June 18, 2010
Serge LeClerc to tell his story of redemption
By MARY ANN HUGHES (Message staff writer)
When Serge LeClerc visits Evansville in a few days, he will bring a message of redemption with him. He has a story to tell about rape, poverty, gangs and prison.
And about changing his life.
He writes in the first chapter of his autobiography “Untwisted: From Lawbreaker to Lawmaker” “I was the product of rape.”
He writes that when his mother gave birth, she was 13 years old, and that he was born in an abandoned building.
He was arrested for the first time when he was eight years old, and sent to a training school near Ontario, Canada. That’s when he began an “odyssey of punishment, escape and re-arrest. I probably ran away 20 times.”
By the time he was 15 he was running a string of alcohol stills, and selling raw potato mash to bars in the city of Toronto. “I had been drinking alcohol since the age of 13. By 15, I was also doing drugs to lose myself in a strange netherworld in which you are neither dead nor alive.”
He became a member of an inner city gang, and he developed an “I don’t care attitude.” Soon he was robbing banks in Montreal, and he was selling drugs.
He’s not sure if he was 19 or 20 when he went to “adult prison.” That’s how his life was for a long time: illegal activity, prison, release, and more of the same.
Then he met Jim Yorgy.
Serge first spotted Jim when he was coming to visit prisoners where Serge was incarcerated. He was being strip searched, and “it wasn’t the fact that this man was being strip-searched that drew my attention, it was the fact that he was smiling.
“I was baffled.”
Jim visited men in solitary confinement, and Serge “watched him. He would go to each cell, stop and speak to the man inside for a few minutes, then hand him some magazines through the slot in the door, and then move on to the next cell.
“What, I wondered, would possess someone to go through this much humiliation and aggravation to speak to convicts in solitary confinement?”
Finally, after months of watching Jim, Serge confronted him, saying, “You’re the stupidest man in the world.”
Jim agreed. “You might be right.” He went on to say, “I happen to be a Christian. I know about you. You’ve made some bad choices along the way, but you weren’t born to be what you are today.”
He added, “I happen to believe that God doesn’t make garbage.”
Jim gave Serge some literature, and eventually he became a Christian. After he was paroled, he began attending the University of Waterloo where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in sociology, and then began his work as a motivational speaker.
Serge will be in Evansville on Wednesday, June 23, speaking at 6:30 p.m. at Ivy Tech in Evansville. The cost is $10, and all proceeds will go to the Brothers Keepers prison after-care program.
For additional information, call (812) 455-2252.
(Related story: Brothers Keepers - Prison after-care program to open in July)