasingly influential prison evangelist, using his own story of repentance and redemption in Lewes Prison and others across the country.

He said: “I get Christians who say to me things like ‘I wish I had a powerful story like yours’.

“And I say ‘don’t be stupid, don’t ever wish that on yourselves, because I have done so many bad things’.

“I wish I was brought up in a Christian home with Christian parents and lived a good life. You must never wish that on yourself, because the life I have led is vile.”

The last jail sentence Glasgow-born Mr Lawson served was for attempted extortion after his gang of debt collectors ended up threatening their intended target’s girlfriend.

Before that there were between 20 and 25 robberies he says were never even reported to police because the victims were drug-dealers or other criminals.

Drug dealer He recalled: “A friend had a falling out with a local drug dealer in his home town of Preston and this guy was flashing his cash in the pub wearing lots of gold and threatening people.

“And Jay said, ‘let’s take them out’. So me, him and a couple of other guys got some shot-guns, removed the pellets, put rock salt in, blasted him and stole all his money.

“And he could not go to the police. And I thought, this is good because we can go and take his money and these guys cannot go running off to the police.

“We did not want to kill anyone but we wanted to scare them to death. So I got into this lifestyle of robbing these people that owed lots of money to gangsters.

“I guess I have blood on my hands. Bad memories of people who got hurt. I thought, well you know what, I am doing society a favour.

“It was odd because I would go and kiss my children goodnight and read them bedtime stories then go out on big jobs.”

Mr Lawson, who now runs Escape Ministries from a modest shared office in Newhaven, would come home every night to his wife and children, oblivious to his activities in their large home in Edinburgh.

“I thought, I have done a good thing here,” he recalled, “These are bad guys. I don’t drink, smoke, do drugs, I don’t beat my wife.

“I am a good guy, just not going to take any nonsense off people. And that’s really how I convinced myself that was I was doing was okay.

“I struggled with the lying but I felt like at that time, there are white lies and there are really bad lies. If you lie to make yourself a good life, what’s the harm? It’s better she doesn’t know.”

At one point he planned to murder a man who owed a client £13 million, but never did after the target’s family kept turning up (“divine providence,” he believes).

Long before reaching that stage there were teenage years burgling factories in Birkenhead, Merseyside, and the lesson at school in Drumchapel, Glasgow, that “violence was a good friend”.

He had moved with his parents to South Africa as a child but moved back to Britain aged around 10 after his father left his mother for a Durban meter-maid.

“In Birkenhead everybody that I knew was robbing someone or if you wanted something you got it knock off,” he recalled.

“Literally everyone I knew was stealing or fencing stolen goods. It was easy to get things so I kind of grew up in that environment and I was kind of a loner.

“I liked being by myself and left school with hardly any qualifications. I found that I did not like being in a situation where I was not in control.

“I had these weird morals, like I would break into factories but I did not like swearing because I was brought up not to swear. I didn’t believe you should mug old ladies or people’s houses, but a factory was okay, or a bank.

“That was my mentality.”

Rolling Stones Later he would work as a bouncer and security guard, once providing security for the Rolling Stones. It wasn’t until he was serving time for the attempted extortion that things started to hit home.

He said: “When I was in prison I got hit with the Proceeds of Crime Act.

“So the big house had to be sold. They knew I was involved in a lot more, they just couldn’t prove anything and they wanted to know how I had this lifestyle.

“I had a really big, four-bedroom house in a nice area of Edinburgh, and a Range Rover and a motorbike – on a ‘security salary’.

“My family had to go into temporary accommodation so that was the first time I really felt that what I had done had impacted my family.

“I just had to ‘fess up to my wife what I was doing and she said I was stupid and an idiot. I thought I was providing for my family. That is what criminals always do – you think you are providing for your family.”

Yet he did not leave his life of crime behind until he was lured to a prison bible study group on the promise of coffee and biscuits.

He recalled: “I went back to my cell and thought ‘well if that is religion then I don’t want anything to do with it’.

“The next day the man appeared at my cell with a bible and said ‘have got you this?’ “I didn’t want it. I threw it onto my bed. But that night I opened it up and read ‘If a wicked man steps away from the wickedness he has committed [Ezekiel 18].... if he does what is just and right it will save his life...’ “I felt like I was that wicked man and then it talked about life and turning away and a new heart and a new spirit.

“I didn’t have some big epiphany or anything but I guess in that moment I looked in the mirror I realised that I needed a new heart and a new spirit.”

More than 50,000 British inmates are said to have taken the Christian Alpha course, which runs in more than 80 per cent of the UK’s jails. Mr Lawson said he was living proof faith can improve behaviour and reduce reoffending, and has written to Prime Minister David Cameron to ask for more access into prisons.

He said: “Something happened to me that changed me so much.

“It changed me so much that not only am I not committing crime anymore but I am volunteering to come into prisons to say there is another way, you don’t have to live your life this way.

“I just think they can see there is genuineness there. I am not here to make money. I am not here selling anything. I am here because it changed me and if you want to find out more then you can ask me.

“I work with guys all over the world who were once serious criminals whose lives have been seriously changed.

“I met drug addicts who are no longer drug addicts. I have met them, they are real. I don’t think I have ever seen any evidence of anyone being saved from drug addiction or a life of violence or a life of crime by the power of atheism. I have never seen it.”

Mr Lawson said he has been called to one prison in the north of England in response to concerns about Muslim inmates becoming ‘radicalised’ – something authorities have publically raised concerns about. He started Escape Ministries as an arm of Avanti Ministries, founded by popular evangelist Tony Anthony.

It went independent after Avanti closed in 2013 when critics raised doubts about the truthfulness of certain parts of Mr Anthony’s bestselling autobiography, Taming the Tiger.

He still does missionary work with Mr Anthony, who has always maintained the substance of his book is true and he plans to publish an update to the book.

Mr Lawson has also published a short book about his own life, endorsed by former MP Jonathan Aitken, and is working on fuller length story.

Speaking of Mr Anthony’s experience, he said: “It is quite interesting the journey he went through – which has held me in good stead.”

He will continue to visit prisoners the world over, regularly visiting some of the world’s toughest jails, including in the South African area of his childhood.

He added: “I think in desperation when the world is a bad place, you see people turning to faith in those moments. People will say, when they are about to be killed, ‘God help me,’ – but there is no belief in God before that and all of a sudden when faced with death a cry out to God.

“And I just think in the UK, people have lived a comfortable life for many years – most people are affluent.

“You see that in some of the more affluent countries – what do I need God for when I have got so much?

“And actually, you have not got so much: everything you have is perishable. It is going to be gone one day and then what are you going to do? All the money in the world won’t do you any good on your death bed.”

Mr Lawson’s first book, Take Him Down: A True Story of Gangs, Guns and Redemption, written with Angela Little is out now on Kindle.