REID SAYS PAEDOPHILE HOOKED HIM ON HEROIN

Jailed Writer 'not Proud'

VANCOUVER - Author Stephen Reid, in his first interview from the
prison where he is awaiting trial for allegedly robbing a bank and
shooting police, yesterday revealed that he became addicted to drugs
at the age of 11 after being offered methadone by a paedophile doctor.

Mr. Reid, who is recovering from a heroin addiction in a Victoria
jail, also spoke about how he was planning to commit suicide in jail
when a court-appointed psychiatrist came to talk to him -- and
convinced him that no matter how bleak things seem, he owed it to his
children to hang on.

"I was clutching this plastic bag to my chest, and [was] ready to pull
it on my head and just get out of here," he said.

The psychiatrist, who had come to assess him to see if he was
criminally responsible for his actions, told him to stop thinking
about himself, and instead to think of the needs of his two daughters,
Sophie, 10, and Charlotte, 16.

"It's not about me. I realize that now," he said. "It's about being
there for those kids in whatever way I can.

"I love my daughters and my wife. There is a ferocious love around our
house."

Mr. Reid said his body aches from heroin withdrawal, but his hands
have stopped shaking and he is beginning to think he will make it.

"Right now I'm just breathing, just breathing. But I'll get through
it," he said.

He credited his wife, poet Susan Musgrave, saying she has given him
strength with her daily visits to Vancouver Island Correctional Centre.

Mr. Reid, who faces 10 criminal counts, including attempted murder and
robbery, said he could not discuss the bank robbery -- he has not yet
entered a plea -- but said he is sorry for what happened.

"This wasn't a nice piece of work," he said. "Shooting at people, or
allegedly shooting at people . . . it's not something I'm proud of."

He said that with the help of the psychiatrist he has begun for the
first time to try to deal with emotional demons that have haunted him
for most of his life.

"I've been on heroin since I was a teenager," he said.

"A doctor gave it to me. A homosexual. I started doing drugs when I
was 11. It started with methadone. Then went on to heroin."

He said the drugs were used to coerce him into sex.

"He was a predator," he said.

"The first time I ever talked about this was a few days ago with the
psychiatrist. It seems strange to be admitting it now to a reporter."

Mr. Reid, an infamous member of the Stopwatch Gang -- a trio who
pulled off a series of bank robberies in the 1970s during which Mr.
Reid used a stopwatch to time the heists, said he has struggled with
heroin throughout his life, trying to quit many times.

In 1986, while he was serving time for a series of bank robberies, he
married Ms. Musgrave, who edited his critically acclaimed book,
Jackrabbit Parole. Coming out of jail he found himself thrust into the
literary spotlight, both for his own writing and because of his famous
wife.

"Coming out of jail, publishing a book -- all of a sudden I was in
that cult of the media. It was hard to handle," he said.

"I managed to stay on automatic for a few years [avoiding drugs]. The
first time I got back on heroin was a few years after.

"I really did fight it -- throwing away my drugs, throwing away my
needles, weeping and beating the earth. But five hours later, a few
days later, I'd be back into it."

He said he went "34 months clean and sober" before he got back into it
this year, and began a downward spiral that led to his arrest two weeks ago.

"I don't have a demarcation point, where I can say this is where it
changed. You just wake up -- and there you are."

He said one night, driving through the mountains on Vancouver Island
to visit his wife in the small coastal village of Tofino, he woke up
with his car stalled sideways on a narrow bridge. He'd shot so much
heroin into his arm he passed out.

"I did another fix, turned the car around and kept going. It seems
bizarre to say that now. But that's the way it was.

"There is this big hole inside me that I've been trying to fill with
heroin. It's like a big, north wind that blows right through me. I
know I have to get at the root of it. I have to face it somehow."

He said that he took the plastic bag he'd saved for a suicide, and
filled it with dirty socks. It was a small gesture -- but for him, a
reaffirmation of life.