Heather Bellamy spoke with Graham Swann

Graham: I did, but before this when I was a teenager, I started drinking heavily. I used to drink as an escape. I didn't realise at the time that it wasn't an escape, but it was an actual trap. It numbed the pain for a little while and took things away. So I started drinking heavily and hanging around with a gang who was drinking and we were all violent. We all had our own problems from our childhood, but none of us shared it. Then I ended up getting thrown out of school and the police couldn't handle me; my mum and dad couldn't handle me and the people on the streets couldn't handle me, so I ended up going to prison.

Heather: In all of this, at some point you made a decision to become a Christian. What made you make that decision?

Graham: Well, life just carried on being so bad and then when I was 26, I was living on the street and in and out of people's houses and on sofas and drinking because I really wasn't doing much with my life. I met a girl, Rachel, who is now my wife and we got married and had a family and things were very good. I opened my own business and I had got everything in the materialistic world and not only that, I had got a wife who loved me. I had got healthy children and we were going on holiday. But my past was haunting me very much. I became very ill with depression and I started having suicidal thoughts. This went on for years because I still never told my wife. I never spoke a word about it.

Then nine years ago I met a Christian. I met a guy who used to live in America and married an English girl. He was really nice and he started telling me that Jesus loved me. I told him I wasn't interested, but something was penetrating into my heart. He told me that God had showed him that when I was a little boy, I was abused and Jesus had an anointing to set the prisoner free and to heal the broken-hearted. Something happened and I just thought, that's what I want. So he invited me to come to church and I went to church.

I didn't like it at first, to be quite honest with you. I didn't like all this bit where they were saying, 'God comes first' in their life and I thought no way, my wife comes first and my children come first - I don't like it. But at the same time this overwhelming presence of love, which is the only way I can describe it, was penetrating into my heart. The second time I went I decided and asked Jesus Christ to come into my heart and be my Lord and Saviour and take first place in my life and I will worship him forever. He healed my broken heart and I've got tears in my eyes as I am speaking now. He healed my broken heart and he set me free of my sins and my unskilful living. He just completely set me free.

Heather: And God has used you in a similar way to set others free hasn't he? I believe you own a tattoo studio and a lady came there and you had a word for her in a similar way, didn't you?

Graham: I did. I wouldn't like to paint a picture like, 'Come to Jesus and all your troubles go away'. We live in a fallen world, but what Jesus does, he helps us through our circumstances and everything else.

I have been used amazingly by the Lord since I became a Christian. One of the things is I've got a tattoo studio and I happened to be tattooing this man when his wife was talking to me with a lot of anger in her voice. I had a word for her that her dad loved her very much and he wanted to tell her a secret. She didn't believe me at first, obviously, but I said that the secret was not for me to tell her but for her father to tell her. She hadn't spoken to her father for years. Afterwards she couldn't get it out of her head, what I told her and then, to cut a long story short, she rang her dad and her dad told her this secret and they have been having a father and daughter relationship ever since. That's a lovely story.

Heather: And you have now written a book, "Prison Without Bars", why have you written that book?

Graham: What people were saying was that because my life was so real, but it is also real now in Jesus Christ, when I spoke to them, they were feeling a real honesty and truth. I was sitting in meditation about four years ago now and out of the blue, I am not very good at spelling and all that kind of stuff really and I'm certainly not a writer, but I heard in my quiet time, not an audible voice, but in my heart God saying to me, "I have healed you and I want now to use you to write a book to help and heal others" and it started there.

I asked for some help from a man named David Shearman. He told me that God was going to give me a vision and when the vision came that I should write the book. Then a few days later I saw, not with my earthly eyes, but I saw a little boy sitting in a corner of a room crying and I felt God say to me, write to that little boy. So what I done, I picked a pen up and I wrote all my life story, all the secrets. I let it all out and I told the world everything. I split the book into two so I could do another part of it where it is all freedom in Christ. How emotions keep us in prison; how the battle of the mind poisons us and about living in the present and not in the past.

Heather: And what's the feedback been?

Graham: It's been amazing Heather. It's been in magazines and on TV and it's been on radio stations and newspapers. It's gone really big in that way. I can't tell you everything because we will be here all day, but one story that just absolutely brought me to tears is, I was in my tattoo studio one day and a couple came in, a man and a woman. They asked if they could speak to Swanny and I said I am Swanny. They said they were parents of a girl who had been cutting her wrists for many years. This was obviously devastating to see and somebody, they don't know who it were, bought my book for her for a Christmas present. They just wrapped it in Christmas paper with no name on it or anything. She had read my book and she read it in one day. She sat in her bedroom all day and read it and she came downstairs and says to her mum and dad, "Dad, mum, I have found hope". This was Christmas Day and they came to see me at the beginning of March. They said the reason they wanted to tell me this is because their daughter had not put a Stanley knife to her wrists since Christmas day.

Heather: That's absolutely amazing.