Personal Reflections on a Christian Response to

the Ipswich Murders and Drug Addiction in Britain

By Jim Sayers

Minister, Kesgrave Baptist Church

July 2007.

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In her deeply moving book ‘From whitewashed stairs to heaven’ Maureen McKenna describes how a spate of murders in the Anderston district of Glasgow affected their work in reaching out to alcoholics and drug addicts working as prostitutes through their drop-in centre ‘Cornerstone’. Her words capture so much of what we have had to come to terms with here in Ipswich:

‘In the mid nineties there was a spate of murders in our area of the city. The victims were prostitutes and they were all known to us. The atmosphere in Anderston at that time was surreal. For three or four nights after each murder the streets were eerily quiet, but by the end of the week it was back to business as usual. Such was the desperation of these girls for heroin, or such was their fear of those who manipulated them, that they went back on the streets prostituting themselves with potential murderers.

Cornerstone was more than usually busy then. Girls huddled round each other and talked quietly. They voiced the hope that it would never happen to them, but in their hearts they feared they would be next, that the Police incident caravan would move down the street to their patch. I could write a whole book about the events surrounding those murders, but it would do no good. The girls are dead. But something has to be said, and it seems to me to be this. There are girls and boys, women and men, prostituting themselves on the streets of every town and city in the country. Most come from backgrounds we can’t begin to imagine. Many were victims of all kinds of abuse before they ever had their first smoke of cannabis or taste of alcohol. There is nothing romantic about their situation, it cannot be presented in any way that is palatable or attractive. It is therefore at the bottom of the charity stakes. How much easier it is to have compassion on a wide-eyed starving baby in the Sudan, or a child from a Brazilian shanty town, or an amputee crippled by a land mine in Bosnia, than on a teenaged drug addict and prostitute in the town where we live. If that is how we react, we have serious questions to ask ourselves regarding the extent of our compassion and the fullness of the Lord’s.’

Appendix: "God’s Compassion for Ipswich"
A sermon preached by Jim Sayers at Kesgrave Baptist Church on Sunday morning, Dec 17th 2006

Chapter 1: Introduction

Those of us who live in Ipswich, Kesgrave and the local area will never forget the weeks leading up to Christmas 2006. Our quiet, dignified Suffolk way of life was violated by the actions of a serial killer who murdered five local young women in the course of a couple of weeks. Their names were Tania Nicol, Gemma Adams, Anneli Alderton, Annette Nicholls and Paula Clennell. They were all addicted to hard drugs and all worked as prostitutes. Gemma Adams came from a lovely Kesgrave family who live very near to our church building. Once the press knew that three women had been murdered and two more were missing they descended on us in their outside broadcast vans like an invading army of aliens, and for a week we were trapped within their bubble. It was a surreal time. 500 police officers were drafted in from across the country and some of these continued their forensic searches of the fields around Nacton right through the Christmas period.

Now seven months have passed, and we await a trial in the New Year when all the emotional wounds will reopen, but for many people life goes on. Yet this traumatic experience has shown us a side of our British way of life that is so desperate and dark that, though we might like to put it from our minds, to do so as Christians would be to pass by on the other side. Indeed, it is my belief that because the root of addiction is in many ways a spiritual problem, Christians have the ultimate answer and we must not keep it to ourselves. We have a gospel of redemption that can really redeem people ‘held in slavery’, however messed up they are.

This year my church very kindly gave me a three-month sabbatical. As one of the projects I have pursued during this time, I have visited a few drug projects, mostly Christian, as well as reading some of the literature and web resources. In the pages that follow I set out some of the facts about drug addiction. I then profile the projects I visited and others I have come across via the web. Finally I make some suggestions as to where we might go together if there are sufficient interested Christians in Suffolk with a common vision and purpose. Please understand that I come to this whole issue from a background of ignorance. I have written this paper as a way of reflecting on my disturbing discoveries over recent months, very much from the point of view of the average Christian who never normally has to deal with such issues but who has a great heart for the lost. If God is stirring us to take action this booklet will have served its purpose if it brings us together to address these issues seriously in the months and years to come.

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The growth of illegal drugs

Since the 1960s the use of Heroin across the world has grown exponentially. In some countries there have been identifiable epidemics of drug use, which rise, level and fall. In Britain, there have been such identifiable epidemics in local areas, one area seeing an increase before another, but the overall effect has been a steady rise in the use of illegal drugs over the past forty years. Drug use is a learned behaviour, transmitted from one person to another. While drug pushers will want to work their patch and get new customers hooked, almost all first drug experiences are the result of being offered the drug by a friend or family member. Drug use thus spreads much like a communicable disease. Users are ‘contagious’, and some of those with whom they come into contact are willing to become ‘infected’.

In an epidemic, rates of initiation in a given area rise sharply as new users of a drug initiate friends and peers. This is the most dangerous phase, since when someone has become a long-term problem addict, they are less ‘contagious’ to non-users because they are socially excluded by their behaviour. In the UK the heroin-addicted population rose rapidly almost without pause throughout the 25-year period 1975–2000, as the following tables from the Reuter and Stevens study (see below) indicate:

Number of addicts notified to the Home Office 1960-1996

Number of new heroin addicts notified to the Home Office 1975-1996

There was a change in the way statistics were measured after 1998, so equivalent measures are not available. However, other statistics show a continued increase in other indicators, such as a 25% increase in deaths from drug misuse, up to 2000, after which such indicators have stabilised and in some cases slightly fallen. Overall, while the Government has had some success in getting large numbers of problem drug users into treatment programmes, the success rates for these are not high, and the overall effect has been only to level off the misuse of hard drugs at a historically high level. This shows no sign of any significant reduction in the short to medium term. New generations of problem drug users continue to enter the system. In new suburbs such as Kesgrave, renowned for its concentration of young families, when a large population of teenagers reach adult life together there is an increased danger of a local hard drugs epidemic.

