Bristol man has turned his life around and is now helping young offenders like him

By the age of 28, Trueman Ward had spent his entire adult life in and out of prison. What started as petty crimes escalated and he found himself in prison for the first time at 17 and went on to spend the next decade committing crimes to support an income.

As a child, he could never feel safe, hated growing up in Easton, and was constantly bullied. But if he came home and told his family he would be beaten, he would be told to “man up” and risk being beaten at home.

After being expelled from his local secondary school, Trueman was sent to what he describes as ‘a boarding school for naughty children” in Chippenham. The new school gave him a chance to reinvent himself and he went from a shy kid who was bullied to being a bully himself and getting kicked out of school two years later for selling cannabis.

READ MORE: Bristol youth worker says role was ‘traumatic’

READ MORE: St Nick’s Market trader who spent years on the streets and in jail

Despite continuing to sit exams at 16 at a local pupil referral facility, by then he was already embedded in a life of crime and was in prison a year later with a friend for assaulting a man . Speaking about his experiences, Trueman said: “Growing up, all my friends were criminals. When we got arrested and went to jail, we were all so that when one of us got out and everyone else was in, you’d have nothing to do, get in trouble and go back in. .”

Now he is 35 years old and managed to change his life. Trueman works as a mentor for Key4life, a Bristol-based charity which supports men who are at risk of going to prison or who have already been. He was introduced to Key4Life by Nicky, who he met before leaving school in Chippenham when she was working as a careers adviser. Nicky soon changed jobs but kept in touch with him over the years.

Five years ago, when he walked into the Key4Life building in Easton, after being brought there by Nicky – whom he described as the only adult he had ever learned to trust – he admits he didn’t really believe in that moment that can change. “There were 15 of us on the course and 14 of them were all changing, I was so confused because the friends I was bringing myself on the course were all swinging on the paths of salvation and I was still stuck in the same place,” Trueman explained.

Although Trueman met charities in prison, they often left their contact details and it was up to him to contact them after he got out; which he never did. Although Trueman did not know Key4life while in prison, he is impressed by the charity’s approach, which can mean meeting people at the prison gates when they are released.

Sign up to receive free daily news updates and breaking news alerts straight to your inbox Here.

Speaking about his experiences, Trueman said: “I’ve been through everything you can think of, from people having drink and drugs in the family to being beaten up, going to jail and feeling neglected. No one’s trauma is different, it doesn’t matter what you’ve been through, it’s how you handle it.

“With the Key4life training I realized that you can break a lot more patterns by asking people where they want to be in the future, rather than what they’ve been through in the past. My approach is to ask them what they can do to change their situation, rather than how they feel about it.

“I’ve been through a lot of depression and had suicidal thoughts, but now I have the tools to get through it. I see those tools work with other people and they end up feeling a lot better, so I feel better too.”

Although for Trueman the Key4life course ultimately helped him transform his life and enabled him to do the same for others, he will always be grateful to Nicky who took him to the charity’s office in Bristol five years ago. “I sent him a message in 2019, thanking him for the help he gave me because I was so untrustworthy of people in my education.

“I told her I wanted to be a mentor and help people and she brought me to the Key4Life building. He sat next to me and I was so nervous, but I ended up doing the course and five years later, I have a job here.

“I thanked her last week and she was very emotional, she’s the only person who stuck by me, she never gave up. When I went to prison at 17, she would bring me books and visit my cousins, and she did it through many prison terms over the years.

Want our best stories with fewer ads and alerts when the biggest news breaks? Download our app on iPhone or Android

“I’ll never forget the first time I met her at boarding school when I was 12. She said to me, “I’m telling you, if it takes the last thing on earth, I’m going to make you trust me, and I said, ‘I’ll never trust you.’

Key4Life was set up by Eva Hamilton MBE in response to the 2011 riots that began in London and spread to towns and cities across the UK after Mark Duggan was shot dead by police in Tottenham. Following the riots, the prison population rose to 88,000, the highest ever recorded.

Key4life often work with prolific criminals between the ages of 18 and 30 and claim that 93% of participants secure employment and turn away from crime after attending their program. Their 7-step model, based on their founder’s 36 years of experience in rehabilitating marginalized sectors of society, has been recognized by the Ministry of Justice Data Lab as “one of the most effective models for creating change in this area”.