From Prison to Preventing Violence Against Women

Summary

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Australian True Crime with Meshel Laurie

Episode: From Prison to Preventing Violence Against Women (July 8, 2026)
Guest: Pete Bates, Founder of the Pete Bates Project

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Overview

This powerful episode centers on Pete Bates, a former long-term prisoner now leading advocacy against coercive control and violence towards women through his platform, the Pete Bates Project. Host Meshel Laurie guides a raw, moving conversation, examining Pete’s harrowing childhood, trajectory through addiction and the criminal justice system, and his transformation into a passionate advocate. The episode directly confronts not only the realities of domestic violence but also explores the pathways out of violence, responsibility, healing, and the vital need for men’s voices in tackling gendered abuse.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Breaking the Silence: Speaking as a Survivor and Advocate

• Masculinity & Speaking Out
  • Pete reflects on the discomfort among men who witness misogynistic behavior but choose silence:

    “I remember… at barbecues where a bloke has said something to his missus… all the men… look at their shoes…” (00:45–01:04)

  • Meshel notes Pete’s “masculine, manly man covered in tats” look brings necessary diversity to male voices confronting family violence (01:15–01:31).
• Impact of Lived Experience
  • Pete emphasizes the power of speaking from lived experience versus “reading from a textbook,” paralleling addiction recovery to domestic violence advocacy (01:47).

2. Pete’s Childhood: The Roots and Ramifications of Violence

• Extreme Family Violence
  • Pete recounts his father’s control and brutality, a traumatic incident involving petrol and threats of immolation, and the role of police and community complicity:

    “He had a 20-liter jerry can full of petrol… poured petrol over me and said to her, are you still going to leave, slut?… She submitted to save my life.” (03:41–04:11)

  • Police non-intervention and victim-blaming further entrap survivors (04:13–04:41).
• Patterns of Isolation and Control
  • Explains how abusers systematically isolate women, monitoring movement and sabotaging connections (04:41–05:59).
• Long-Term Entrapment
  • Pete’s mother remains with his father after 45 years (“She’s just trapped there… mental illness, Stockholm syndrome.” 06:07–08:27)
  • Meshel and Pete discuss how intervening directly often endangers survivors—repercussions fall on women trying to leave (08:05–08:38).

3. The Cycle of Violence and Realizing Change

• The Crime That Changed Everything
  • Pete’s conviction for manslaughter is discussed openly; context of his offense emerges from triggered, protective, trauma-related violence after decades of exposure to violence and drug addiction (09:53–12:12).
  • He served 14.5 years (longest manslaughter sentence in Queensland at that time) (11:47).
• Desensitization and Lack of Empathy
  • Prison hardened him further, making violence seem routine; the impact of such environments on brain development is explored.

    “My earliest memory is violence… I was desensitized to violence…” (13:47)

  • Pete acknowledges:

    “A lot of people with your background grow up with no empathy… that’s about your brain chemistry.” (14:26–14:43)

• Turning Point in Prison: Self-Education and Rehabilitation
  • Initially illiterate, Pete taught himself to read with an encyclopedia in solitary and began self-help (15:14).
  • Decided to help others, mentored men trying to detox from drugs, and took every opportunity for personal growth (17:13–17:27).

4. Roadblocks to Rehabilitation and Institutional Barriers

• Prison Programs vs. Systemic Resistance
  • Successful rehabilitation model led by counselors (supported by female staff, opposed by security/business side); ultimately shut down as prisoners become ‘commodities’ (18:05–18:22).
  • Pete and Meshel critique profit-driven prisons that deprioritize rehabilitation.

5. The Victim’s Story and Accountability

• Acknowledging Responsibility
  • Pete faces his past without glorifying crime, mindful of the damage to the victim and both families (19:56–20:47):

    “I hate talking about the crime side of it. I did what I did. I take ownership for that. I’ve done my sentence, but I’m doing everything I can… I’m not doing it for redemption.”

• Rejecting Excuses
  • Pete rejects the narrative that backgrounds excuse future violence:

    “Our past explains us. It doesn’t excuse us. It’s a choice.” (21:10–22:07)

  • Encourages men to confront their choices, not perpetuate cycles of blame.