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How big is the problem?

Estimating what the true picture is in the area of drug misuse is a huge statistical problem for Government agencies. This is partly because these drugs are of course illegal and so users will not want to admit to a crime, but also because problem drug users lead chaotic lives which means it is hard to keep track of them.

The Government’s drugs website www.drugs.gov.uk is a valuable source of information for those who want to go and explore it further. I have looked at a couple of studies that have been published in recent months.

The first of those is ‘Estimates of the prevalence of opiate use and/or crack cocaine use (2004/05) East of England Region' which uses the capture/recapture methods (normally used to estimate the size of animal or fish populations!) to analyze the scale of the drug using population. Each local authority now has a statutory Drug Action Team or DAT to handle drug treatment in their area. The data collected by each DAT has been included in this study.

The estimated number of problem opiate and/or crack cocaine users in the East of

England is 23,081, which is 6.48 problem drug users per thousand population aged from 15 to 64. Luton is the DAT area with the highest prevalence rate at 15.70 per thousand followed by Peterborough at 9.87 per thousand and Southend-on-Sea at 9.39 per thousand.

The statistics for Suffolk can be summarized as follows:

• Problem drug use is just above the regional average with 6.98 drug users per thousand aged 15-64.
• An estimated 3017 problem drug users in Suffolk
• of whom 2490 are opiate users,
• 1811 are crack cocaine users
• 1206 are injecting.
• 3 out of 4 problem users will be male.
• Typical problem drug user (i.e. heroin/crack) is not a teenager but aged 25-34 or older
• 1 in 100 adult males aged 15-64 in Suffolk is a problem drug user (In Southend it rises to 1 in 70, and in Luton to 1 in 50).

It must be stressed that these are figures for 2004/05. I was unable to locate more recent figures.

A more recent and major new study published in April 2007 is An Analysis of UK Drug Policy: A Monograph Prepared for the UK Drug Policy Commission by Peter Reuter, (University of Maryland) and Alex Stevens, (University of Kent). This received widespread media coverage the day it was published. Over more than a hundred pages it gives a complex analysis of the successes and failures of Government drugs policy. They include a welter of statistics and some graphs, some of which which I have reproduced in the previous section. Among their conclusions are the following:

• there were 327,000 problematic drug users in England 2004/5
• There were 1,644 identified drug-related deaths in the UK in 2005.
• The UK has the second-highest rate of drug-related death in Europe, at about 34 per million population aged 16 or over.
• Occasional drug use is not the principal cause of Britain’s drug problems. The bulk of drug-related harm (death, illness, crime and other social problems) occurs among the relatively small number of people that become dependent on Class A drugs, notably heroin and cocaine.
• About one quarter of those born between 1976 and 1980 have used a Class A drug at least once by 2005.
• Around a fifth of those arrested by the police for any crime appear to be dependent on heroin.
• It has recently been estimated that the size of the UK market for illicit drugs is over £5 billion, despite sustained reductions in drug prices.
• The annual socio-economic cost of drug-related crime in England and Wales has been estimated at over £13 billion

The following quote from Reuter and Stevens sums up their assessment of current drug policies.

‘The government has successfully increased the number of dependent drug users entering treatment, with enrolment in England increasing from 85,000 in 1998 to 181,000 in 2004/5 with significant numbers of referrals through the Criminal Justice System. Research suggests that this will have led to substantial reductions in drug use, crime and health problems at the individual level, with positive benefits for drug users, families and potential victims of crime. The majority of this treatment involves the prescription of heroin substitution drugs (mostly methadone). More than half of the estimated number of problem drug users are now in contact with structured treatment each year. Waiting times have been cut sharply.

‘However, it is unlikely that the benefits of treatment to individuals and families will have translated into a substantial and measurable impact on overall levels of dependent drug use and crime at the national level. International experience suggests that such impact is likely to be limited, due to the large numbers of users remaining untreated, the high rate of relapse, the variable effectiveness of treatment and the continual influx of new users.’

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Chapter 2 What is being done

Over the course of my sabbatical I have visited four different projects, and in this chapter I review what they are doing. In the past I have also visited Caring For Life, and I review their work here as well. I have also discovered numerous other projects on the web and in the media, and I review some of them here, based on their websites and other literature. My aim is to learn from the experience of others and provoke discussion of what we could be doing here in Suffolk.

Provision in the UK is categorised into four tiers, which can be categorised roughly as follows:

• Tier 1 – Front line services such as needle exchanges and outreach workers on the streets
• Tier 2 – Drop in centres providing advice and information
• Tier 3 – Non-residential treatment and counselling
• Tier 4 – Residential Rehabilitation

The Open Door Trust - Glasgow.

Hugh McKenna and his wife Maureen started a work with Glasgow City Mission, reaching people with addictions to both drugs and alcohol in the Anderston area of Glasgow, reaching out to the red light district. Their story is told in the remarkable book ‘From Whitewashed Stairs to Heaven’ (Published by Christian Focus). After ten years of running front-line drop-in centres and going out onto the streets to meet the women who work there, they decided that what was needed was not only to provide for the short term needs of the people they reached but to care for them on a long term basis and help them to escape from a life of addiction. They left the City Mission to set up ‘Open Door Trust Glasgow.’

