Adrian Penton This is Me

 Web References

1. 1. Main Page

   www.thetelegram.com/MainPage.a - [Cached]

   Published on: 4/4/2004   Last Visited: 4/5/2004

   Adrian Penton gets helping hands from (from left) George and Bertha Powell, Steve Nagle and Tolson Chapman.
   ...
   The cell door to "the hole" slammed shut behind him, signalling his mandatory 72-hour lockdown following his return to Her Majesty's Penitentiary after a pass for the Christmas holidays, and Adrian Penton picked up the only book in sight to break the ensuing monotony.
   
   He recalled last week how he couldn't put the Holy Bible down until he had it read from cover to cover.
   
   "Then I started to feel a tingling sensation and thought I was getting a cold - I had no idea it was the Lord talking to me," said Penton, 39, a stocky, close-cropped former career criminal turned born-again Christian.
   
   At the time, he was serving a four-year stretch for property offences. That was more than two years ago. Today, Penton is out on parole again after serving close to 20 years of his life behind bars for a string of break-ins.
   
   But this time, he says, he's living a life he thought he'd never have.
   
   He has a girlfriend who he plans to marry, he's been reacquainted with the baby girl he deserted three years ago, he has good friends, a high school diploma, no job yet but he's working on getting one, and for the first time ever, he has a purpose.
   
   "I want to help people who come from the same side of the track as I do to find their way to the Lord," he says. "I'm just stepping over right now into a new life and I know that it's possible for others, too."
   
   Penton is part of a group from St. Thomas' Anglican Church on Military Road that is trying to get a Christian-based transition house for paroled male inmates up and running in St. John's. It would be for inmates who've seen the light but need support to recover from a variety of addictive habits and lifestyles.
   
   "I'm their poster boy," Penton says with a hearty laugh.
   
   By the time he hit adolescence, Penton was on his way to becoming an alcoholic and a drug addict. He grew up with an alcoholic father. His family relocated from Grand Falls to Toronto when he was five, and he and his four brothers and sisters grew up tough there and in Edmonton. He quit school in Grade 8, and ran with street gangs.
   
   His first incarceration came at 16, for breaking into a pool hall and lugging away $5,000 in quarters. Penton and his accomplice were rolling up their booty at the kitchen table when Edmonton police officers barged in the door.
   
   He drifted from city to city, prison to prison. His drug problem escalated from pot to crack cocaine, and so did his crimes to pay for his addictions. Three years ago, he abandoned his former girlfriend and their newborn daughter in Winnipeg and moved back to Newfoundland. But before long, he was in trouble with the law again and sentenced to another four years for break-ins.
   
   Until he found religion in the hole that Christmas two years ago, he said, it seemed he'd never be able to step off the revolving door to failure.
   
   Now, Penton sits as a community representative on the St. John's Community Chaplaincy board, which works with paroled inmates and troubled youth. He regularly visits his young daughter, who now lives in central Newfoundland. And he's about to enrol in some counselling courses in the hopes of using his bad experiences to help others go straight.
   
   "I can be honest with myself now, but that only came after I started to study scripture and it started to speak to me," Penton said last week at St. Thomas', where he volunteers with an Alpha spiritual-renewal course.
   ...
   Among the first hands that reached out to Penton were those of Rev. Canon John Paul Westin, the tall, cheerful rector of St. Thomas' and the Anglican chaplain at the penitentiary.
   ...
   "You know it," says Penton.