6. Breaking Free: Love, Purpose, and a New Path

• Meeting Belinda: Healing Through Connection
  • Found human connection through his now-wife, a prison counselor who treated him as a person; her support, family acceptance, and mutual trust were crucial (24:59–27:34).
• Practical Steps for Change
  • Upon release, Pete did the opposite of old-timers’ advice: faced anxieties, engaged directly with life (shopping centers, work), and refused to retreat into old patterns (32:21–32:51).
  • Built a new life: home, family, and stable work, credited to planning and determination (33:03).
• Lessons for Prevention
  • Reflects on youth crime, advocating for early intervention and positive male role models, not just punitive “adult crime, adult time” mantras (25:18–26:13).

7. Male Responsibility in Preventing Violence

• Calling Men to Action
  • Pete emphasizes violence against women is “not a women’s issue”—it requires all men to speak up and challenge abusive behaviors (35:18–35:56):

    “Every single man, boy and child should be concerned about domestic violence. It should not be okay.”

  • He highlights that men with “masculine” energy are well placed to influence cultural change.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On direct action and risk for survivors:
  • “She would pay the price… when women are in those situations, the consequences [of leaving] are so much worse.” — Pete (08:17–08:38)
• On accountability:
  • “Our past explains us. It doesn’t excuse us. It’s a choice.” — Pete (21:10–22:07)
• On fatherhood and legacy:
  • “I wanted to be a loving, caring, soft, gentle man for my family. I wanted my legacy to be not a warning to my grandchildren…” — Pete (29:16–30:13)
• On masculinity and activism:
  • “We need to speak up as men. We need to speak up and say it’s not okay.” — Pete (35:56)
• On community and healing:
  • “I didn’t know that good people existed. And she showed me that they do.” (24:59–25:18)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:45–01:15: Masculinity, silence among men, the importance of male voices
• 02:53–04:11: Pete recounts domestic violence and police failure
• 06:07–08:38: The long-term effects of coercive control, inability to intervene directly
• 09:53–11:47: Discussion of Pete’s crime and sentencing
• 13:47–15:14: Desensitization, empathy, and the impact of trauma
• 17:13–18:22: Innovative prison program, then its closure
• 19:56–20:47: On accountability to the victim’s family
• 21:10–22:07: Rejecting excuse-making for violence
• 24:59–27:34: Meeting Belinda and the healing power of relationships
• 33:03–34:14: Transitioning from prison to society
• 35:18–35:56: The responsibility of men in preventing violence

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Conclusion & Resources

Pete Bates’s story shows how cycles of trauma and violence can be interrupted, but only with honest confrontation of the past, responsibility, community support, and the courage to speak out. His voice, especially as a distinctly masculine role model, actively encourages other men to become part of the solution in preventing violence against women.

Resources:

• Lifeline: 13 11 14
• 1800RESPECT: 1800 737 732 / 1800respect.org.au
• 13YARN (for Indigenous Australians): 13 92 76 / 13yarn.org.au

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Transcript

[A]

This is Australian True Crime with Michelle Laurie. Unfortunately, we don't hear a lot of stories about long term prisoners transitioning successfully back into society, but we have one for you today. Pete Bates runs the Pete Bates Project, a fast growing platform dedicated to exposing coercive control, post separation abuse and the behavioural patterns that put women and children at risk. He joins us to talk about his mission. This is Australian True Crime. We acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which this podcast is created. The Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung People of the Kulin Nation and a warning. This episode of the podcast contains graphic descriptions of violence.

[B]

I remember going to pub with pubs with men and they say if I ever saw a bloke do this to his woman, I'd do this and I'd do that. And then being at barbecues where a bloke has said something to his missus or put his misses down or disrespected her and all the men at the, at the barbecue look at their shoes when that gets said, you know.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So just with my, my past and where I've been, I feel like I'm in a position where I can stand out front and say something.

[A]

And the thing about you, Peter, is, if I may say so, your look and your vibe is very welcome in the space, I think, because I think, you know, you're a very masculine, manly man covered in tatsu. You know what I mean?

[B]

Right. Yeah.

[A]

Because we, we women are always asking men to step up more in this conversation, right, about, about family violence and misogyny. And oftentimes the men who do step forward, bless them, are a certain genre of man. Softies, lefties.

