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| Gary Mulgrew by David Silver, Flickr.com |
He was one of the “Natwest three”: three British bankers who were charged with fraud linked to Enron's downfall, and extradited to US for trial.
At the time there was a great uproar against what was called an ambivalent law that allowed British citizens to be deported to the US without any further explanation under the terrorism act.
In this country what they did, although it breached their contract with Natwest, was classed as "theft of opportunity", but in the US they faced a much more serious charge of elaborated fraud against Eron.
Mulgrew’s background:
He was born in Glasgow in 1962. The youngest of three boys, still a baby when they were all taken into care, when their mother and she couldn’t cope after their father left .
At four he and his brothers were moved to an orphanage, two years later their mum was finally able to take them back.
By then Gary’s psyche had been permanently damaged by a sense of guilty and self- blame from being abandoned, a desperate need for other people’s approval and a pathological fear of the dark.
His father eventually made contact with him when he was 11yrs and from then on they started to forge a relationship.
He has recently been release from jail and has just published a book: Gang of One
His book focuses on the time he spent at a notorious prison in the USA: Big Spring Federal Correction Institution.
It’s his account of the process that led up to his conviction and the time spent in the notorious violent and lawless jail in the US, which he describes as a social experiment: a Big Brother House full of psychos, where a cell is like a warehouse with 80 inmates living in there.
He's donating most of the proceedings from the book’s sales to charity, and his main motivation for writing is the hope that it will help him to make contact with his missing daughter.
He has two children; Callum was 8yrs and Cara Katrina 5yrs at the time
Gary's process started. Gary and their mother had divorced two years earlier and while Callum chose to live with him, Cara shared her time between both parents. He believes that she is now living in Tunisia with her mum who re-married a Tunisian, but he has not heard from them since.
Coping with the absence of his daughter Cara Katrina:
He wants his book to be a record for her, while she's gone, to prove to her "that I was always trying, that she was always loved and it wasn't her fault.” He blamed himself from being abandoned by his father as a child and he is concerned that his daughter might feel the same way.
Some of his quotes:
He admits of being plagued by self-doubt and a need for other people’s approval throughout his life:
He describes it as "a powerful sense of self-doubt and a terrible need to be liked, even when he found himself at the very top of the money tree."
Recalling his orphanage report years later brings him a mixture of sadness for the child he once was and of anger towards the way he was treated:
"It was heartbreaking. It was terrible. I had once given somebody something, a cross or something, to 'be my best friend'. They describe me as a 'needy child'. I'm kind of pissed off about that, because why wouldn't you be.... Of course I was needy.
On the love for his children he says:
"Your love for your children doesn't diminish, it just doesn't. And it's very, very difficult to, um… it's difficult to see… to function normally, right?
On how he copes with his daughter’s absence:
I have to feel every day that I've done just a little bit. It just helps me."
He shows a determination to not let go of his children, to cope only through doing something every day towards them.
His fears:
Fear of the dark from being locked in a garage as a punishment at his orphanage.
He makes lists of his fears and tries to work through them using word association and grading them between bad and catastrophic. He admits having made many decisions in his life and even in his banking career by using this method.
On the days running up to conviction he worked through his apprehension about the impending prison sentence by making the following list: "PRISON" "rape", then "buggery". "Shagged". "Buggery" again. Then "violence", "darkness", "murder", "extortion", "blackmail", "bitch", "knives", "death", "gangs", "gang rape".
He admits never having been very brave.
He feels easily cornered and has always been afraid of violence, trying to avoid direct conflict with anyone, even in his short career as a bouncer he always tried to be nice.
In prison he refused to be associated with any of the gangs: they were notoriously violent towards anyone who didn’t belong. He managed to remain neutral and even when witnessing some of his fellow inmates being assaulted he didn’t intervene in order not to attract the same sort of violence towards himself.
If his people-pleasing tendencies were part of what made him so successful, they were also his downfall.
On his career progression from bank cashier to running the high profile Greenwich Natwest investment division, he says that he was good at it, and fast-tracked by supportive bosses. He admits that he was proud of belonging to the Bankers' fold.
