By Veena Bharwani
IT'S outrageous and senseless.
This is how a reformed gangster and drug addict described the recent gang-related attacks at Downtown East and Bukit Panjang.
Pastor Don Wong, 50, said yesterday: "It's really terrible. We spend so much time trying to help youths and we are sad when we read such stories."
The executive director of The New Charis Mission, who counsels youth offenders, said that when he was in a gang in the 1970s, gang members would never go about slashing people for no good reason.
"The gangs today are much worse than the gangs of before," he added.
"Before, we had a code of honour and we had rules. If you had a problem with another gang, you'd arrange to meet to settle the problem.
"Once you tell the rival gang you are sorry, it is over. They won't come after you any more.
"There was no such thing as staring competitions, and whacking and slashing like what's happening today.
"In the old days, if you acted like that, the gang leader would punish you according to the strict code of conduct."
Pastor Wong was 13 when he began taking marijuana and heroin. At 14, he dropped out of school, joined gangs and trafficked in drugs.
When he was 23, his father, who runs a confectionery business, had to bail him out for three days so he could get married.
"Instead, I used the three days to get friends to prepare drugs for me to smuggle into prison," he said.
For 12 years, he was in and out of drug rehabilitation and prison.
A new leaf
He finally turned around in 1993 - after another spell in prison - when a pastor got him to check into The Helping Hand, a Christian halfway house. A sermon at the shelter on his first day changed his life.
"It was then I had my wake-up call," said Pastor Wong, now married to a church worker. They have two primary school-going children. He has a son, 26, from a previous marriage.
He and his team of seven junior counsellors, who are also ex-offenders, work with gang members and youths at risk.
"What they need is a mentor, someone who talks their lingo," he said.
"When we go into the prisons, we tell them about our lives. They can identify with us as we have been through the same thing they have.
"We can't just tell them that what they are doing is bad. They need to have a goal and a plan.
"I tell them if they reform, they can have the chance to help someone else who needs some guidance, which is what I am doing now.
"They need people to believe in them."
Another ex-drug addict and gangster, Mr Glenn Lim, 39, founded Architects of Life (AOL), where former delinquents help young ex-offenders and youth at risk get back on their feet.
He said: "They need someone to care for them even before they turn the corner themselves.
"What they don't need is another intervention programme, or adults treating them as deficits.
"They don't need hardware (or another formal programme). They need 'heartware' - that is a relationship with a trusted mentor like us."
Mr Lim was mentor to David Thorairajan Manickam, the ex-gangster who was featured in The New Paper on Sunday.
Mr Thorairajan, 29, is now about to graduate with a degree in Psychology and Organisational Behaviour and Human Resource at the Singapore Management University.
"I believed in his potential even while he was still in prison struggling with who he was," he said.
Why are youths so violent these days?
Mr Lim said that part of the problem is the lifestyle.
He explained: "Look at the games they play, like World of Warcraft for instance. They just shoot and don't think."
So some end up being violent without thinking about the consequences.
Talking about his own past, he said: "I turned to gangsterism and drugs between the ages of 16 and 23."
Finally, at 23, he was caught at the Woodlands Checkpoint and faced the possibility of life in prison and 24 strokes of the cane for drug trafficking.
But he had someone who believed in him - his father.
"I gave him so many headaches and still, he believed in me and bailed me out and I made a fresh start," he said.
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