[B]

It's, it's, that's true. It's like I remember when I was, when I was younger and I was going through a drug addiction and I would have, there would be a counselor there talking. And they're talking, they're reading from a textbook while they're talking. But then one of the older blokes that, who actually lived addiction gets up and speaks and he's walked that road. It's a bit more impactful. So I think if I can get out front and I can speak from the heart. I experienced extreme domestic violence when I was a child. My father was horrible, violent, terrifying man as I was a kid. And I remember being that little kid, hoping that a man like me would come through that door and grab me and get me out of that house, you know. So in a way I sort of feel that I'm speaking for Those kids now, you know, that they're looking out the door and hoping someone comes along and saves them, you know, can you.

[A]

I mean, you talk about it a bit on your socials. Do you want to talk about some of the things that happened when you were a kid, the sort of environment that you grew up in?

[B]

Talk about anything, mate. I talk a lot about how women are. Everyone goes, why don't you just leave him? Why don't you just leave him? Now, I used to watch my father knock my mother out against the fridge and hold her up with uppercuts when she was unconscious. So. And then the police would come. And by the time the police got there, us kids were given scripts to say the place. She was given scripts to say the place, you know, busted lips, whatever. And then the police here end up joking and laughing with the place and, you know, she's just being silly. She's drunk again now. The one time that she did get the courage up to leave him was the scariest moment of all because he went quiet and he disappeared. She was in the room packing her bags. She had the suitcases on the bed. And then he disappeared for. For a few minutes. And he's come back upstairs and I was sitting in the hallway. And then as he's come back through the door, he had 20 liter jerry can full of petrol and he just started dousing all the furniture, walked up the hallway where I was sitting, poured petrol over me and he said to her, are you still going to leave, slut? And then he pulled his lighter out and she had to submit. She submitted to save my life. That, like, he probably would have went ahead and let us up, you know.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

Now so many women are in that position where that's why they don't leave, because the consequences are so much worse.

[A]

And also a lot of cases, they don't have any money of their own, they don't have anywhere to go. They're unaware of services and what's available to them because they haven't been allowed to use the phone whenever they want to. Haven't had the privacy to talk to a doctor about it or, you know, all of those practical issues. Where do you go?

[B]

It's. It's systematic. It's part of the thing that. That these men do where they isolate the woman.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

No friends, no family. Yeah. He. My mother wasn't allowed to wear makeup. She had no friends, she wasn't allowed to work. If for some reason someone called her, this is back in the old days, he'd go and he'd go and pick up the other phone in the house and listen to what was going on. He used to check the odometer on the car to see, like, if she had to go down to Coles to get some shopping. He'd check and why is there an extra half a kilometer on there or something? Like, just. And he would. He turned her against her family. My mum was. Was. Her parents fled Russia in 1956 when the revolution was on. She was born on a boat in a dock in China. So her family were Russian immigrants. So they didn't. They didn't really know anyone when they got to Australia. And she never really got. Knew anyone either, while where she grew up, she. She went to school. But he got her when she was 18, so took her away from her family, then just isolated her and just took her confidence away. And he was all she knew. So just. And he knew that, he knew that, so he had total control over her.

[A]

So when did it end? What's the outcome of this story of your childhood? Is she still alive? Is he still alive?

[B]

But she's still there. 45 years. 45 years. Still there, yeah.

[A]

Oh, lovey. Are you still in touch with them?

[B]

No. No. See, after. After I got out of prison in 2014, I made contact and she called me. She was hiding in a cupboard over there. She called me that he was going silly and I said, that's it, I'm coming. And because I was on parole at the time, he said, he's going to call the police, tell them I'm coming with guns and I've got knives and make all this story up. And then she's. I haven't spoken to her since, so

[A]

she's lost you now.

[B]

I. I understand what she's doing because she, like, my doors always open to her, always open. She knows that. But unfortunately, mate, she's just. She's just trapped there, you know, she just like. Yeah, but this is sort of. I know she would. She'd see a lot of my videos. I know she watches YouTube. She. She sees Facebook. So hopefully she sees what I do I'm doing. And hopefully he does too. So. Yeah.

[A]

Oh, my God. I just want to drive over there now and get her. But you can. We can't, can we? It doesn't work that way.