The Trust is funded almost entirely by private donations and does not want to rely heavily on funding from the state sector. They employ a handful of salaried staff and work with a large team of volunteers who come from across the Glasgow churches, who keenly support their excellent work. It was people I had met at the Tron Church the day before I visited ‘Open Door’ who had introduced me and spoke so highly of the work that ‘Open Door’ is doing.

They have an office in Argyle Street but for many of their activities are based in the hall and rooms of the vast St Vincent Street Free Church. The basement hall itself is huge, and every Wednesday lunchtime it is filled with about a hundred people who come to their ‘lunch club’ This is a free meal for homeless and disadvantaged families. Free groceries and clothing are laid out for them to choose what they need.

On a Monday night they go out on the streets, where a team of workers and volunteers serve soup, sausage, sandwiches, cake and hot drinks. This is where they meet people in the extremities of drug addiction, befriend them and invite them into other parts of the work.

These ministries then lead into a whole series of recovery groups, which they hold on weekdays. These involve small group work and one-to-one counselling. These take a holistic approach to ensure that recovery is comprehensive. On the physical level they organise programmes of hill walking, badminton, Multi-gym and football. Members of the group get involved in other activities that teach them a skill such as painting and decorating or carpentry. At a spiritual level they use courses such as Alpha and Christianity Explored, and on the day that I visited, were meeting with a group of men to continue a Bible study series through Romans.

One of this group, Davey, had been converted five years ago after yet another spell in Barlinnie Prison. He sat and chatted to me with such joy at what the Lord has done in his life. Hugh has a regular ministry inside Barlinnie, where they run a drug recovery programme in the High Dependency Unit, as they also do in Low Moss Prison. They also run a Bible study group in Barlinnie every week.

Maureen died of cancer five years ago, but not before she was named ‘Scotswoman of the Year’ for her work. Hugh has since remarried, to Margaret (Mags), a mother he and Maureen led to Christ through their ministry. As we all sat and chatted over a soup lunch, I felt like I wanted to cry and cheer at the same time to hear all that they are doing. How wonderful to see the most broken lives of all finding redemption. Hugh and Mags are not superheroes, just ordinary, patient, gracious, loving Christians being powerfully used by our extraordinary, powerful God.

Contact details:

Open Door Trust Glasgow, 342 Argyle Street, Glasgow, G2 8LY 0141 243 2336

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The Bridge Project – RSVP Trust - Ipswich

Don Egan is an Anglican evangelist who set up the RSVP Trust, based in Stowmarket, which works to support Don’s itinerant ministry. As the work has grown Don has received opportunities to minister to the grieving people of Rwanda after the 1994 genocide. He says ‘We believe that God can heal us everywhere we hurt.’

Don has been joined in his work by Alison Fenning, who also works on a number of mission teams and outreach training initiatives. Alison trained at All Nations Christian College, and gained experience while there working with the ‘Door of Hope’ Trust in Hackney. This inspired both her and Don to reach out to the red-light district in Ipswich, setting up the ‘Bridge Project’, a work that began in 2005. Their work is exclusively to reach women. Their website states their aims as being:

• To befriend women on the street in an affirming relationship.
• To be there for women who want to exit prostitution.
• To point them to the love of Jesus.
• To provide information when asked for it.
• To meet for coffee in the daytime if women want to.
• We always work in pairs.
• We occasionally run events for the women to ‘drop in’ to.
• We partner with local churches in the area.
• We may visit women in prison, if requested.
• To connect women with other agencies - like the drugs team - for specialised help.
• We train volunteers to work in the project.

Don and Alison very kindly welcomed me to their office and explained their work. I was hugely impressed by their gospel heart and their clear evangelistic aims in what they are doing. They exemplify the combination of compassion and gospel truth that is so clearly modelled on Jesus.

They have been working with Ipswich International Church (formerly known as Elim) who are based in the red-light area, and have recruited a team of volunteers from that church who they have trained and who go out to reach the girls on a Friday night. Alison, Don and others go out on a Tuesday night. Because of the nature of their work, any men that are involved always go out with another woman working as a pair to reach women on the streets, with the man very much to the rear so that the woman worker makes the first approach.

In their estimation they see on average about 7 girls working the streets on any given evening, almost all of whom are drug addicts. 90% have been abused as children, and self-loathing is a common factor. Even so, I was struck by their comment that ‘Prostitution is greed based not poverty based.’ (The homeless who live on the streets of Ipswich tend to be alcoholics rather than drug addicts, having come off drugs and replaced drugs with alcohol.) Alison said that some girls might get clean of drugs but still have a sexual addiction that keeps them ‘working’. She said that the sex industry operates at several levels. (1) Street prostitution – almost always by women addicted to heroin and crack cocaine. (2) Brothels – girls have to be clean of drugs to get to work in such places. (3) Escort agencies – apparently well-paid professional women will work through such agencies purely for the sexual thrills they offer. (4) The hidden sex trade. This is the big unknown, but we do hear about human trafficking and ‘sex slaves’ with the explosion in population migration, and no one really knows the measure of the problem. If this does exist in the Ipswich area it is completely untouched by the police.

Don and Alison sit on a committee that facilitates communication between agencies that work with street prostitutes. This involves the police, social services, probation, the Suffolk DAT, Ipswich Borough Council and other agencies. Tellingly, at one meeting a member of the committee admitted to Don that while each of the other agencies has something to contribute to reduce the problem, only the Bridge Project has the real answer.

