Shaun Attwood, a former stock-market millionaire and Ecstasy supplier turned public speaker, author and activist, who is banned from America
for life visited us on Monday 19th January to tell students his cautionary tale about prison and drugs. His story was featured worldwide on National Geographic Channel as an episode of Banged Up Abroad called Raving Arizona: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWiW8E6zkNk
Raised in a small industrial town in the northwest, Shaun, 45, moved to Arizona in 1991, where he worked his way up to become a top producing stockbroker and a tech-stock millionaire during the dot.com bubble. But he also led a double life. Having been a raver in Manchester in the late 80’s, Shaun took his love of dance music to the US. He threw raves and imported Ecstasy.
On May 16th 2002, a SWAT team smashed his door down. On remand for 26 months, Shaun started the first prison blog, Jon’s Jail Journal, which
turned the international media spotlight on prison conditions – gang members and guards murdering inmates, dead rats in the food, cockroaches crawling in his ears. Shaun was sentenced to 9½ years for running an Ecstasy ring, and served almost 6.
Shaun has appeared on the BBC, Sky News and TV worldwide. Random House published his life story as the English Shaun Trilogy: Party Time, Hard Time and Prison Time.
Shaun gave the talk as part of the L6th PSHEE series, ‘Learning Lessons in Life’, and followed Reg Starkey’s tale of gambling and alcohol addiction last term. It really opened the eyes to the potential pitfalls of getting involved in drugs and crime.
Alex Forsdike
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