[B]

Can't. That's right. That's right. It's. It's really sad. And the thing is that's. It's just. It's so prevalent. I get dozens of messages a week from women who have been in these Sort of situations. Some. Some for 50 years, some plus, you know, and women who have left 20, 30 years ago who still are hyper vigilant and still suffering, you know, so. Or have never haven't been in another relationship since that one that damaged them like this.

[A]

Well, tell us what, what do you think would happen, what would happen if I drove over? I'm a stranger, but I'm, you know, if I drove over there or if I called the cops, if I rocked up over there with.

[B]

She would pay the price. Yeah, she would pay for it.

[A]

Why wouldn't she leave with me if I said to her, come with me, come back to my house, stay with me for however long it takes and we'll get you organised.

[B]

Because I think. I think after that long, it becomes mental illness, Stockholm syndrome. I think she's just. She's just trapped there, you know, And

[A]

I think too, the fear of. The fear of what he will do. Like, it's hard to convince somebody that, that we can overcome this guy together. When she spent her entire adult life being overcome by him. He's defeated everyone. He's even defeated you in the end. He's got everyone away from her.

[B]

Yeah, he hasn't defeated me. I'm getting him video by video now, you know, like, I'm raising awareness for it and.

[A]

Well, this is it. You are doing, I guess, what I would advise you to do if we were friends, which is you got to get on with your own life, you got to save yourself, you got to make yourself healthy. You can't rescue her and all that. And you're doing that.

[B]

That's right, mate. Because that particular day that she did call me, I was going to the car and my wife pulled up, luckily, at that moment. And then I thought, well, my family, if I go down there, this could be. This could ruin everything and it would ruin everything.

[A]

Yeah, you'd be back in jail.

[B]

I wasn't a little boy no more, so. And he knew that. So I just. I had to choose my family, my wife and my kids. And so. Yeah.

[A]

What. What offending did you participate in?

[B]

Well, what I went to prison for.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So. In 1999, I was charged for a murder. It was a. A girl, the mother of my child. We had broken up and she had a couple of young girls over babysitting. This particular day, while she was at work, she was walking the babysitters home. Once she'd finished work, a carload of blokes had driven past and yelled out abuse out the window. She had yelled back, responded this Car's done a U turn, jumped out of the car. She's had words with him. One of the blokes slapped her up the side of the head. And it just so happened that the two girls that she was walking home, recognized the car, knew where they lived. She called me, told me what had happened. I was young, wild, stupid. I went to the house, jumped the fence, went inside the house and went silly. And one of the boys, one of the men in the house, fell over and bashed his head on the tiles and it killed him instantly. I ended up. Was charged for murder. I had two trials on that murder. I ended up pleading guilty to manslaughter. I got life for manslaughter. The judge said I should have been tried as a murderer, therefore he was going to sentence me as a murderer. Then in 2002, it went to the Australian High Court of Appeals and they overturned it and gave me 18 years for manslaughter. And at that stage, it was the largest sentence in Queensland history for manslaughter. So, yeah, mate, I ended up doing. Serving 14 and a half years.

[A]

Okay. I mean, it's interesting to me that even now you're describing it as. I was young and silly. I mean, you realise you were obviously triggered to use a very popular word, an overused word, but if ever there was a time to use it, I reckon it's now. When violence against the woman that you, even though you'd separated, you were obviously still feeling protective of her.

[B]

Of course. Yep. At that stage I was as a young fellow. Cause I ran away from home at 13 after the petrol incident and a million other incidents with. With the old man. I just went it, I'm out of here and I run away. At 13. I started using heroin. So I was addicted. I was living on the streets. And violence was. Violence was something that I was doing because I was feeling so. Because I was feeling so much pain inside myself as a child from. I didn't realize this until I got older and I got counseling and I worked on myself. But I wanted to hurt other people and I wanted to inflict pain on other people. Cause of the pain I was feeling inside me. So it's sad and it's so tragic how that happened and what happened to that guy.

[A]

You are a textbook case of something. I've heard many, many times on this show from psychologists, from defence barristers, from anyone who works with offenders, anyone in the prison system, that being born into violence affects your neural pathways, it affects your brain development. Someone described it to me once as you know, think about your brain growing as like building a house and if you're born into that environment, the slab that goes down first is wonky but you're on fire. Everything that's built on top is going to be bit wonky.