Contact details: The RSVP Trust, P O Box 55, STOWMARKET, Suffolk, IP14 1UG

Tel 01449 677058. Website www.rsvptrust.co.uk

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Yeldall Manor - Reading

I made a brief visit to Yeldall Manor near Reading and received a warm welcome from Tom Ward, the member of staff in charge of referrals. Tom talked me through a number of the issues involved in the drug treatment sector, and I was able to gain a clear idea of what they are doing at Yeldall and their approach to treatment, which is thoroughly Christian in its thinking and approach.

Yeldall Manor is a curious Victorian baronial-style country house set in 38 acres of ground. It was turned into a Christian rehab centre in 1977, and runs two residential programmes, both entirely for men.

(1) The Yeldall Manor Programme (28 Weeks)

The aim of the programme is to help residents to live a fulfilled and new life free from using drugs or alcohol. This is a huge change, and so the centre is designed to provide the support, acceptance and structure needed to bring about this change. Their Christian ethos respects the dignity of each resident as made in God’s image, and sets a standard of discipline in which old attitudes can be challenged and new ones tried and tested.

Residents must be detoxified before coming to Yeldall. For the first four weeks they undergo the ‘assessment’ phase, in which they share a room with another resident. During this time they have to demonstrate their motivation to continue with the programme. This is followed by the 24 week ‘regeneration’ phase. Residents enter a contract with personal objectives and a number of specific conditions. They explore the deeper issues that led them into drug/alcohol dependency, and through counselling and group work they begin to face these issues. The aim is to make it more difficult and less attractive to return to their old lifestyle. All residents are given practical work to do on the estate, and there is time for a wide range of recreation. While the ethos of the centre is unquestionably Christian, applicants do not have to be Christians before they come. The programme includes Christian aspects and residents have to respect this, and are asked to attend a local church once on a Sunday in the early part of the programme. In being shown round, I was struck by the fact that when shown into two of the bedrooms, on both desks were Alpha course study booklets – the gospel dimension is strong here.

(2) The Lodge Programme (18 weeks)

This is a supported housing project that operates two 4-bed units in houses in another part of the estate. Residents move into this programme when they will find it a challenge to reintegrate into the community. Residents access voluntary work two days a week to prepare them for entering paid employment when they leave. The other days are spent covering such areas as developing basic literacy and numeracy, IT skills, relapse prevention, relationship building, budgeting and life skills. On leaving the Lodge and re-settling in the community, former residents receive support from their key worker for a further twelve months.

A significant issue raises itself when we come to considering residential rehab. Such Tier 4 provision is costly, and yet if the client completes the course, the most likely to be successful. Yet across the country residential drug and alcohol rehab centres are emptying and closing. Yeldall Manor has places for 27 men, but at this point in time only 8 are occupied, and Yeldall Lodge is also only half full. The Government’s current drug policy favours funding drug treatment at Tier 3, in day centre based courses (such as e.g. the Iceni project in Ipswich, see below). Such non-residential treatment courses are full to overflowing, and this has been the way that the Government has been able to say that it has been successful in getting more addicts into treatment. That means that fewer and fewer people are being funded for residential rehab, even though it is my perception that they have a higher success rate. If there are not more referrals to Tier 4 units, many of them will close and their expertise and the unique healing environment that they provide will be lost.

Contact Details: Yeldall Manor, Blakes Lane, Hare Hatch, Reading, RG10 9XR. www.yeldall.org.uk.

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The Iceni Project - Ipswich

I visited the Iceni Project in Ipswich one afternoon and spent a very helpful time with the Treatment Manager Carole Slater, who provided me with a copy of their treatment philosophy. Iceni has been operating for some years now and has a strong reputation in the area. It operates as a Tier 3 drug treatment centre offering free and confidential advice and holistic treatment through daytime sessions that generally run 10am-4.30pm. They concentrate on the interaction between body and mind, trying to take into account a person’s whole situation and status in society. The project employs a number of salaried drug workers supported by a team of volunteers.

The project offers treatment to some 180 clients per year, using a phased approach to treatment. Iceni will admit to Phase 1 those who are actively using street drugs or misusing prescribed medication and are not yet ready to enter a more active level of treatment. At this stage they seek to give advice on issues that stand in the way of progress such as housing, benefits, debt etc., and to give support in resolving these. They also do a general health assessment and each person receives a care plan at the point at which they start treatment, so that their progress can be assessed. Normally, after a period of up to 13 weeks clients will move into Phase 2 treatment. Those doing so are expected to be ‘more stable in relation to their drug use’ (Iceni does not require abstinence as a pre-condition of treatment.), and some may start treatment by going straight in at this phase. Treatment in this phase includes counselling and mentoring, using both small groups and one-to-one, and uses a range of complimentary therapies. Therapy groups address a range of issues such as anger awareness, personal development, gender specific issues and relapse prevention. Phase 3 is for those who have become drug free and who want to prevent relapse but need some support to enable them to do so.

The Suffolk DAT are keen to see Iceni expand its client base and to expand this well beyond 200 clients a year entering treatment. I asked Carole what their success rate is, which is a controversial issue in the whole drug treatment sector. It depends how you measure ‘success’, and today the buzz term is ‘successful outcomes’. These can be anything from coming off illegal drugs to reduced use of methadone, to entering education/training or employment, or not re-offending. In terms of becoming completely drug free they have a success rate of about 30%, though outcomes on other measures may be higher.

