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This program contains content on distressing issues, including references to suicide and drugs, as well as sexual and violent material, which may be difficult for some listeners.

I can only describe it like putting my head in a bucket of water

and you can hear the noise around you but it's just muffled

so it's like you're not really there

and I was just a little boy

really so naive and scared

swing low little boy, really so naive and scared.

I'm Sharoma Silva and this is the documentary on the BBC World Service.

For this episode of Heart and Soul, which looks at personal stories of faith,

I've come to meet Mick Fleming to learn how, against the backdrop of childhood trauma,

he went from being a gangster to a healer.

So I was brought up in a kind of really good working class home, good parents, sisters, no brothers,

so I was the only boy, so I was mummy's little soldier.

They were kind of timid, very quiet. You remember them black square glasses and they had a patch over me eye because I had a lazy eye. Then one day, aged 11,

Mick took a shortcut walking to school. I felt like a, it was like a woolly jumper being

stuffed in my face. What it was, it was the arm of jumper being stuffed in my face.

What it was, it was the arm of a man coming across my face.

Sometimes even now I wake up and I can't stand the thought of wool against my teeth.

I was assaulted sexually and physically.

And I didn't know what was happening because I didn't understand sex.

And I can graphically remember there was like a glass bottle at the side.

...