[B]

Yep, yep. And that's true. Like my earliest memory is violence is my father grabbing my brother boy's ears, picking him up by his ears and dragging him out of the house. Like I was desensitized to violence once I ended up by the time I was 19 and I was in a prison yard like a bloke got stabbed to death right beside us and were more interested in the cigarettes at the time. Like it's just that it just desensitised by the time we become adults, you know, so it's just, it's sad that that happens to children.

[A]

And empathy. A lot of people with your background grow up with no empathy or little empathy and that's not a decision any of us can make. You haven't made a decision to, to feel nothing when a bloke is stabbed next to you. That's about your brain chemistry and.

[B]

Yeah, that's right.

[A]

Yeah. And you said that you've done a lot of counselling. Has anyone else ever told you you're. I mean, I think you'd be a great case study for a lot of these people because you're also clearly really self aware and really intelligent.

[B]

Yeah, I went to prison. I couldn't read, I couldn't write. No, really, no, I couldn't, I couldn't read or write. I'd left school, I got kicked out of school first week of grade eight.

[A]

You're ticking every box on the checklist, mate. You are ticking every box, you poor bastard.

[B]

Yeah, I got, did a lot of solitary while I was locked up. This one particular stint in solitary, I think I was down there for nearly three months and an old guard that I'd known for a while, he gave me a encyclopedia and, and it was about the cosmos, the stars and all that. I couldn't read but I was just, I was looking at the pictures and trying to sound words out, ended up taking that book back with me. I got a dictionary, they started the reading, then I just started devouring books. Then I started doing self help, self help books and just, just starting work on myself. I quit using drugs in 2007 in prison because it was rampant and just buckled down and just started focusing on myself, watching the men around me come in and out. There were men that done the same sentence as I did. In six months, installments. They'd do six months, get out for two weeks, come back in, they'd be missing a tooth, some of their hair would fall out and just get back out again. Just same cycle, same cycle. And I just. I didn't want that. I just wanted to be different to what everyone else was doing. And fortunately for me, I started to get into helping because I stopped using drugs. I had a bit of respect in prison by this stage. I've been in there a long time, pretty well known. They asked me if I'd help mentor some of the younger blokes that were trying to get off the gear. They set up a unit in the prison, isolated from all the other units, so no one could get down there. And blokes would come in there detoxing and they'd have counsellors come down, would do meetings, NA meetings, AA meetings. And then one day, this beautiful blonde lady walked into the fishbowl and I'm still married to her now, so.

[A]

Gosh. Are you still active in prisons with this kind of program?

[B]

No, not at the moment.

[A]

That's a shame. I don't know if you would want to be, but, I mean, I've never heard of a program like that being instituted in inside prison. That's brilliant.

[B]

Yeah, it was. It was a good program, but the. It was a program that counsellors, and, funnily enough, the female staff wanted to happen because it was. You can't. Because if you. If you don't work on the guys while they're in there, you're just going to send the same bloke back out. And if you're. If you treat them like shit, like, I know people go to jail and they need to serve their time, but you don't want them coming out the same as they were when they went in, or worse, because they're going to be your neighbor or they're going to. They're going to be in your suburb, like, if you can. If you can fix them up, try and fix them up.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And. But security, the security element of the prison didn't want that program, so they ended up shutting it down. And at the end of the day, prisoners are a commodity. If you start rehabilitating them, then you start losing your stock.

[A]

So, yeah, absolutely. When prison is privatized and it's a business model attached to it, then there's a whole different set of priorities, isn't there? This break is brought to you by Adobe Creative Cloud, the ultimate creative Toolkit with over 20 apps at your Fingertips. There are always new ways to explore your creativity. Transform images with Photoshop, design graphics with Illustrator, edit videos with Premiere Pro or Animate. Just about anything. No matter what you want to create. Adobe has the tools you need to bring your ideas to life. It's all in Creative Cloud. We must talk about the victim in your offense because it would be rude not to, frankly, and be rude to his family. So I mean that. I can't imagine how terrifying that was for them. And I'm not, obviously what they did was shit house, but then to have you crash into their house a couple hours later must have been a terrifying melee for everybody. Do you remember much of it?

