‘I was going to cut his throat’: Ex-criminal enforcer turned bishop reveals how he planned to kill rapist
“I should have been dead many times,” says Pastor Mick Fleming.
The 57-year-old has survived several attempts on his life after working as an enforcer for the criminal underworld.
He narrowly avoided being killed in a drive-by shooting when he felt bullets “whizz” past his body. “I think that was the closest I came to be being murdered,” Mick tells Sky News.
He also survived his own attempt to kill himself when he pointed a gun at his head, pulled the trigger but the weapon failed to fire.
“I dropped the gun and I cried,” he says.
“It was the first time I’d cried since I was little boy.”
After years of violence and drug use, Mick says he had grown to “despise” himself.
He suffered two traumatic events growing up in Burnley, Lancashire, that sent his life spiralling into crime and substance abuse.
Aged 11, he says he was raped by a stranger in a park as he walked to school.
Mick Fleming pictured as a boy
“I felt a hand over my mouth and I was dragged into this bandstand,” Mick says.
“I was petrified. I still sometimes think about it. It hasn’t gone away.”
The next day, Mick was told his 20-year-old sister Ann had suffered a heart attack and died in her father’s arms.
“My dad came through the front door and shouted: ‘Come down, your sister’s dead’,” he says.
“It was cold and blunt… then he broke down. He was a tough guy my dad, but a nice man. I’d never seen him cry.”
Mick Fleming says he began dealing drugs as a teenager
Life of crime
Mick says he went “inward” and started imagining carrying out crimes like pickpocketing “to escape the real world”.
Soon after, he started stealing and dealing drugs as a teenager before working as an enforcer collecting debts for criminals.
He admits there was “a lot of violence” and that his family described him as “demonic” at that time. It was not until 2009 that his life changed.
Mick says he spent years dealing with drug abuse
Armed with a gun wrapped in a plastic bag, Mick went to collect a debt from a man outside a gym. But when he walked towards his target, he realised the man was holding hands with two little girls – and there appeared to be “light shining off their hands”.
“It was a really surreal moment,” he says. “I felt sick. I started to cough and splutter and I couldn’t see.
“I felt this thing in the pit of my stomach. It was a horrible, dark feeling – like a sickness.
“I got back in the car and drove round the corner into this little industrial unit and pulled over. I was throwing my guts up. There was blood everywhere. I looked like I’d been stabbed.”
Mick was an enforcer for the criminal underworld
It was at this point that Mick tried to shoot himself. After he failed, he was later admitted to a psychiatric unit.
“I’ve never had a drink or used drugs since,” Mick says. “I was on a road to recovery from that point on.”
Meeting his rapist – and the plan to kill him
Mick had been clean of drink and drugs for about a year when he says, by chance, he met the man who raped him.
He spotted his attacker in a McDonald’s restaurant. The man was drunk and Mick bought him a cup of tea.
“I knew it was him,” Mick says. “He didn’t know it was me.”
Mick arranged to meet the man the next day with the intention of killing him.
“I went back with a knife in my sock,” he says.
“I was going to cut his throat. I was going to kill him. Everything was building up inside me.”
Mick Fleming is known locally as Pastor Mick
As Mick walked towards the man, he says he imagined killing him, with “clear, vivid pictures” of the brutal act in his mind.
But instead of carrying it out, Mick says he sat down and listened to what the man had to say.
“I didn’t say anything,” Mick explains. “In that moment I got this real understanding. I thought: ‘I’m not going to live in your sin.’
“People say resentment is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. That’s what I’d been doing.
“I didn’t grow to love the guy but, in the end, I can honestly say I didn’t hate him.”
Mick says the man died about two years later.
Becoming a priest
After leaving the psychiatric unit, Mick went on to achieve a degree in theology from the University of Manchester, overcoming difficulties he faced with dyslexia.
Now ordained as a priest and recently consecrated as a bishop, he is known locally as Pastor Mick and runs a charity called Church On The Street, helping people struggling in the cost of living crisis.
