Breaking the cycle: Frederick Dryden helps Hamilton’s at-risk teens through his non-profit, Liberty for Youth

Search for the name Frederick Dryden online and the list of accolades are never-ending.

He's the recipient of multiple humanitarian awards, an author, a speaker, a half-marathon runner, the founder of a grassroots basketball program, the executive director of Hamilton non-profit Liberty for Youth that serves at-risk youth and the owner of a rural ranch that acts as a refuge for his many mentees.

Not too bad for a 50-year-old who almost dropped out of high school.

But behind the padded resume is a humble man with a story of his own, one that, over the past two decades, has been instrumental in keeping hundreds of at-risk teens in school, out of trouble and off street corners.

Dryden moved to Collingwood, Ont., from Jamaica in 1983 as the youngest of seven children in his family. His father settled in the town on the southern shore of Georgian Bay a few years earlier, landing a job at the local shipyard before saving enough to bring his kids there. He was laid off three months after Dryden arrived and took work as a commercial truck driver, leaving his kids with temporary caregivers paid for out of pocket.

Things quickly went south.

Once, while his father was away, Dryden came home to find several caregivers sexually abusing his sister. His father called the police and sent his sister back to Jamaica out of fear for her safety. He and his five other siblings were seperated into group homes.

It would mark the beginning of a childhood checkered by rampant abuse, spates of homelessness, run-ins with the law and manipulation at the hands of criminals he believed to be mentors.

In the years that followed the breakup of his family, Dryden bounced around at least a dozen group homes. He recalled in a recent interview that he moved so much as a kid he'd forget where he was going on walks home, literally stopping and turning on several different (roads) because I didn't know which home I was going to." At 13, he was physically abused at a group home near Collingwood. Police were called. They told him to pack his hockey bag. He was off to another home, this one in Toronto.

The big city had plenty to offer in the 1980s relative to cottage country - more kids, more attractions, more supports.

But what gripped Dryden was gang culture.

The Rolls Royce came to a slow stop outside a Toronto bank and the man behind the wheel peered over his shoulder.

We're going to rob this place today."

Dryden, then 15, trembled in the backseat.

The unwitting teen had been living what he thought was the high life, riding through town in nice cars with guys almost twice his age who oozed swagger. He met them a few years earlier in a Scarborough housing project - a time when he was living on and off the street, tired and hungry. They often hung out with other cool kids in the neighbourhood, he recalled, and made him feel important through gifts and favours: a new pair of shoes, a free meal, a drive somewhere.

They were everything to me," he said.

Now, suddenly, they wanted him to rob a bank. And Dryden could see his young life heading down one of two opposing paths: rob the bank and keep the clout and friends, or don't rob it and risk losing everything.

He opted for the latter. The men in the car whisked him out like a fly under a cacophony of cusses and insults.

It really ripped me up," he said. I thought they cared about me, man. I thought I knew these guys."

On the walk home, tears streaming down his face, Dryden thought about the betrayal he felt and how he never wanted to feel it again.

But two years later - as is often the case with at-risk youth - he found himself in another sticky situation.

He was now 17. A group of guys he trusted brought him and some friends to Pennsylvania to watch a few college basketball games and shop lavishly at big malls. But that's not what happened. Instead, within hours of entering the country, Dryden was in handcuffs.

I was so scared," he remembered. I'd never had handcuffs on me."

A conversation with a police officer revealed the men he was with were using him and his buddies as pawns to traffic guns. He ended up evading charges and was released.

You're young and you think, What?! These guys are gonna get us new shoes and take us to these cool malls and watch basketball,'" he says. But they knew what they were doing, and it went over our heads.

We were manipulated."

These two childhood memories often flutter in and out of Dryden's mind, even some 30 years later.

He said they have to.

A big driver behind the success of Liberty for Youth, the faith-driven non-profit Dryden founded in 2004 to mentor and help at-risk Hamilton teens, is that its team can relate.

A lot of us have been there, we've seen it," said Dryden.

Dryden knows there are other factors pulling kids into crime beyond a longing to rebel.

Gang leaders use sly grooming tactics to coerce, manipulate and force vulnerable young people into criminality. In his case, it was the free shoes and clothes and outings in luxury cars; the time spent with guys considered top dogs in low-income neighbourhoods; the feeling of being special, wanted, cared for.

You're just looking for someone to form a bond with and they form a relationship with you, they care about your problems," Dryden said.

But it's all intentional, he added, a means to an end for manipulators masquerading as mentors.

