‘A lot of young guys out there need their fathers’

Many fathers are letting down their sons and creating a large number of angry young men, says Ralph Burrows.

He admits that while he was involved in his son’s life growing up, he was not the type of father he was capable of being. 

He was living under the scourge of drugs and sometimes turned to a life of crime in order to support his habit.

“I hope one day you are not reading about your sons in the paper or get a phone call telling you that he is dead,” he says. “A lot of these guys out here are needing their fathers and there are a lot of women who are raising boys. I was not the best father to my son when he was growing up but I was always there for him.”

Mr Burrows gained insight into what some young men have to endure emotionally when, in 2012, he was asked to be one of five mentors at a pilot programme at St David’s Primary, facilitated by the Mirrors Programme.

A positive contribution

“I was surprised when the principal asked me and I gladly accepted because I had never been asked to do something positive — I guess that was because I wasn’t doing anything positive with my life. 

“I enjoyed the young man who I was paired with and I continue to talk to him and his mother on the phone from time to time. “Unfortunately, by the end of the programme, the four other men who volunteered to mentor stopped coming. 

“A few times it was just all five male students and me. Some would make comments like, ‘He’s just like my daddy’ when their mentor didn’t show up. That used to hurt me a lot when they would say that.”

Mr Burrows said he learned a lot from the students and while his exposure to the boys was only for a few weeks, he hoped they learned something from the many talks they had: “If I was able to get through to even one of the five, I feel my job was done.”