John our dad, worked full time to provide for us, but he had his own issues, coping with my mother leaving him with three kids. Alcohol was his coping mechanism.

He was in the pub when he wasn’t working. With the help of my Gran he brought up my 2 older brothers and me. My dad John was my whole world.

I was playing in the street with another young boy when he started teasing me, he said ” you’re Dad’s not even your real Dad ” so I ran into the house crying saying he says “your not my Dad! ” .

  “sit darn cock I’ve got something to tell you.” He said ” Your real dad is a man from Liverpool, who your mam ran off with years ago. Then when you were 6 weeks old, she came back but she didn’t stay. She just left you here, but thy’s my lad now.” He told me my brothers were his and said I’ve looked after you since you were 6 weeks old so your my lad now.“

My whole world fell apart. I was heartbroken!

 I thought, wow my mother didn’t want me!

Your not my real dad!

 My biological dad didn’t want me either! 

What a way to find out by a kid in the street!

But as you do I got on with life, or at least the best I could. Abandonment issues were well and truly imbedded deep inside me now. My Dad used to take me to school and I would scream crying my eyes out saying; “don’t leave me here please Dad don’t leave me here”.

He would take me into school where a teacher would do her best to clam me down I always thought he would not come to get me.

Then Christmas 1979 my worst fear became a reality! It was the last day of school before we broke up for the holidays. Everyone was really excited to be going home, screaming, shouting, jumping up and down with excitement. and that was just the teacher, probably looking forward to a break from us all.

At home time when the teacher saw the parents come to collect each child she would say

“Go on Peter your mums here,” 

“Go on Debbie your mums here.” etc.

Bit by bit the class emptied until everybody had gone. But my dad didn’t come. I thought he had abandoned me. I kept crying saying “my Dad’s not coming he doesn’t want me now ! ” I remember I became hysterical. After what seemed like an eternity of waiting, the teacher was getting concerned!

She looked through my file and took me to my Gran’s house. I couldn’t stop crying all that night…

It was the next morning when the police knocked on my Gran’s door, telling her my Dad had been drink driving and had a head on collision with another car after his works Christmas do! He was in hospital with 2 broken legs.

After 3 days he told the Dr’s on the ward  “I need to go home. I’ve got 3 kids to look after. They said “when you can get across this ward on your own we will let you out”.  So my dad being the man he was, asked for some crutches and dragged himself across the ward just so he could come home to be with his kids!

Thinking back, I remember we had to put a bed in the living room. We must have looked like Charlie and Grandpa Joe out of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory!

Over the next couple of years I started to feel a little more secure, that I was not going to get hurt again.

Around 7 or 8 years old during the school six-week holiday’s, I was playing in the field’s with two of my mates. We stumbled across a man laid on the grass masturbating. We did not know what he was doing at first. He then sexually abused all three of us, and then he made us abuse each other.

I never told anyone about this happening, I felt too ashamed!

I went into my own shell, I became shy and scared of getting hurt again.

I was bullied emotionally and physically by my oldest brother. He used to knock 7 bells out of me. Then he’d call me the Cuckoo because they lay their eggs in another bird’s nest.

About a year later my mother decided she wanted me so I went to live with her. She was bipolar, in and out of psychiatric hospitals.  My mother couldn’t cope with herself, never mind looking after me.

So I was passed around my mothers family who I’d never known before, I was past from pillar to post. 

I was about 13-years-old when I went back to my Dad’s into an extremely violent environment. He and my oldest brother knocking lumps out of each other regularly.

One day, they stopped fighting while my Dad went to the toilet. That’s how surreal it was!

When he came back he hit my brother with a bar!

Another time my Dad tried to kill my brother with an axe, but his friend saved his life by pulling him out of the way. The axe went straight through the sofa where my brother’s head had been. We had that sofa for years after, every time I looked at it I would remember how the split got there. I have only just begun to realise how traumatic this must have been for my eldest brother as the sofa was also his bed. 

My Dad took me to the pub from a very early age, we would sit at the bar with pop and crisps. one night an argument started between my brother and him. As my brother started to get up my dad smashed my brother’s teeth in with a beer bottle. He said, “I can’t be bothered fighting tonight get back down there” Everyone started laughing, and the landlord shouted across the room to pack it as he was interrupting the quiz, which got a tremendous laugh and they carried on playing.

