Simon Fenech helps those touched by justice system turn their lives around at Fruit2Work
He was shot by hitmen, stabbed in the neck, lost his marriage and wrote letters to his kids before attempting to end it all. But it was a stint behind bars that helped kickboxer Simon Fenech win his seven-year battle against drugs. Now he’s helping others to restart their lives.
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Every reformed addict has their rock bottom.
For Simon Fenech, it wasn’t when he was shot by underworld hit men.
It wasn’t when he was stabbed in the neck with a 12-inch kitchen knife during an armed robbery.
It wasn’t when his marriage broke down and he left the family home in Hoppers Crossing for a dingy apartment in Flemington.
It wasn’t after a six-figure workers’ compensation cheque went up in “smoke”, or police raids on his car parts factory or when his addiction to methamphetamine was costing him $1000 a day.
And it wasn’t even when he wrote final letters to his brother and his kids before attempting to take his own life.
For Fenech — a one-time kickboxing champ turned ice dealer and addict — it was a stint in jail that was the beginning of the end of a seven-year saga that began with one puff.
“Once I got to prison, and I was locked in that cell for 22 hours of the day, coming down off the drugs, (I had) a lot of time to think about where I was,” he says. “I needed to clean myself up and become the man I was prior to this addiction. And prior to prison. I wasn’t born bad. I wasn’t born an addict. I wasn’t born a criminal. I lost my way.”
Fenech, who turns 46 next week, was living the Australian dream: a nice five-bedder out in the western suburbs, a wife he adored and young, growing family. He had a “jaw-dropping, jet-black beast” of a Harley and a promising amateur career in kickboxing.
But after a workplace accident that left him with a broken back, in debilitating pain and out of action for more than a year dosed up on powerful painkillers and antidepressants, Fenech was “a shell of a man”.
That was until a mate dropped by with a small bag of methamphetamine — ice — and a pipe and Fenech’s pain, for the first time in a year, was gone.
“Rooster one day, feather duster the next. That’s how the massive comedown from ice was once described to me,” Fenech writes in Breaking Good, the memoir that describes his journey into addiction and his ultimate redemption.
“Ice affects everybody. All walks of life. It doesn’t discriminate. From the very first puff, it really takes hold. Had I known it was that strong I would never, ever, ever have tried it,” he says. “That message is just not out there. About how, from that very first time, it’s so addictive.”
Ever-enterprising, Fenech funded his addiction through dealing, buying increasingly-greater quantities of ice to cover his usage. Though he fronted court numerous times, it was driving unlicensed while under community corrections orders that ultimately saw him spend close to a year in jail — first at the Melbourne Remand Centre, then sentenced to six months at the medium-security Fulham Correctional Centre in Gippsland.
“You hear a lot of guys talk a lot of rubbish in jail. It can drive you crazy,” he says. “I probably should’ve ended up in prison a lot earlier. And my offending probably would’ve been lighter. There would’ve been less offending (which was) pretty much the same — drugs, driving (while disqualified), there would’ve been less off it.
“What I really needed, was compulsory rehab. That’s what I believe I needed. And to be honest, what I really wanted.”
Even though he was clean and resolved to turning his life around, Fenech says upon leaving prison it was almost too easy for him to fall back into his old ways.
“It’s a bit like, you’ve done your time, you’re out the door, good luck. You’re released back into the suburbs where you were committing the crimes, or using drugs,” he says. “(The system) almost throws (people) straight back into the deep again. It’s very tough.”
He says after paying rent for a room in a boarding house that “looked more like an ice den than the first stop on the road to recovery” he was left with $60 a week to pay for food and transport.
“What are you going to go back to? You can’t survive on Centrelink. There’s a lot of guys that I met in jail that really had hope in turning their life around. They’re all wanting — well not all — there’s a huge amount of people that want to change.
“But they do come across a lot of hurdles when they get out. Employment is their biggest challenge.”
While there are many organisations devoted to helping younger offenders stay out of the system, Fenech says there’s “not a great deal that work with older offenders. There needs to be a lot more of it. It’s such a huge gap”.
For Fenech, help came in the form of Fruit2Work, a social enterprise that delivers fruit and dairy products to workplaces.
Starting in 2017, the enterprise is dedicated to reversing the level of reoffenders in the justice system. Victoria has a recidivism rate of almost 44 per cent, due in the main to the dual hurdles of homelessness and unemployment.
“Obviously if you’ve got no employment you can’t put a roof over your head,” Fenech says. “Fruit2Work provides meaningful employment to guys and girls who have been touched by the justice system.”
From his first days packing fruit boxes at 2am to driving the delivery van, Fenech is now the operations manager, helping others restart their lives as he did.
“With anyone who comes out of prison and works alongside me, I can relate to their issues, they can relate to me, (there is) respect and understanding,” he says. “I see the process start from when they’re released from prison, to when they’re earning their first pay check, to then getting their kids back in their lives. And I’m with the process the whole way through.
“Watching these guys and girls go home in a high vis, they’re driving a registered car, have put their own petrol in, and can buy groceries for their family. Feeling like they’re a member of the community again.”
In the three years of its operation, nobody who has participated in Fruit2Work has returned to prison — making the program one of the most successful of its kind in the world.
While COVID-19 lockdown has caused the delivery business to fall by more than two-thirds, the team is still working delivering bulk veg to soup kitchens, delivering food packs to the vulnerable and helped feed families in the Flemington and North Melbourne towers, delivering 3000 meals a night over a fortnight when they were in hard lockdown.
Fenech, who often speaks at prisons sharing his story in the hope it inspires others, says his biggest joy is watching people make positive changes to their lives and today “my life is gold”. “Got a great boss, a beautiful partner. Got a family again, got my kids back in my life. What more out of life can you ask for?”
Breaking Good, by Simon Fenech with Neil Bramwell (Echo Publishing), $29.99,
is out now.