Among its services, the charity provides food, mental health support and Citizens’ Advice – and has recently had to start helping families pay for funerals.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Church helping families in Burnley
“At the moment, it’s far, far worse than the pandemic,” he says. “It’s ordinary people with children who are in dire straits.”
He is also concerned about the impact of the cost of living on mental health and suicide risk.
“I’ve got NHS mental health teams working with us in our building. People can’t afford to have a funeral for their loved ones. It’s horrendous. We pay an undertaker to do the funerals for us and then I do the services for free.”
William and Kate met Pastor Mick during a visit to his charity last year
Meeting William and Kate
Mick’s work was recognised by royalty when Prince William and Kate visited the charity in January last year.
William has since written the foreword to Mick’s book – with a TV series about his life in the works – and he was invited to Kate’s Christmas carol concert in December.
“I got to pray for them which was quite an honour,” Mick says. “I really felt they’re going to need prayers.”
Mick believes William and Kate understand the problems people are facing with the cost of living despite their royal lifestyles.
“Obviously they haven’t experienced it but you don’t have to dead to be an undertaker, do you?” he says.
“They’ve got the ability to open doors and ask questions that need to be asked and point fingers in right directions.”
Mick – who was married with three children during his time as a criminal enforcer – says he has repaired relationships with his family over the years.
“I wasn’t a good father,” he says. “I have to live with that fact.
“I’d want it to be better with my children, that’s the truth. But it’s all right – my family have come to accept me, and love me, and care for me. It’s the best I can do.
“Some of it is my regret around my children. I wish I could turn the clock back with that but I can’t so I accept it and do the best with it.”
Anyone feeling emotionally distressed or suicidal can call Samaritans for help on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org in the UK. In the US, call the Samaritans branch in your area or 1 (800) 273-TALK
Many Labour MPs have been left shellshocked after the chaotic political self-sabotage of the past week.
Bafflement, anger, disappointment, and sheer frustration are all on relatively open display at the circular firing squad which seems to have surrounded the prime minister.
The botched effort to flush out backroom plotters and force Wes Streeting to declare his loyalty ahead of the budget has instead led even previously loyal Starmerites to predict the PM could be forced out of office before the local elections in May.
“We have so many councillors coming up for election across the country,” one says, “and at the moment it looks like they’re going to be wiped out. That’s our base – we just can’t afford to lose them. I like Keir [Starmer] but there’s only a limited window left to turn things around. There’s a real question of urgency.”
Another criticised a “boys club” at No 10 who they claimed have “undermined” the prime minister and “forgotten they’re meant to be serving the British people.”
There’s clearly widespread muttering about what to do next – and even a degree of enviousness at the lack of a regicidal 1922 committee mechanism, as enjoyed by the Tories.
“Leadership speculation is destabilising,” one said. “But there’s really no obvious strategy. Andy Burnham isn’t even an MP. You’d need a stalking horse candidate and we don’t have one. There’s no 1922. It’s very messy.”
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Starmer’s faithfuls are ‘losing faith’
Others are gunning for the chancellor after months of careful pitch-rolling for manifesto-breaching tax rises in the budget were ripped up overnight.
“Her career is toast,” one told me. “Rachel has just lost all credibility. She screwed up on the manifesto. She screwed up on the last two fiscal events, costing the party huge amounts of support and leaving the economy stagnating.
“Having now walked everyone up the mountain of tax rises and made us vote to support them on the opposition day debate two days ago, she’s now worried her job is at risk and has bottled it.
“Talk to any major business or investor and they are holding off investing in the UK until it is clear what the UK’s tax policy is going to be, putting us in a situation where the chancellor is going to have to go through this all over again in six months – which just means no real economic growth for another six months.”
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Why is the economy flatlining?
Read more:
Starmer and Reeves ditch plans to raise income tax
Former chancellor Osborne is shock contender to head HSBC
After less than 18 months in office, the government is stuck in a political morass largely of its own making.