While Carole did not criticise those projects that operate on a Christian/spiritual basis, such as those who use the ‘12 steps’ approach, she did make clear that the underlying philosophy at Iceni is a secular one, as, she argued, the 12-steps approach is not for everybody. ‘Iceni’s humanistic approach values the uniqueness of every individual.’

I was very struck by something else Carole told me. Before the Ipswich murders none of the Churches showed any interest in the work of Iceni. Since then the world has made a beaten path to her door! Not only did she do some thirty press interviews in December, but Church groups such as the Mother’s Union and some Baptist women’s groups have come to find out more. She seemed somewhat bemused by this, and understandably so! I realised I was only adding to the interest, and felt rightly reproved for ignoring the whole world of drug addiction for so long.

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Other Projects

The following are all projects that I have become aware of in a number of ways. While I have not been able to visit them (with the exception of CFL), their methods or their ethos interest me and their approaches to work in this sector deserves mention here.

Freedom Project Egypt

On a family holiday in July 2004 we worshipped at Trinity Baptist Church, Brussels. The guest preacher on that day was Dr. Ehab El Kharrat, a psychiatrist and member of Kasr El Dobara Church in Cairo. He founded ‘Freedom Project Egypt’ some 18 years ago, a drug rehabilitation centre based at an Oasis in the Egyptian desert, and they now operate at several sites in Egypt.

Each rehab site offers two programmes running side by side – a Christian 12-step based programme and a “non-faith specific” 12-step based programme. Along with a core 12-step philosophy they use some motivational interviewing and CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) The project reports to have successful treatment outcomes ranging between 70-90%. Their outcome measures include completion of the programme (60-70%), but also remaining abstinent from illicit drugs following completion (90%). They have follow-up data for some clients from the inception of the project (17 years ago).

I was impressed by Dr El Kharrat as a preacher, particularly by the way that he combines a faithfulness to God’s word in a Muslim country in the face of much persecution with a strong commitment to Christian social concern. If their success rate is correct, it is remarkable, and indicates that a gospel-focussed drug rehab approach may have more success because it deals with the spiritual issues that underlie addiction and the power to change.

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Door of Hope

Based at Shoreditch Tabernacle in Hackney, Door of Hope is a Christian charity that aims to reach out to Prostitutes working in the East End of London. They are linked to the National Christian Alliance on Prostitution, which brings together many similar projects working to help women escape from prostitution.

Door of Hope lists the following services on their website:

• Outreach - We meet with individuals on the street, in the area that they work. We offer information about the help we and other agencies can provide and give refreshments. This is the first step to building relationships.
• Drop in - A time during the day where individuals can access further support on issues such as housing, benefits, and domestic violence amongst others. We provide food and access to showers, with a small clothing store.
• Home visits - A chance to build supportive relationships with individuals and their families.
• Informal counselling and support - We seek to support the person in addressing the many issues they face, whether emotional, practical, social or spiritual.
• Addiction counselling - In partnership with the Children and Family Alcohol and Drug Service (CAFADS) we offer support in the area of addiction to individuals and their families.
• Advocacy - We campaign on behalf of individuals. This includes attending appointments at other services with them if requested.
• Information - We provide relevant information advice where required
• Liaison - We refer to other agencies to make sure each individual gets the best support available.
• Health - We offer individual and small group education about sexually transmitted diseases and HIV prevention. We produce information leaflets on these topics that were created in collaboration with our service users.
• Life skills training - This is offered individually and in groups and includes typing and computing skills, cookery, budgeting, anger management and self-care.

According to their website, the project's impact in 2003/4 was considerable. They contacted and offered primary advice to 237 women on the streets. 72 women aged below 24 involved in prostitution were offered support. 268 visited their drop in centre. 9 people were counselled for substance misuse, and they were involved in providing support and advocacy for 11 people in approaching healthcare agencies. They provided information to 9 women suffering domestic violence, referred 6 young people at risk to local young people's support agencies, and helped 3 women move to short term safe accommodation. They also obtained birth certificates for 12 individuals to enable them to access benefits and housing services. Most significantly of all, 3 individuals stopped their habitual pattern of prostitution.

Their web address is www.doorofhope.org.uk

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The Monty Project

By a strange querk of TV scheduling, at the very time that Ipswich was going through the trauma of the Ipswich Murders, BBC2 screened a fascinating TV series called ‘Growing Out of Trouble.’ The five part series aired over a fortnight in the run up to Christmas, and is the brainchild of BBC Gardener’s World presenter Monty Don.

In collaboration with West Mercia Probation Service and the West Mercia Trust, he obtained the use of a small-holding near Leominster to run a horticulturally-based drug project. Their stated aims were ‘to take a small group of local people who had fallen out of society and become persistent offenders as a result of their drug addiction and to help them reintegrate and conquer their addiction by working with the natural world.’ Their story is told in Monty’s inspiring book ‘Growing Out of Trouble’.

All the young people who came to work on the project were addicts who were on a court order and trying to come off heroin and crack via a methadone script. To follow their personal challenges and their progress over the course of the series was both heartbreaking and heartening. Monty’s frank diary tells of his inner struggles in setting up and running the project, the range of issues involved, and the ridiculously short-term expectations of Government drugs policy.

Their purpose is

‘To provide long–term facilities for individuals who will benefit from working at the site on a regular basis, and to provide a safe place, free from drugs. They will learn to work with the seasons to grow organic and biodynamic vegetables, fruit and meat which can be sold through local farmers markets, specialised grocers and box schemes.

‘This will be done through on site training and educational courses. They will also have the opportunity of visiting local food producers and farmers, to find out more about local food in their area.