[B]

I do, I do. There were five guys in that house. I. I went into that house on my own.

[A]

They're the sort of guys who'll jump out of a car and slap a soul woman or a woman who's walking to a teenager's home. So I can't imagine. They're the bravest blokes in the world.

[B]

Ye. And like, I hate, I hate what happened. And this is the reason why it's taken me so long to do this with the social media, because it's something I've always wanted to do, but I didn't want to bring his family any grief.

[A]

Also, you have to front foot it if this is part of your story. Just like I have to front foot it with you. Isn't it? Like, we can't, we can't just focus on your story when we have another victim involved and we have his family.

[B]

And yeah, I'd like to think that they can see that I'm doing good. I'm not, I'm not glorifying crime. I hate talking about the crime side of it. I did what I did. I take ownership for that. I've done my sentence, but I'm doing everything I can now to try and to try. And I'm not doing it for redemption or for any reason like that. I'm doing it because it's important to me, you know. And yeah, it was a horrible. It was a horrible night. It was a horrible thing. It cost a life, it cost his family and it cost my family.

[A]

If I were reading it, reading this story on paper in black and white, I would say, okay, well, that was inevitable because of this fellow, Peter Bates background. It was inevitable that, that violence would then come out in another way in his life, probably towards somebody else, if not a partner, then. Could have been road rage. Could have been, as I say, if I wasn't talking to you but if I was just reading the story, that's

[B]

what I'd be thinking, yeah, 100%. It was inevitable. Violence was. Violence was all that I knew as a kid. It was. The first emotion I went to, was anger and violence. But in saying that, when I always swore I'd never hurt a woman or I'd never hurt a partner, and my wife has never had to fear me or my daughter, to me, like, a lot of. A lot of men fall back on their past and my. You know, my father did it, or this happened to me and poor me, you know, our past explains us. It doesn't excuse us. It's a choice. It's a choice. What you do is a choice. So you know it's wrong. If your family. If the atmosphere changes in your house because of your mood and your family's got a tiptoe around you, then that's a choice. You know what you're doing.

[A]

The choice to be real about that, with yourself, though, to accept that, acknowledge that is a step too far for a lot of people, men and women, too hard for a lot of people to accept ugly things about ourselves like that. What. How were you able to do that? What set you apart from those blokes in jail who don't rehabilitate, who don't turn a corner in jail, who come out the same or worse?

[B]

Well, I had 14 and a half years in a cell by myself where for most of those years, I couldn't even look at myself in a mirror. Like, I hated who I was. I just wanted to be a better man. And I knew that we have choices. We decide what we want to be. It's easy to be a victim, and it's easy to be a victim of your past. And it's easy to say, poor me, this happened to me. It's too hard for me. I went, fuck that. I'm being different. I knew that by that stage. I went to jail when I was 19. I was 35 when I got out. I thought my life was just about over. Being 35?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I just. I. I wanted to just be better. Than what? Than what my father was. The. The best lesson he ever taught me was to not be like him. So I. And then I was lucky. My wife Belinda, come into my life and we connected.

[A]

I mean, and let's talk about that. Everyone, everyone, particularly in her life, must have been saying, are you joking? Like, what are you doing, woman? This is a Daily Mail story. You can't hook up with a bloke in jail.

[B]

Yeah, well, she left the job. We become close because I was a mentor. My job was to go on, liaise with her and just say such and such is not feeling well. Can we, can we get him a pillow? Can we get medical down the seam? Because these boys would be detoxing. And she was a human. There was a for it being. I've been inside 12 years by that stage. And that was the first time anyone had spoken to me like I was a human in 12 years. So I ended up being transferred out of that prison up to Marabara. And she left a job shortly after that. And I received a letter from a Zane of, I've left the job. I want to come and see her. This is my number. Throw it on your phone if you want. And she came and visited me for four years. Drove from Ipswich to Maribar. Four hour drive there and back every weekend, next four years. She taught me that good people existed. I didn't know that good people existed. And she showed me that they do.

[A]

Yeah, I remember talking to Russell Mansa about this, may he rest in peace, about being a young person who feels like, well, no one cares about me, so why am I caring about anyone? I'm gonna steal a car if I like the look of it and I'm bored, I'm gonna. I don't care who owns it or how it's gonna make them feel or. Because it feels like no one cares about anyone.

