Patrick Maguire has struggled to deal with adult life after he was arrested for terrorist offences aged 13.
Patrick is 48 and a grandfather. Beneath the grey hair, he has the air of an oversized child. He is powerfully built and hardened by years of brutality, but he bounces into the room with a puppy-like enthusiasm.
"I loved being a child, the innocence of it all. At 13 I was very much a little kid. I didn't even learn to tell the time til I was sat in the Old Bailey."
Patrick grew up in north-west London, the son of parents Paddy and Anne, childhood sweethearts from Belfast.
Anne Maguire's nephew, Gerry Conlon, had been wrongly accused of carrying out the 1974 IRA bombing of a pub in Guildford that left five people dead. He and three others, who became known as the Guildford Four, were later imprisoned in one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in English legal history.
The four were all convicted on the basis of false confessions extracted after physical abuse and threats by Surrey police while detained under anti-terrorism laws. Among the coerced confessions was the assertion that the Maguire household was a bomb factory.
Police found no evidence of bomb-making, but they took swabs from under the fingernails of the family. Using later discredited forensic tests they said the family had handled the explosive nitroglycerine.
Seven people were jailed: Patrick, by then aged 14; his brother Vincent, 17; both their parents; Anne Maguire's brother William Smyth; her brother in law Guiseppe Conlon (Gerry's father) and a family friend, Patrick O'Neill. Patrick and Vincent were given sentences of four and five years respectively; their parents 14 years; their uncles and Patrick O'Neill 12 years.
The Maguire Seven all served their sentences apart from Guiseppe Conlon, who died in prison in 1980. In 1991 the Court of Appeal quashed their convictions after it ruled the evidence was unsafe.
When Patrick was arrested, a policeman turned to him and whispered: "By the time you get out of prison, you'll be an old man. And you'll not see your mum and dad again."
"That was the moment my childhood ended," Patrick says.
He was told over and over that he was guilty and that it would be better if he just admitted it. He was bewildered and barely understood the charges against him.
After his arrest he was out on bail for over a year, while his parents were remanded in custody until the trial. During this time, presumed to be guilty, he was under the constant attention of the police.
"If they beat me up three times a week, I considered it a good week.
"I was getting told: '---- off back to Belfast, you IRA bastard.' But I'm from here. I've lived all my life in London."
Patrick served most of his time in adult prisons, a frightened boy locked up with dangerous men. But he proved remarkably resilient, refusing to bow to the system.
"When my parole came up they gave me a form and told me to write down that I was sorry and I wouldn't do it again.
"'But I haven't done anything', I told them. 'And I'm not going to say I have just to get out of here quicker.'"
So he served his full sentence. And that's when his resolve started to break.
"I wish I was guilty, it would've been a lot ----ing easier. If you're guilty you deal with it and move on.
"The worst sentence I got was when I was released," he says. "In prison, you know where you are."
He was still pursued by the police, who were angry he hadn't got a longer sentence. He tried to bury the seething anger and resentment and get on with his life. But he kept getting in trouble for things he hadn't done, and increasingly for things he had done.
"[The police] slaughtered me, to the point where I was so messed up that I became a bank robber - a getaway driver. I had access to guns, and every time I passed that police station I wanted to go in and shoot them all."
He managed to resist the killing spree but over the years became increasingly isolated from those around him and reliant on drink and drugs.
"I just couldn't take it any more so I just hit the cocaine. Used to take it with brandy. Just tore the arse out of it. One morning I woke up - line of coke, brandy, and I just hit the floor.
"I ended up in the Priory. They told me I had about a month to live."
In the six months he spent in rehab, the frustration surged out of him in a way he had never expected. Hidden away in his room he began furiously drawing sketch after sketch as ideas tumbled onto the page. He would do the charcoal drawings so quickly that he wouldn't think what they were about, he just felt he had to get them onto paper.
Now, six years since Patrick left the Priory, he describes himself as an artist. He has produced critically acclaimed work and has sold a number of pieces, some for charity to help other victims of miscarriages of justice. He is currently supporting Sam Hallam, a Londoner whose murder sentence is under review after several witnesses put him elsewhere at the time of the crime.
He has also written a book, My Father's Watch, named after the gift handed over as he was taken away to prison. He found a great outlet for his emotions in this wonderfully frank and tenderly told story of a lost childhood.
But he is still having therapy and taking a lot of prescription drugs to cope with the flashbacks and the panic attacks. During our interview, he has to leave the room several times to sit and alone before he can come back out and face talking to me.
"It's taken me a long time to be able to control this," he says. "Living with that prison madness all around in Brixton and the Scrubs doesn't just go away. I'll be on the medication for the rest of my life."
* The Miscarriages of Justice Organisation
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