‘Through the project we hope to offer a chance to these individuals, to maintain and care for them with the respect for the long–term husbandry of the land using organic and biodynamic principles and with the minimum reliance of heavy machinery, non- renewable energy or expensive technology.’

The TV series and book track the progress of the Project from starting work in September 2005 through to August of 2006, and as its website is still online, I assume it is still running. Monty Don is frank about the successes and failures. One young person died by overdosing, but many of the others made good progress and there was about a 50% success rate, which in the drug treatment world is better than the average.

I am very struck by two poignant quotes from Monty’s book:

‘Heroin has created a lost generation of kids who get involved and it is very difficult to move away from it. They are all stuck at the age that they first got involved, so life experiences stop at that age. They are stuck in that box.

‘What we are doing here is showing them that there is life outside that box.’ (P154)

‘The truth is that no one will give up heroin by coercion. Threaten them with punishment of some kind – withdrawal of privileges, prison, illness or death – and it never ever works….But all you can do is create an environment in which they feel motivated and supported to choose to get off and stay off heroin. For all the reasons that they are in it in the first place, that will be difficult and slow. Sporadic re-use is very probable. Drugs – and perhaps more importantly the ritual of drug taking – are right at the centre of their lives. Remove it and there is a great yawning gap. It will be filled by something. What we are trying to do is provide something that could fill it in a rewarding way.’ (P162)

I am filled with admiration for Monty Don in his willingness to try something, and to help in lifting a lid on this world through his media connections. He and his colleagues have worked really hard to make this project work, and they are enjoying some success. I think he is onto something when he talks about the therapeutic benefits of gardening and getting addicts out into the countryside, learning new skills, and watching things grow. As a Christian I think that is reconnecting with God’s creation. My only comment - and it is an observation rather than a criticism - would be this. The ‘great yawning gap’ he mentions in the paragraph above is the spiritual cause at the heart of drug addiction. As Christians we have been given the answer - the hope of redemption in the gospel of Jesus - that is the only ultimately transforming power to set someone free from addiction.

www.themontyproject.com

Growing Out of Trouble – Monty Don. Hodder and Stoughton.

ISBN 0 340 89847 X

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Caring For Life – Leeds

As a Church we support Caring For Life in Leeds, who this year have celebrated twenty years of working with vulnerable adults. In 1987 Peter Parkinson and Esther Smith, together with a number of others from Leeds Reformed Baptist Church and a growing number of other churches, started the work that became Caring For Life. They offered a home to three homeless young men, and the work has grown from there. Their mission statement is:

‘To share the love of Jesus with those who are disadvantaged, have a disability, or who are vulnerable or otherwise in need, through the provision of accommodation, therapeutic daytime activities at our farm base and long term support and friendship.’

The work is based at Crag House Farm on the northwest outskirts of Leeds, and they accommodate both men and women in two homes in that part of the city. On the farm they become involved in a number of projects that help them to grow in confidence, to learn new skills and to put behind them the memory of a past of abuse. These projects include rearing chickens, animal husbandry, a small mammals project, horticulture, cookery, carpentry, literacy skills, and music and drama. Others who are resettled in the community come in to the farm each day to work on one of the projects, and a floating support team help support them in independent living. Above all, the Christian ethos of CFL flows through all that they do. Their strap-line ‘Sharing the love of Jesus’ really is tangible when you go to visit the farm and when you talk to the people in their care. The author Juliet Barker, who has recently written a history of CFL to be published in September, says this ‘I defy anyone to visit Crag House Farm and not be profoundly moved by the experience. Despite the unspoken trauma and tragedy that are the reasons for its existence, the surroundings are both beautiful and peaceful, and the whole place is imbued with a spirit of grace which is almost tangible.’

I mention Caring For Life here not because they work particularly with drug addicts, because that is not the focus of their work. Sometimes people will come into their care with a background of addiction. But what is so striking about CFL is that they have created a place that embodies the gospel that had small beginnings and arose out of a profound Christian social concern. If Christians in Suffolk have the same passion to develop a ministry of Christian care for drug addicts, we can learn a great deal from CFL in the way that they work patiently and graciously to transform broken lives.

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Chapter 3: What could our response be in Suffolk?

My initial thought is to say that thinking about such an ocean of need quickly becomes overwhelming. This is not something outside our comfort zone; it is way beyond our comfort zone. The temptation is to do nothing and praise God for what others are already doing. But every Christian work has to start somewhere, and where better than here? God has allowed this need to come to our attention in a way so drastic that we had to listen. At the present time there is huge public good will towards any project in Suffolk that seeks to help drug addicts get clean – as the Evening Star’s ‘Somebody’s Daughter’ appeal bears witness. That good will may not last forever, and this issue may get forgotten, and Christians can be as forgetful as others. So where might we start.

Tier 1 and Tier 4

In terms of reaching out to girls working the streets of Ipswich, the Bridge Project is doing a fine job and needs to be supported more widely by Suffolk churches. There is no need to replicate such a project; it needs reinforcement by Christians who volunteer to work with them in their vital work.

At the other end of the spectrum, in Tier 4 residential rehab, it would be unnecessary to open another residential rehab unit when those that exist are being underused. Funding addicts from our area who want to self-refer themselves to them would seem like a more sensible way to go at the present time. Setting up a trust that might provide such funding as part of its work would seem the better way to go, until there is a change of government drug treatment policy that recognises the higher success rate of Tier 4 provision and backs it with funding.