[B]

So, yeah, and when, when you're all you're told is you're a piece of shit, you. You begin to think you're a piece of shit. And we talk about youth crime, that, yeah, everyone's saying, let's get tough on youth, let's, let's do this and let's do adult crime, do adult time. And yeah, that's fair enough, but what about maybe showing some of these kids that they're not pieces of shit? You know, if I had a, when I was a kid, if I had had a man come to me and go, come on, young fella, come and come and lay some bricks with us. Come and do some laboring. And because I didn't know what it was to work like building responsibility and give you a purpose, give you some sort of structure, if maybe that's what should be done with these young fellas before they get into the court systems. You know,

[A]

I won't ask you to speak for your wife, but when you got out of jail, I'm imagining you had, did you feel like you had a lot of work to do with her? People with her family, with her friends and that to prove that she wasn't mad.

[B]

Funnily enough, Belinda's Belinda tells her story on, on Instagram. But funnily enough, her father was a prison guard at Bogga Road many, many years ago. He was, I think he was 22 years old and he had been there not long and he found a young man who had hung himself.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And they told him to hold him up. Well, I, and I had to run and get a, get a blade to cut him down, so. And that scarred him and he left. But Belinda's mum, sister and dad, very supportive. They just trust her judgment. They trust their judgment. They ended up coming and visiting me whilst I was in prison with Belinda at times and they've just been great.

[A]

It's interesting, isn't it? So they've demonstrated how you end up with a kid like Belinda. You know, it's like if you were the demonstration up to a point in your life of how do you make a violent man? Well, this is how, right. Give him this childhood, give him this. How do you make a really good woman with great judgment, you give her these parents and this background.

[B]

That's right. And like just being in prison system, my childhood, I just only ever seen betrayal and I didn't realize such good people existed, you know.

[A]

Well, you were fighting for your life every day, weren't you?

[B]

Yep. Definitely might.

[A]

What's interesting to me, do you have a clinical sort of explanation or has anyone offered you a clinical opinion on this that you clearly developed empathy or seems to me, did you learn how to, I'm gonna say fake it, but I don't even mean that in a bad way. I just mean that all I've ever told, all I've ever heard is that, nah, kids who come through a childhood like this, they don't have any empathy and that's how some of them can end up violent offenders. But then you're talking about a life in prison where you're saying, oh no, this bloke needs a pillow. I'm going to run and sort that out. I'm going to, oh, he's not feeling well. I'm going to go and try and do. I mean that's an incredible depth of empathy in jail. How did that happen?

[B]

Yeah, because I read a lot of psychology books. I read lots, like I said, self help books. Once I started to understand what was going on inside me and why I had that pain and that hatred and that hurt. Hurt. And from the things that happened to me as a child at Home and at school, once I started getting understanding for that and I started to. I come across a good counselor, an old chaplain from Toowoomba. He used to come to the prison and I was up in solitary confinement. And I spoke to him about what happened as a child at school with a teacher. And he said to me, a problem shared is a problem halved. And. And it was true. Once I started to speak, get it out of me. And I just, like, I'm a good person. I'm a good person and I'm kind. I love my family, I love my friends. And in prison, you have to have a facade that you're. You're bad and you're dangerous and you're this and you're that. But it's all facade. Everyone's running around these facades. But like, I. I just wanted to. I wanted to be a loving, caring, soft, gentle man for my family. And I wanted my legacy to be not a warning to my grandchildren, like, instead of like my. My father. His legacy is going to be a warning, you know, But I want my. My children to talk about me in a good way to my grandchildren.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, you are. You're an incredibly impressive human being. I mean, I was just thinking from going into jail, unable to read, to reading psychology textbooks, it's like a Tom Hanks movie or something. It's like, yeah, pretty cool.

[B]

Yeah, you got. You got plenty of time in there, mate. And you choose what you do with your time. You can either sit there and gamble and play cards all day, or you can go out in the yard, you can train exoise and read and use that time to your advantage. And I did. I've done every course known to man that they had done. Every anger management course, every violence course, cert for an engineering in there, done fitness, like, just every course I had, I just. I just devour. And it. It all just. It's just working on yourself, you know?