My other brother recently reminded me of the time Dad crumpled newspaper and set it alight. He began putting it under and all over my brother while he was asleep on the sofa, I was sat on the staircase watching, he said “I’m going to burn the bar-steward alive“.

Violence had become very normal to me.

 I even thought it was funny!

When I was fourteen-years-old my brother hit me for the last time. He would have been twenty-one. Almost fourteen years of anger was unleashed in me that day. I ran at him, as he fell backwards the door handle hit him in the back which winded him. I wouldn’t stop hitting him, kicking him and throwing him against walls.  His mate pulled me off him eventually saying “your going to kill him Fin!” All four walls and even the ceiling was splattered with blood,

After that…

(No fear) 

I feared no man ever again.

I had just battered a man at fourteen. I thought how can anyone else ever hurt me now. All the hate and fear inside me had been let out.

Pandora’s box was well and truly opened!

I told my Dad when he got home from work. I said,

“He will never hurt us again Dad”

he replied with, “I’m sorry Fin but I can’t let this carry on”. So I got kicked out because I was not his flesh and blood, I was sent back to my bipolar mother.

My mother was now living with Harry my stepdad, he was a great man, but as my mother was bipolar she was regularly trying to commit suicide. I’d only been there 2 weeks before I walked into her bedroom to find her with slit wrists!

I thought it was because I’d been sent there! I got used to seeing her with her eyes rolling round her head as she slipped unconscious. Then we would call an ambulance.

(Yet Another Overdose)

Then she would be sectioned! 

My dad then started to see a Lady that worked in the Redbeck Café. So on a Sunday night he would drink all night get drunk then jump into the 7.5 ton builders wagon he drove. We would go to the Redbeck. One Sunday he almost ran head on into a car coming the other way. I pulled the steering wheel so we missed it. We ended up in a hedge. The next day he took me on the tip and said “you’re going to have to learn to drive, because when we go to the rebeck I am going to end up killing someone.” ‘Because that’s normal at 15 years old’…

Harry’s son Tim my stepbrother, came to live with us. That’s when I was introduced to drugs, he smoked weed. I was totally against drugs at this point, as that had been the catalyst that caused the fights between my Dad and oldest brother. My dads alcoholism and my brother getting high caused them to clash. That’s what would start the arguing off!

At fifteen-years-old I started working in a butchers as a Saturday Lad! I spent the next three years training to be a butcher. If I wasn’t desensitized  to the sight of blood already, that career choice stopped me from being squeamish in any way.

When i was 17 my Mam hit Harry over the head with a poker. It was only thin but this it bent to the shape of his head. The police were called and my Mum was arrested, but because of her Illness she was let off. Harry left his own house, he got his own little bungalow. A couple of weeks later, my Mam said “I am going out”. She left me and our Tim in the house and moved back in with Harry, Tim’s dad leaving us to fend for ourselves. I was Seventeen he was Eighteen. As you can imagine 2 young lads no supervision party time. He got me on drugs,

Drugs be came an integral part of my life for the next 33 years!!!

Weed to start with, but that quickly escalated to harder drugs. I realised while I was off my head I had no cares, worries or emotion. I didn’t care what drugs as long as I was out of my head. While on drugs all my problems disappeared.

until they wore off then I needed more!!!

I bought a car, I didn’t have a license yet but that wasn’t going to stop me from driving. I had become so unruly and basically feral I was a ticking time bomb. Just after I passed my test I had a car crash ironically on a road called ‘Hell Lane‘. We were trapped in the car, it took the fire brigade 4 hours to find us and cut us out. I spent the next 6 months in traction staring at the hospital ceiling, then almost a year in a wheelchair and on crutches.

The girlfriend I had at the time, was not happy about this choice but she went along with it. However she made it clear. I should get a normal job and normal life.

I thought have you any idea how my life has been?

What’s normal I thought?