Tier 2 and Tier 3

So I would suggest that it is in the area of Tier 2 and 3 provision that efforts should be concentrated by Christians and churches in the next few years. This could be in any of the following scenarios:

1. A Church in a strategic location and with the right facilities sets up a drop-in centre for drug addicts and alcoholics. On the back of this a church or group of churches could set up a Christian-based drug treatment programme that deals with the whole range of issues: detoxification, medical needs, relationships, debt and benefits, and spiritual needs.
2. A trust is set up that employs a drugs worker who trains a team of volunteers to work with them in reaching out to drug addicts. This could involve detached outreach work onto Ipswich council estates, working with problem drug users and alcoholics one-to-one, and getting them into the drop-in centre and non-residential Christian treatment programme outlined above.
3. A group of Churches and Christians band together to set up a trust that rents a small holding to run a horticultural project providing non-residential drug and alcohol addiction treatment. Set in the Suffolk countryside, it provides a healing environment with a Christian ethos in which people can explore the issues surrounding their addiction over a longer period of time, receive counselling and group therapy, learn new life skills that will help them back into work, and explore the Christian faith to find answers to their spiritual questions.

While these scenarios would each be an ambitious start for any church or churches, such projects could all start small and grow with experience over time.

Every project has to start somewhere, and I would suggest that the starting point for any such work would be a gathering where Christians could listen to each other, pray together and see if God is opening doors for such a work to begin. If there is a sufficiently strong response to this paper, I would be happy to host such an event and see where it leads. If you would like to be part of such discussions, please contact me at:

9 Dewar Lane

Kesgrave

Ipswich

IP5 2GJ

01473 612848

email: james.sayers@btinternet.com

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Further Reading

Ministries of Mercy – The Call of the Jericho Road

Tim Keller

Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing

ISBN 0-87552-217-3

2nd Edition 1997 £7.95. PP 236

A superb exploration of the biblical basis for Christian ministries of compassion, explaining how these flow out of the gospel of grace, and exploring such issues as the ‘deserving Vs undeserving poor’ debate, our motives for showing mercy, whether we should help Christians first, and how we combine evangelism with compassion ministries. The second half of the book is an excellent manual of how to go about the practicalities of setting up a mercy ministry, especially in how to train and manage volunteers.

From Whitewashed Stairs to Heaven

Maureen McKenna with Irene Howat.

Christian Focus Publications

ISBN 1-85792-616-1

Quoted above, this heart-warming and heart-wrenching tale will leave you in tears, yet also inspired at what can be done. Also, it is a great testimony to God’s provision above and beyond all our expectations.

The Deafening Sound of Silent Tears

Juliet Barker

SPCK Published September 2007

Book your advanced copy from CFL via their website.

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Appendix

A sermon preached by Jim Sayers

at Kesgrave Baptist Church on Sunday morning, Dec 17th 2006

God’s Compassion for Ipswich

Jonah 4:11

Listen to this with mp3 audio:

Ipswich is a beautiful town. Situated astride the beautiful river Orwell, between Constable country and the beautiful forests and beaches of the Suffolk coast. Under our vast Suffolk sky, this is a wonderful place to live. We are so privileged. Ipswich has become an exciting place to live. With the regeneration of the waterfront, and the coming of the University, there is so much promise. Here in Kesgrave we have a great quality of life: lovely homes to live in, a beautiful environment, low crime – occasionally I have left my car unlocked on the driveway overnight without it being stolen. On Friday morning I stood in the playground at Cedarwood School, and saw the beauty of the sun rising in a softly dappled sky, and then I realised that it was rising over the villages of Nacton and Levington. I thought: ‘How can such a despicable evil come to a place as beautiful as this?’

Suddenly we find ourselves inside the media bubble, with satellite vans and familiar faces broadcasting live from the places we know so well. We are experiencing what Soham and Dunblane have been through before. A criminal has lifted a lid on our town, and shown us what it can be like. In one sense we are not altogether surprised. We know that the culture of drugs and alcohol in this town, in a pattern repeated across the country, has gone downhill in the last ten years. Ipswich is a different place at night, and we fear for our young people in a town that is drinking itself into the gutter. With the alcohol that comes with nightclubbing come recreational drugs. With them come hard drugs, and with heroin and crack cocaine comes a terrible addiction. For some women addicts with addiction comes prostitution. For too long we have tried to pretend that it isn’t happening, that it doesn’t matter, that it isn’t our problem, that the police will sort it out. Now a terrible series of crimes have asked some searching questions.

On Thursday night the shops of Ipswich were open late for Christmas shopping, but they said the shoppers were finding it hard to be festive. Is there a sense that Christmas seems inappropriate in this mood, with the media camped out on our doorsteps hungry for bad news? But I want to say: No, we will celebrate Christmas here, and we will do it for the best reason. For the coming of Jesus is the coming of a Saviour, a rescuer for the lost, the coming of light into a dark world. If ever there was a time to be proclaiming the message of Jesus, it is now. So this morning there are four things I want to proclaim.

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1. The coming of Jesus reminds us of evil.

