A life of domestic violence, crime and homelessness

Updated

The tattoos that cover almost every inch of John Kenney's body don't have meaningful stories behind them, but this colourful character has one hell of a tale to tell.

John Kenney has spent the majority of his life either on the streets or in a cell.

At the age of seven, he fled a home of domestic violence.

"A good example, I fell out of a tree one day at my property in Coburg and my dad chased me around with a belt, and he kept belting me. The only thing that was one of my aunties came around that day and she stopped him. He probably would have killed me," he says.

"The kids, we all learnt domestic violence, so it affected our long-term relationships with anyone. I grew up to be a very violent person."

As a child living on the streets, he collected bottles for money.

But he ended up in the juvenile justice system for the first time at 10, after he assaulted one of four men that had raped him.

"I practically nearly killed him. I strangled him. I wanted to kill him," he says.

"From then onwards I was totally afraid of men. I was totally afraid of everybody."

The training ground

John grew up inside Turana detention centre in the north Melbourne suburb of Parkville.

He says he was never offered counselling for his trauma, nor was he given support upon his release when he was 18 years old.

Instead, he looks at those years as his 'training ground' for a life of crime, substance abuse and homelessness.

"You learn how to commit crimes, and how to break into houses and not get caught," he says.

"I didn't have the tools to carry me through life. The only thing I had to carry me through life was me and myself. I didn't trust nobody."

'Wherever I could make money, I'd get into'

John admits that at times he would've done anything for his next hit. Or just for a basic feed.

"You might as well say I was a gangster," he says.

"Drugs, alcohol, I used to run around with some of the Carlton boys.

"I ran girls down St Kilda, because there was a lot of guys going around abusing the street girls so the boys got together, protected the girls and the girls gave us 5 per cent of their income so we could buy our drugs and alcohol.

"So we looked after them til 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning.

"There was a time there that I was in the back laneway in Fitzroy with the old alcoholic drinking methylated spirits and orange juice."

One day he chopped off one of his fingers with a meat cleaver at work, and told his boss it got caught in the machine, so that he could get compensation.

"I was doing everything from house break-ins, to drug running," he says.

"In one home the back door was open so I came in, helped myself to the food in the fridge, made myself tea and then washed up the dishes and left. It was in the local papers and they had a good laugh about it."

It got to the point that the four walls of a cell, or the open streets, became as close to home as John knew.

Even if he was offered a room in a hostel or a half-way house, he felt the urge "to go walkabouts".

"I didn't mind living on the streets. There's a code you can live by. We're like a family, we can stick together," he says.

"And I was institutionalised. I felt safe inside. It was like my home. I got three meals a day."

That was until the last time he was released from prison.

Breaking the cycle

Suicidal and recently diagnosed with hepatitis C, John decided to turn his life around.

He says he got rid of his drug-addicted friends, began selling the Big Issue and started saving money.

His new addiction for tattoos began, he bought a truck and began working as a furniture removalist.

But after the truck's engine blew, he found himself jobless and homeless once again.

"I couldn't afford the $300 rent, so I had to take my cat and put him down, and then I moved in to the back of the truck.

"I was really getting to the stage where I was too old for the streets."

John now lives in a Melbourne apartment block run by Wintringham Housing, an organisation that provides accommodation for the ageing at risk of homelessness.

His story is confronting, shocking, and maybe to some, disgusting — but it's not uncommon.

He says his story illustrates how a violent childhood, poor rehabilitation, and a lack of housing support resulted in a cycle of substance abuse and reoffending.

Victorian homelessness body Council to Homeless Persons is currently lobbying the state and federal governments for additional housing stocks.

The organisation's CEO, Jenny Smith, would like to see money diverted from the prison budget towards affordable housing.

"In the last 10 years Victoria's annual prison budget's gone up by $626 million, which is you think about it, that's enough to rent 36,000 three bedroom homes," she says.

"So that's enough to more than house our homeless population of 23,000 tonight in Victoria.

"But we're putting it into prison beds, we're not putting it into homes for people which will provide people with the sorts of basics that they need to participate in the community in a way other than offending."

She says John's story is a good example of how people can turn their lives around if they have safe and affordable housing.

"It's one thing for people to go to prison to pay for their crime, it's another thing indeed to think about ... what support they do and largely don't get to reintegrate into the community," she says.

"When you think about that 43 per cent of the prison population exit into homelessness, you don't have to think very hard about the likelihood of people who have offended in the past reoffending when faced with the circumstances of not having a secure and stable home or any support."

'I want to have a happy life'

John credits the people at Wintringham Housing — those who offered him a second chance — for still being alive. And his cat, Lucky Devil.

An advocate for Hepatitis Victoria and Council to Homeless Persons, John now regularly volunteers on the streets, helping to hand out coffees to homeless people.

"The older generation, the rents are getting too dear," he says.

"There's going to be a lot more people on the street if they don't start doing something about it now."

After spending more than two-thirds of his life either in prison or on the street, at 60, John Kenney says he has a new lease of life.

John admits he has done many things he is not proud of but vows to live the rest of his life differently.

"I want to have a happy life, even if it's short."

Topics: homelessness, human-interest, melbourne-3000

First posted