Due to her being pregnant at the time, I should have grown up at this point and took her advice, but I didn’t. After my son was born, we was in the house one night sat watching tv, when someone knocked on the door. When I opened the door there was 2 drug dealers from York stood there, one of them stuck a gun in my face. He said “your stepping on toes!“

Normal people would usually have brown underwear at this point, but as I have now come to realise I was a psychopath at this time. I just looked them straight in the eye and said “I have got my missus and a baby in the room behind me, so you need to get back in your car, get back to York and protect your family. Because no one comes to my door and threatens me and my family.” I had called their bluff, they got back in there car and left. I then walked back into the living room and calmly said “I have got to nip out love, I wont be long see you“.  I got into my car, I only drove about 50 yards then it hit me what had just happened. My whole body was shaking I must have been sat there 10 mins just shaking. 

I am now so ashamed of the person I was at that point.

Inevitably my relationship with her came to an end. I then moved into a flat. I was on tag new years eve, on the millennium so I could not go out. I started to think what are you doing with your life, your either going to end up dead or in prison for a very long time.

My middle brother our Russ and I have always got on like a house on fire. He came to see me and said,

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING!”

“I will get you a job at our place and sort your life out”. I have always looked up to our Russ and thought if I could be half the man he is I would not be a bad bloke.

I started working for a well known retail company. I started building my career there. starting as a warehouse operative, but I grafted as hard as I could to change my life. Over the next 5 years I shot up in positions, eventually becoming National Off-site-Co-ordinator. Basically this meant, any warehouse in the country that was not running smoothly, I had to go and get it running how it should. 

Even though I had such high positioned job, I could be sat in meetings with directors on a Monday morning, then at night, I could be going to Leeds, sitting in crack houses still trying to forget all my problems.

By now I had got back with my ex and had a daughter, bought a house and totally turned my life around, but I was still addicted to drugs. I had gone from doing naughty things with drugs, to running warehouses. However due to this job, I could be sat in my office for months at a time, twiddling my thumbs with nothing to do. Then I could get a phone call from a warehouse anywhere in the country from London to Scotland, and I would have to go and sort it out.

I could be gone months at a time, working long hours, with extra travel time before I finished. This was not ideal with such a young family at home. This caused my relationship to break down again. She said to me “your not the man I fell in love with“. I said “you fell in love with a naughty man, I’ve changed from that life to going straight so we could have a nice house and family. My work commitments have given us a nice house and everything we have got now. so no I am not the same person you fell in love with !”

Then we split up. Within a week I had pinned my boss up against a wall, resulting in losing my job, house, my kids and my missus all in one week.

Not knowing anything different, I went straight back to my old life. Once my house was sold, me an my ex got about 17 grand each. My drug addiction was that bad, I spent it just under 6 weeks. With all that anger inside I became a very violent man.

I’ve always had broad shoulders and because of my upbringing, I’ve always had the stones as big as a Bengali Tiger. I had be going out drinking and fighting grown men since I was 15 years old. I would never back down to anyone, and I’ve got plenty of scars to prove it. I didn’t get these from playing tiddlywinks.

I made money by hurting people for a living, (Debt Collector, Enforcer) whatever you want to call it. If you owed money for a drug debt, and I got the job of collecting it, I was getting that money one way or another.

People can say “I’ll be ready for anyone coming for me,” but believe me if I took your front door off your first reaction would be shock, people think what on earth is that noise. Then I would be coming through your living room door, and on you before you have a chance to even get out of the chair.

I only had 2 rules:

1st I would not go into a house if kids were in the there!

2nd I would not hit a woman!

I have a funny story about that 1. I was living in Harehills in Chapeltown Leeds.

I went with a 66 years old Jamaican yardie crack cocaine dealer, to collect a debt, when we got there, just as we were going through the door, the drug dealer told me “He’s a transsexual.” At that point I said..

“A what?“

He said a “chick with a penis“, but he didn’t say penis obviously. He then proceeded to tell me to “hit him,” but to me it looked like a woman. “He’s got breasts” I said. He kept saying it’s a bloke “he’s still got the meat and two veg“, at that point I started laughing. To me, it looked like a woman therefore I could not hit him. I ended up walking out laughing saying “sorry I’m not doing that one“.

Just picture the scene:

Me being a big lad as high as a kite at the time, 

a 66 years old Jamaican yardie crack cocaine dealer with dreadlocks!