They look for guys without a father, Dryden said. And once you think they're your friends, they start asking you to do stuff for them. If you don't, you think, Will I lose it all?'"

Akwasi Owusu-Bempah, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Toronto, said kids lured into crime are offered intangible things not often found in precarious households: a sense of camaraderie, stability in a social circle.

We know that kids who are most vulnerable to gang activity are those who live in neighbourhoods where gangs are present, who might've been pushed out of school, who come from households where they lack role models and social supports," he said. Gangs provide them friendship and love."

And to leave those things behind is difficult.

When youth are released from detention centres, they likely come home to the same circumstances, said Owusu-Bempah - the same places where they committed crimes, the same friends who influenced them, the same troubles they endured in the classroom and at home.

The factors that pushed or pulled them to crime don't necessarily disappear," he said.

It makes you feel trapped," Dryden added.

Indeed, Dryden felt trapped after that incident in the U.S. He said he got out only thanks to a reignited faith in God and a high school teacher who took a keen interest in setting him straight.

But others are dealt a worse hand.

Consider the 15-year-old boy who inspired Dryden to launch Liberty for Youth.

Dryden met him in the early 2000s while volunteering for a weekly church program in the old youth wing at the Barton Street jail.

For two years, the pair met one-on-one every Wednesday.

He was locked up and the only reason he spoke to me that first time was because he was bored," Dryden recalled. We talked about girls and basketball, how we were both from Jamaica, our life stories, his court case. Eventually, he trusted me and I would ask: Don't you want a better life?'"

The teen told him he did. He wanted to be a pilot, live a straight life, make his parents proud.

When the teen was released to a halfway house in Waterloo at age 17, Dryden kept in touch and visited weekly to keep him focused on finishing high school and pursuing aviation.

On weekends, the teen was permitted to sleep at his parents' home - in the same Waterloo neighbourhood and around the same friends that landed him in Barton years earlier. It was no surprise to Dryden when the gang the teen had previously been involved with came to see him three times in nearly as many weeks.

They wanted him back, back into the crime," Dryden said. He felt trapped in that cycle, just like I did."

At the request of their son, who worried that living in Waterloo might lead him down another bad path, the boy's parents asked Dryden to become his legal guardian.

It was the type of philanthropic step Dryden had thought about - helping youth in a greater capacity than volunteering. But he was recently engaged to his now-wife, Tanya, working full-time as a salesman and planning to have children of his own.

Could I really do it?" he remembered thinking.

Tanya thought he could.

She said, He needs you. You spent two years of your life with him. Why wouldn't you take guardianship?'"

And so the teenager moved into Dryden's basement, evading the cycle Dryden worried would keep him trapped.

That's when I realized the challenges for youth trying to leave gangs," Dryden says. When guys are released from prison, they don't have a place to go. It's so easy to fall back into the cycle, but so hard to leave it. I realized I had this passion to help give hope to them."

Dryden quit his job and launched Liberty for Youth out of his 600-square-foot basement on the Mountain. He sold chocolate bars and took out a line of credit to finance it. The teen who moved in with him chipped in with the effort, telling his friends about Dryden and the new program. Word got around quickly, prompting a basement renovation - more kids were coming to stay.

Over the next decade, one at-risk teen living in Dryden's West 4th Street home turned into 13. A small basement office turned into a 3,200-square-foot headquarters in the city's east end. A line of credit turned into dozens of donations and grants - from banks, the federal government and others - worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. And a single kind act to help a recently incarcerated teen turned into a nationally recognized charity that's given renewed hope to more than 900 at-risk youth.

It's crazy when you think about it, how it started to now," said Dryden, adding that first teen he took in is now his son's godfather. But it shows youth you can do something in life even when times are tough. It shows all they need is hope."

Rudy Tijerino was wasting time.

That was 15 years ago. He was 19 and had recently dropped out of college. He spent his weekends drinking, smoking and partying. He came from a family once hampered with drug addiction and his parents worried he would end up the same way.

Being an actor was his dream.

But I didn't know where to start or who to ask for help to get there," Tijerino said.

That changed when two childhood friends - guys he used to commit petty crimes with - told him about Liberty for Youth.

I'd ask them to hang out and they'd keep saying, We're going to Liberty, we're going to Liberty,' so I came with them to see what it was all about."

Tijerino made his first trip to the non-profit's east-end mentoring centre with a nonchalant attitude, just like his buddies.

My initial plan was just to kind of ruin it," he said, mess around and be a headache."

And he was for a while.

Tijerino attended Liberty sporadically, enjoying the free food and fooling around. One day, he got in a fight with another teen. A program facilitator approached him.