Treasury sources have belatedly argued that the chancellor’s pre-budget change of heart on income tax is down to better-than-expected economic forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility.
That should be a cause of celebration. The question is whether she and the PM are now too damaged to make that case to the country – and rescue their benighted prospects.
UK
Home secretary vows to end UK’s ‘golden ticket’ for asylum seekers – as Denmark-based reforms to be unveiled
The home secretary is set to unveil sweeping measures to tackle illegal migration, vowing to end the UK’s ‘golden ticket’ for asylum seekers.
People granted asylum in the UK will only be allowed to stay in the country temporarily, in the changes expected to be unveiled on Monday by Shabana Mahmood.
Modelled on the Danish system, the aim is to make the UK less attractive for illegal immigrants and make it easier to deport them.
Planned changes mean that refugee status will become temporary and subject to regular review, with refugees removed as soon as their home countries are deemed safe.
The Home Office said the “golden ticket” deal has seen asylum claims surge in the UK, drawing people across Europe, through safe countries, onto dangerous small boats.
Under current UK rules, those granted refugee status have it for five years and can then apply for indefinite leave to remain and get on a route to citizenship.
As part of the changes, the statutory legal duty to provide asylum seeker support, including housing and weekly allowances, will be revoked.
The government will seek to remove asylum support, including accommodation and handouts, to those who have a right to work and who can support themselves but choose not to or those who break UK law.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood. Pic: PA
‘Last chance for a decent politics’
A government source said Ms Mahmood believes her reforms are about “more than the electoral fortunes of her party”.
“This is the last chance for a decent, mainstream politics. If these moderate forces fail, she believes, something darker will follow,” they said.
“But this demands that moderates are willing to do things that will seem immoderate to some. She has reminded those who are reluctant to embrace her ambition for bold reform, with an ultimatum: ‘if you don’t like this, you won’t like what follows me.'”
Ms Mahmood said they were the most sweeping changes to the asylum system “in a generation”, as she vowed the government will “restore order and control to our borders”.
The home secretary also told The Sunday Times that “I can see – and I know my colleagues can – that illegal migration is tearing our country apart”.
Read more:
What Sky News witnessed after tip-off about migrant crossings
Could Danish model save Labour’s bacon?
System being ‘gamed’
The source said Ms Mahmood believes the system is being “gamed by those travelling on boats or abusing legal visas”.
Some 39,075 people have arrived in the UK after making the journey across the Channel so far this year, according to the latest Home Office figures.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
The gangs smuggling people to the UK
That is an increase of 19% on the same point in 2024 and up 43% on 2023, but remains 5% lower than at the equivalent point in 2022, which remains the peak year for crossings.
What happened in Denmark?
The UK government points to Denmark remaining a signatory of the European Convention on Human Rights, while also cutting the number of asylum applications to the lowest number in 40 years and successfully removing 95% of rejected asylum seekers.
Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said the Labour government has “lost control” of the UK’s borders” with illegal channel crossings “surging to over 62,000 since the election”.
He said some of the new measures were welcome but “they stop well short of what is really required and some are just yet more gimmicks – like the previous ‘smash the gangs’ gimmick”.
Mr Philp added: “Only the Conservative borders plan will end illegal immigration – by leaving the ECHR, banning asylum claims for illegal immigrants, deporting all illegal arrivals within a week and establishing a Removals Force to deport 150,000 illegal immigrants each year.”
And Enver Solomon, chief executive of Refugee Council, said: “These sweeping changes will not deter people from making dangerous crossings, but they will unfairly prevent men, women and children from putting down roots and integrating into British life.”
Ms Mahmood will be appearing on Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips from 8.30am on Sunday.
-
Sports2 years agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports3 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports2 years agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports3 years agoButton battles heat exhaustion in NASCAR debut
-
Sports3 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment1 year agoHere are the best electric bikes you can buy at every price level in October 2024