And a bloke dressed like a woman with quite impressive breasts and a 5 o’clock shadow.

It was the only time I couldn’t collect the debt.

Looking back now it was so surreal!

But now in all seriousness!

It wasn’t all fun and games.

I moved from Chapeltown to Holbeck, because I had upset that many people someone would have ended up just shooting me!

I lived with a prostitute who was a heroin addict, she used to inject her drugs straight into her groin. Luckily for me I never took the step of injecting. One night while we were taking drugs, she overdosed in front of me. This gave me  phobia of needles, still to this day I pass out at the sight off one. She unfortunately passed away. I called the ambulance but sadly it was too late. This infuriated me, but as i did not know which drug dealer she got them from, I went round all the heroin dealers in Beeston that she bought from and smashed them in. I was not in a relationship with her but in a strange way we really did care about each other.

On reflection now it was me still looking for love, but my heart was that hard it wouldn’t soften for anyone. I caused a lot of damage to people physically and psychologically for financial gains. I seriously hurt a lot of people. I had no emotion, no feelings, just cold.

Crack cocaine became my drug of choice.

Then about 20 years ago, one night just as I had run out. I saw someone on the TV, who sold their soul to the Devil.

I said “give me all the crack I can smoke and you can have my soul.“

(BIG MISTAKE)

About 3 months later, I got my first blood clot in my lungs, and one in my leg. The first of many which caused a lot of health issues including D.V.T’s, P.E’s, Heart Attacks and T.I.A’s. This caused severe pain, mainly in my leg, which would swell up. Blood thinners and pain killers did nothing to help it. After about 3 days I couldn’t even walk. I would be rolling round in agony, however smoking Crack took all the pain away.

After smoking Crack I Found, 

 I could walk normalish, for about 3 days, then the pain came back until I smoked some more.

This cycle continued for over 20 years!

I Had to smoke crack every 3 days, just to keep the pain away. Otherwise it would be back to rolling around in agony, using a Mobility Scooter and walking sticks just to get around.

I was looking for love but didn’t understand love, so when anyone showed me love it was alien to me .

I never felt love!

I couldn’t even tell my kids I loved them!!!

• I always felt I had something missing.

Then I met an amazing lady who works with my wife.

(Who has become a dearly treasured friend now.)

She asked my wife, “Can Fin put flat packs up, I will pay him to assemble my new office desk if he can?” When my wife told me this I thought, I’m a crack-head of course I will do it. I’m going to get some money! While we were there, we got talking about Church. Truthfully just out of respect for her. I agreed to go to Church. which by pure chance was at the end of my street. she travels miles just to get to this Church. Amazing coincidence.

The following Sunday we went.

first song in church I heard was.

Maverick City Music-

I Thank God  Hell lost another one I am free.

It was really upbeat with a real band, Guitars, Drummer and Keyboard playing. I thought wow I’ve never been to a church like this before. I really enjoyed it. I noticed when I came out of church I always felt calmer.  So I kept going.

After about 6 month I started doing the Alpha course once a week for two hours on an evening. 

While doing the course they kept talking about how much Jesus loved me, but this didn’t make any sense as I’d never felt love and never understood love. They also talked about forgiveness, mainly forgiving myself for all the pain I had caused to others. Also forgiving everyone who had hurt me in the past. But I couldn’t forgive myself, for some of the things I had done to people while debt collecting.

Then the amazing lady who introduced me to Church, turned round to me and said “are you better than God!” I said “no not at all.” Then she said “well God’s forgiven you so why can’t you!” That helped tremendously and I started to forgive myself. Half way through we went on the Alpha weekend, where we learned about the Holy Spirit. Our Pastor prayed for me and asked the Lord to turn my heart of stone into flesh.

When we got home, the first thing I did was ask my wife to take something to Cash Converters. To get some money for crack as my leg was really hurting.

17th Nov 2024 Was when my life got transformed.

I went to Church, and on the way  I asked God to drench me with the Holy Spirit and give me help to conquer my addiction.

 I said,

“Lord Jesus, if you are real, I need to know that this is real. I don’t want a little bit, So hit me with it hard so I’m sure! So I know for definite. Drench me with the Holy Sprit. I’m asking this, in the name of Jesus. ”

When I was in church I sat with my arms open and my eyes closed and I said,

“Father please drench me, fill me with the Holy Spirit.”