He was like, If you take this seriously, you can change your life. We'll give you a scholarship and help you get to where you want to be.'"

A light bulb turned on in his head. This was a chance to make something of himself.

It just hit me: my friends are not taking me any further ... but Frederick can take me somewhere with guidance and commitment," he recalled. At one point I had to cut off those friends who told me about Liberty because they didn't take it seriously."

Tijerino became one of Liberty's most active participants, attending multiple programs a week and connecting with staff. Eventually, the non-profit paid for him to study acting. He was the first person in his family to ever graduate post-secondary school.

At 22, he landed his first gig: a role in a National Geographic television show. A Canadian Tire commercial followed shortly thereafter. Then, a spot in a film that screened at the iconic Cannes Film Festival in France.

It was proof for me that Liberty was the real deal," Tijerino said. Liberty got me those jobs - not the friends I was up to no good with."

Plenty of other teens have experienced that same sense of reward. Since its inception, Liberty has handed out $121,000 in scholarships, giving many first-generation post-secondary students between $5,000 and $10,000 in education-tailored grants each year. The graduation rate for scholarship recipients is 71 per cent.

Tijerino, now 32, has now appeared in close to a dozen films, shows, shorts and commercials. He credited his turnaround to Dryden.

Had it not been for Frederick, my life would've been a slow burn going nowhere," he said. Frederick makes things happen for people."

But the road to recovery for at-risk youth is a two-way street, said Dryden. If there's no commitment, there's no change.

Any kid who participates in Liberty for Youth is asked to commit to a five-year strategic plan that requires them to spend a minimum of three hours each week at one of the non-profit's programs.

Here's how it works:

Over the first two years, Liberty staff help youth buck their crisis mentality" - the troublesome lifestyle that caused them to seek out the non-profit. In year three, they help youth gain stability in their lives. And in years four and five, they help youth establish strategic goals towards a productive future through completing their education or finding employment.

It's all part of a gradual mentoring model - coined the Model of Change" - rooted in permanent behavioural changes, inner character building and leadership development.

Dryden succinctly boils it down to what he calls the seven Rs: realization, resolution, repentance, return, rehabilitation, reintegration and reconciliation.

A person has to realize they want help first, otherwise they won't get it," he said. Then resolution. They have to make a decision and act on that realization."

Repentance - the acceptance of their past, however tough to revisit - comes next.

If they're in court, we'll pay the legal fees, but they have to have repentance and return to the areas where they harmed or affected people. They work for us and the money they make goes to the building they vandalize or the car they've stolen," Dryden said.

The subsequent four Rs are about returning to the mainstream, building self-esteem and understanding that the road to a goal is not always smooth. Dryden says the latter is the reason youth must commit to a five-year plan: real change takes time.

With at-risk youth, it's five steps forward, three steps backward," he said. They need time to trust and buy into the program because they've been manipulated so many times."

They also need options; different resources to address different problems.

At Liberty there are plenty, including:

• A five-day-a-week program that helps those with academic troubles by offering tutoring support, transportation to school, internet access, bonding activities and lunches, among other things;

• A twice-weekly chapel service;

• A summer school initiative for Grade 9 students;

• An equestrian ranch in Brantford - purchased on a whim during the pandemic after seven Liberty members attempted suicide - that serves as an escape for isolated teens with limited skill sets;

• And a basketball team made up of at-risk and post-incarcerated youth that plays 24 games across Ontario each year as a way to direct negative energy into a positive team sport.

When you listen to participating youth share their experiences, you realize the positive impact Liberty has had on so many lives in our community," said Hamilton police chief Frank Bergen, whose officers square off against Liberty's Prodigal Sonz basketball team in a game every summer.

If it wasn't for Frederick, I'd still be in jail," said Jonas Tenazi, 21, a coach for the team who was locked up in a Montreal jail just three years ago. I'm the first person in my family to graduate high school, and now I'm planning to play basketball at Redemeer University on a scholarship next fall. It's because Frederick sought me out and helped me."

There was a palpable sense of humility in Dryden's voice as he spoke to The Spectator in multiple interviews that spanned several weeks.

The glowing comments from Liberty alumni and community leaders are nice to hear, he said - an indication the program he dropped everything to launch is working.

But he knows behind every success story there will always be another at-risk teen, caught in a cycle and trapped, looking for a sign.

And I want to be there for them," he said. I don't want anybody to experience the type of manipulation I experienced, the feeling of being trapped and not having anybody.

I want to give them hope."

Sebastian Bron is a reporter at The Spectator. sbron@thespec.com