That seems a strange thing to say, having been to a nativity play this week! Surely we want to think about nice things this Christmas. But the problem of evil is at the heart of the name of Jesus. The angel said to Joseph ‘you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.’ (Matt 1:21) The following chapter describes a terrible evil: King Herod wanting to kill the baby Jesus, and slaughtering the so-called ‘holy innocents’, the children of Bethlehem. Simmering below the surface of the pretty Christmas story is the reality of evil. Why did Jesus have to come into the world? Because we need rescuing from the slavery and evil of sin. People have said this week that the man who is committing these murders is an animal. I choose to disagree. Certainly he may be mentally unbalanced, but we need to remember that there is a terrible potential for evil in the human heart. Look at what is happening in Baghdad, in the West Bank and Gaza. When people are brutalised by war they commit the most terrible acts of hatred. Civilised nations can engineer a holocaust. Why? Because there is in all of us what the Bible calls ‘the flesh’, a sinful nature. What tempts men to drive into Ipswich and keep these girls in business? It is sinful desires. (Why is it that we hear so little about the men who fuel this trade?) The same sinful desires are in all of us. The girls who were murdered were not worse than other women. There are not two classes of people: good women and bad women, or good men and murderers. We are all men and women, sinners before a holy God. The Bible says we are all born ‘dead in trespasses and sins.’ That is why, in our nice family lives, in our nice clothes on a suburban Sunday morning we need Jesus, as much as the girls who work at night in the town, and as much as the murderer.

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2. The coming of Jesus reveals God’s compassion.

We can be tempted to say ‘This situation is too horrible for us to do anything.’ We can sit back and do nothing. God could have done that with us. But God is a God of compassion, who has a huge heart for the lost. He shows that to us again and again in the Bible. Turn to the Book of Jonah, a story people know so well, except that so often we miss the point of the final chapter. Jonah has been saved by the whale from drowning and vomited onto dry land. He sets off on his original mission from God, to go to the Assyrian city of Ninevah and preach a message of judgement. The problem for Jonah is that he can’t cope with what comes next: the King and the people humble themselves in sackcloth and ashes, and God in his compassion spares them. Jonah goes outside the city, sits under the shade of a vine and wants to die. Why did God spare this city? Does he have a heart for places like this? As Jonah wrestles with these questions, during the night a vine weevil eats through the stem of the vine and it dies. In the morning Jonah is more concerned about his vine that has died than he is about the people of Ninevah. This is God’s reply. ‘Should I not be concerned about that great city?’ (Jonah 4:11) Of course he should. That is the heart of our God. As I have thought about these words, they say to me that this is what God feels about Ipswich. We shouldn’t say ‘Why didn’t God stop this?’ Why do we always blame evil on God? Why don’t we blame it on Satan, and remember that the Bible reveals God as a God of compassion. The coming of Jesus to earth is the measure of God’s love for us. ‘God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son…’ Jesus had time for prostitutes and tax collectors who turned to him for mercy. He said ‘I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.’ ‘The Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.’ Paul says ‘Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the worst.’ The message of the coming of Jesus is that when God looks at the tragedy we are living through, he is filled with compassion.

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3. The coming of Jesus is about incarnation.

Incarnation means someone from outside coming to us, to identify with us and be one of us. Jesus left behind the glory of heaven to identify with the lowly and despised. In much the same way God had said to Jonah ‘Go to the great city…’ Go to the city that revolts you with its idolatry and wickedness. When I think of the young people of Kesgrave and Ipswich, I can’t help feeling that we have failed them. Young people hang out on the streets because they have nothing to do; no one takes an interest in them, and along comes someone who gets them hooked on drugs. One of the victims was a young woman who grew up here in Kesgrave. Which young person will it be who gets hooked on drugs next year? Our friend Peter Parkinson was a pastor in Leeds, in a church that ran an active children’s and youth work. One day he had to go to court as a witness, and when he got there he saw a police van emptying its contents of young offenders into the Magistrates court. They were the young people who had been through their youth work, now doing drugs, and thieving. Peter realised that it was one thing to preach the gospel to young people, it was another to live beside them and share the love of Jesus with them, which is how they came to found Caring For Life, a charity that runs homes for vulnerable adults, and supports large numbers of people in the community who come from a background of crime, drugs and abuse. That is incarnation, and that is what Ipswich needs if we are to make an impact on the social problems that are hidden in our town. What such people need is one more wonderful thing:

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4. The coming of Jesus is about redemption.

Luke’s account of the birth of Jesus uses the word ‘redeem’ again and again. We hear that word surprisingly often, perhaps without understanding its meaning. Mostly people speak about redeeming themselves, as though by our own efforts we can make ourselves right with the world and with God. No wonder then, that women who have fallen into addiction and prostitution consider themselves beyond redemption. But Jesus came to be a redeemer of the helpless and hopeless. In the Bible, to redeem means to buy someone else out of their slavery. The slave can’t do anything to change their situation. That is exactly where the young drug addicts of Ipswich are. We need to get alongside such people and tell them that there is one person who can redeem them from their empty way of life. Jesus by his death can take away their guilt, and by his life he can transform them and give them a life they never dreamed would be possible. Have you been watching Monty Don’s programme about his farm for drug addicts, where he is using farming to wean young people off drugs and give them a new beginning? He is doing a great job. I am 100% behind what he is doing, but there is one thing he doesn’t have so far as I can see: the good news of redemption. God has given us this vast and powerful gospel that changes lives, that sets the captives free, and now we know they are all around us.

This week has been the worst week of our lives here in Ipswich. I have wept for Ipswich this week. And yet, this Christmas could be a new beginning. This extraordinary week could be the watershed of something big. We must not pass up this opportunity and make lots of excuses for doing nothing. I believe that God is calling us to act, to follow the example of Caring For Life in Leeds, to come to the most ruined lives here in Ipswich and share with them the love of Jesus, and say to them, you too can find redemption. This Christmas that is the good news of the coming of Jesus.

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Jim Sayers