For the next hour and 20 minutes the only way I can describe it is pure love and energy. Filling my whole body from head to toe, I felt my heart turn from stone to flesh, just as our pastor had prayed for the day before. I truly could feel it inside!

As this was happening to me with my eyes closed, This is hard to describe. You know when you have your eyes closed and you wave your hand in front of them, and you see a shadow! it was like that. I saw 2 black things come out of my shoulders. It was at this point the emptiness got filled with the love only God can give.

I believe it was the demons coming out of me, from when i sold my soul 20 years ago to the Devil.

Afterwards the People around me said my whole body had been shaking.

A close friend came round to me and said “are you ok I have just watched something come out of you?” she had been sat behind us, to which I replied “I feel amazing I have just been filled with the Holy Spirit!”

I’d never felt a feeling like this, No  drug could make me feel like I did. 

You can‘t buy the feeling that I was getting in a bag!

That’s for sure!

The emptiness that I felt inside was suddenly filled. When I left Church I felt like I was floating.

I felt love for the first time.

It was Oozing out of me! 

I no longer wanted to have any drugs, I felt complete, the emptiness was gone.

However I was expecting the pain to return after three days.

But the pain never came!

8 days later, my mind was telling me I needed to go get some drugs. I really did not want to, I was arguing and battling with my own head, but I could not stop it. So I thought I will just go get a little bit. I jumped on my push bike, and set off to get some, I must have looked crazy, as in these circles my reputation precedes me.  As I was riding along I had tears streaming down my face, because I did not want to do it. I ended up spending £300 over a 2 day bender.

The day after that I went to the Alpha meeting, as soon as I walked through the door, I said to our pastor “please help me, my heart is healed, I have got no pains in my legs, but my head is still driving my addiction.”

I can not thank God enough for this, as when he put his hand on my head and prayed for me that all changed. I instantly had no more cravings!

Still to this day I have no cravings, even the thought of taking drugs now, makes me feel physically sick.

 So now I’ve got no pain and no need to take the drugs.

Thank God!

The whole experience has filled my emptiness. By inviting Jesus into my life and wholeheartedly devoting my life to him I am now clean of all drugs. through faith, Jesus Christ saved me!

Three weeks later my door buzzer rang, two friends came round to see me. They are both crack-heads! I buzzed them in. Then I started to talk to God as they were coming up in the lift.

I said “Lord Jesus, why are you testing me like this?” I thought well if this is what God wants, fair enough!

I sat for 30 mins telling them how much finding God had changed my life.

Then I asked them, “Do you have any crack on you?”, to which they replied “Yes why?“.  “Put some on the pipe and pass me it!” I said!

One of them said “No Fin, you have done so well don’t spoil it now!”.  Probably because they didn’t want to share it! They really didn’t want to, but I can very persuasive.

“Give me it.” I said, I took the pipe off them and lifted it to my mouth, lit the lighter and stared straight into their eyes. I said,

“This is what God can do for you!”

I then started laughing, passed them the pipe back with the crack still on it! saying “I don’t need that anymore.” they were totally gobsmacked that I had not smoked it.

I said to them,

“I THANK GOD 

BECAUSE HELL LOST ANOTHER ONE

I AM FREE!!!“

This is why I have created The Fin Dalton’s Christian Outreach Programme Evangelist C.O.P.E.

I am giving my testimony to as many people as I can.

In the hope that through me,

God Can Save Other Souls. 

That is why I volunteer at CAP Care Wakefield.

I also go out as many morning as I can talking to the homeless community,

Drug Addicts, Alcoholics, and Victims of Abuse.

About the miracles God can do! 

I say to them,

“If God can do it for me he can do it for you too, 

you have to mean it from the bottom of your heart,

But if you ask Jesus Will Save You Too!

“What have you got to lose?”

I’ve hurt enough people in my life, now it’s time through God’s guidance to help other people!

If any of you know of anywhere I can give a testimony talk, such as at churches or outreach programs, please let me know.

As Jesus said in the Bible!

John 14:27 says,

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid”.