"I got paid a phenomenal amount of money. And I'll tell you something, I never asked for it. I was amazed when I got it, and what it meant for me was… Me! Me. Look at me. I've made it in this business, I can't bloody believe it. I think I had moments of extreme arrogance."
His father referring to his success in the City once sent him a letter saying: "Congratulations. Looks like you've finally beaten me." Later he elaborated: “You've always been driven by me. You've always wanted to beat me.”
He admits being "dazzled" by Fastow, the man who led him to the Enron infamous deal :
"He's the CFO of America's hotshot company, he's 36 years of age, an Ivy League guy. He has all those nice things in life: nice teeth, nice hair, shakes your hand properly. So when he offered me the investment, if he'd asked me to invest in a pizza parlour with him, I would have done it."
After they’d done the deal, Gary had second thoughts but he didn’t act on those:
"Of course, I was fascinated about how he had made so much money on the Swap Sub deal. And, of course, I never asked him. I thought about asking him, but instead I decided to act like I did that every Tuesday, that I was cool. And when I look at that now I just… I think I was a horse's arse. Those are the kind of bits where I think I must have been polluted by it. All I did was thank him. 'Thanks very much, that was great. Maybe we'll do some more in the future.' I just stood there like a big diddy. And that's dreadful, I think."
He has a tendency for blaming himself, both for his mistakes and for events out of his control:
He and his two colleagues took the plea bargain rather than fighting the case: losing would mean at least 20 years in prison instead of the 37 months sentence they got.
When asked if he was guilty he says: “In law, it's a fact that I'm guilty. I am guilty. Definitely, I have to be. I went to jail."
He blamed himself for his father’s abandonment as a child and he blames himself now for having abandoned his own children while serving his prison term.
When he had his son he couldn’t speak to his father for a while as the sense of abandonment he experienced as a baby became in more evident. Later he explained to his father: 'I didn't speak to you because I had a son, and I couldn't believe that you had f**** off and not been there. I can't understand that. I would never leave my kids.”
Now he blames himself: "I left them to go to prison. And everything that has gone wrong since."
He is a loner, brought out of his clan, his family from an early age.
He's never been able to integrate since.
He’s been through life always looking for approval looking for brethren to belong too.
For a while It seemed that he’d found it amongst the bankers, but still his continuous need for approval and for making friends, combined with arrogance and the pride of thinking that he could beat the system and make a quick buck got him in trouble.
In jail he couldn’t associate himself with a gang either, unable to find common ground with any of them.
In society he still finds himself as a pariah, he says: 'People get much more bent out of shape about me being an ex-banker than they do about me being a convicted fraudster. He jokes: ' Convicted fraudster was the first step of my rehabilitation."
Gary’s Homeopathy prescription is Lac Lupinum:
Lac Lupinum is one of the homeopathic milk remedies, it's Wolf's milk.
All the milks are important for addressing childhood abandonment, lack of self-confidence, feelings of being unloved, and phobias that stem from childhood trauma.
Lac Lupinum has a particular concern about children, about caring for them and protecting them.
The wolves live in close knit community. Every group has a well-defined hierarchy, with the alpha female running the pack: every member knows exactly their place, and their function.
Contrarily to traditional tales, wolves tend to avoid direct confrontation and seldom attack a human unless they have no choice.
They only take sick or old animals which are an easy prey.
They never abandon a member of their pack when sick, old or wounded, it is normally the doomed animal that choses to isolate itself if they feel they are going to die.
Lac Lupinum patients have a deep need for integration: they feel outsiders in their own family, they crave approval and recognition, and they have to compete for status. They are very concious of being shuned by their community and have a deep fear of falling from grace: for them acceptance is a question of survival: if a wolf is forced to leave the pack it may not survive, as they hunt in group.
Wolves are responsive to the Full Moon: they need light, and they are particularly active during this period. They are also fascinated by fire: another source of light.
Gary’s real clan is his family
It's been blown apart by his own acts, he admits, but he is determined to make emends and not to give up until they can be reunited again – he knows what's like to grow up without a father…
By the Undercover Homeopath
Further reading on Milks in homeopathy:
http://urbanhealing.hubpages.com/hub/Milk-in-homeopathy-a-spiritual-perspective