[A]

How was your transition out of jail? Obviously you were lucky. You had a partner waiting for you and with a great family. But 14 years is a long time. I mean, blokes talk now about getting out of jail and they've never seen an iPhone before. And to the rest of us, that's unfathomable. So there's things like that, isn't there, that the world just keeps moving while you're in there.

[B]

So when I first went to prison, iPhones had just come, not iPhones, but mobile phones had just started to come out, like in the months before. And I think it was a Nokia 62, 10 or something. Big brick. So with an aerial. Yeah, yeah. But what I, when I come out, I was lucky because Belinda started to buy clothes every week for me. She had a full wardrobe.

[A]

But with that said, I've certainly met women who have met prisoners one way or another. Started a relationship with them and then he's gotten out of jail and he's just not been able to cope and they've said he ended up just staying in his, in the house, in a bedroom, gaming or. Next thing I knew he was offending again. Like even if with a great support system, it doesn't always work.

[B]

Yeah, I just did it. Everything that, because I said the other blokes were coming to do the same amount of time as I did. But in Storm, it's everything they said not to do. I did the opposite. They'd say, oh, I don't go to the shopping centers because of the anxiety. You know, institutionalized. Don't do this, don't do that. First day we went to a shopping center. Second day we went to Dream World.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

Yeah, just, I just went head first started. I started working straight away.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I couldn't sit on lounge chairs so I had to sit on the floor because I've been sitting on metal chairs for so many years. So. Because they're all metal. Everything's metal in there, screwed to the floor. So.

[A]

So you couldn't sit on a soft couch.

[B]

Couldn't sit on a soft couch. Nah, nah. It hurt my back too much. Yeah, yeah. It was strange, but I'd say it was seamless. It was, it, it just went well because I wanted to succeed. I didn't associate with anyone from prison. We had planned for four years what we're going to do. We, we had, we had hopes, we had dreams, we had plans and we both just stuck to them. We, I went to work, we started saving, we brought a house within three years. So I, I got myself qualified as a bricklayer. I had 15 staff. Again, it's you, you choose what you want to do. You know, it would have been easy to get out. I'm institutionalized and it scares me. Going to the shops or it's too hard. But the alternative was go back to jail. And I don't want to go back to jail.

[A]

To be 19 and go to jail, I mean, I can't imagine how terrifying. You'd lived through a lot of terrifying situations by then, but how scary was that?

[B]

Yeah, it was pretty wild. Going straight into maximum security. And because, because of the particular crime I got put into the violent offenders unit with, at that stage, the worst. The worst. So fortunately, like, there were a lot of bad men in there for committing bad crimes, but some of them still had good morals. And I, I was still an impressionable age where I learned a lot from these men. A lot of them grabbed me because I was so young, looking at such a long sense, and pulled me out of their wing. And I got that. Make me train as a kid. I'd say, get out in the yard, let's train. So they started teaching me that, let's get out in the yard and box. Let's do this, let's do that. So I was fortunate in that way that a lot of these men had a lot of respect for women and a lot of these men had a good moral code. Every single man, boy and child should be concerned about domestic violence. It should not be okay.

[A]

It shouldn't be a women's issue.

[B]

It shouldn't be a woman's issue. Like, we've all got mothers, daughters, sisters. Like, a woman is killed in this country every, every eight days. And this year is pretty bad at the moment. Like, the numbers are pretty high this year. That, that should be concerning, you know,

[A]

like, well, and because children are killed as well and, and, and children, and children are devastated. Like you were little boys, male children. It's not a women's issue. It's an issue for all of us. And I agree with you. I think there's definitely a place and a great place in our society for masculine men.

[B]

Definitely, definitely. And that's sort of why I try and stand out front now and say, we need to speak up as men. We need to speak up and say it's not okay.

[A]

Thank you to our guest today, Pete Bates. And you can find out more about what Pete's up to at his website, the Pete Bates Project, and also on his socials. Thank you for joining us on Australian True Crime. We'll be back next week. If you need support after listening to this podcast, you can call Lifeline on 131114 or contact 1-800-Respect on 1-800-737-732 or 1-800-Respect. Org au Indigenous Australians can contact 13Yarn on 139276 or 13yarn.org au.