“Please let my husband get arrested”: A wife’s desperate plea when her ex-drug addict spouse fell back into crime

Vivi Goh didn’t know what to do.

Her husband, Vincent Quck, had been sucked back into a life of crime.

“He was getting in deeper and deeper. It’s very scary, that kind of life.”

It started with illegal betting, loanshark activities and club vices … anything that could earn him fast money. Then she found out that he had started trafficking drugs. 

“He was getting in deeper and deeper. It’s very scary, that kind of life,” Vivi, now 43, said.

Their three children were all under the age of five at that time.

No amount of talking, scolding, threatening or pleading could stop him.

“I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t know how to help him. He also didn’t know how to help himself,” she recalled.

Slowly slipping

When Vivi first met Vincent, she knew that he was a former drug addict and gang member. She knew that he had been in and out of jail four times.

“I went ahead and married him because I believed that everybody deserves a second chance.”

However, she believed that his days of crime were behind him. After all, they had met in church; he had become a Christian while in prison. He had also completed the programme at Christian halfway house The Hiding Place, and found a stable job as a youth worker.

They fell in love, and after a year of courtship, decided to marry.

“I went ahead with it because I believed that everybody deserves a second chance,” said Vivi.

Life for the Qucks became busy – she with taking care of their daughters, and he with his new logistics business.

Business flourished, but Vincent was clocking in 16-hour work days. He often spent his nights entertaining clients in clubs.

Then Vivi discovered that her husband had picked up smoking again.

Then he started coming home from parties drunk on Saturday nights. 

“Why you so mafan?”

One day, Vincent’s friends invited him for a weekend trip to Johor Bahru to drink and party. He badly wanted to relax after a long week. But he also knew that going meant skipping church on Sunday with his family.

While mulling over the decision, he heard  “a voice, very clear, speaking to me”.

“‘Why should you live a double life?  Just don’t go to church, lah.”

Said Vincent, now 46: “The voice said, ‘You are doing okay, already what. You are not involved in crime, you are not taking drugs. You have a family, you have a business, you are doing very well. Why you make yourself so mafan (troublesome)?

“‘Why should you live a double life? Saturday you drink, then Sunday you have to wake up to go to church. Just don’t go to church, lah. Don’t need to act.'”

Looking back, Vincent said: “The moment I listened to that lie that said ‘You are okay already’, I fell.”

He called his wife and told her that he would not be going with them to church that Sunday.

Then he totally stopped going to church, leaving Vivi to bring their daughters to church on her own.

Starting to compromise 

Caught up in the partying lifestyle, Vincent started to mix around with bad company.

“I started to compromise,” he admitted.

After selling his business to his partner after a disagreement, Vincent started an illegal soccer betting website.

However, the business soon ran into trouble. The cash he got from selling his logistics business, and his savings, dwindled.

Once able to provide more than enough for his family, he now struggled to pay the bills that kept piling up.

“Very stressed – like sinking sand. I was very proud, very arrogant. I tried not to admit the defeat. I never told my wife that I cannot,” he said.

Constantly “fire-fighting”, he succumbed to the likes of loansharking and illegal betting.

“Anything I can grab for money, I just do because I was desperate,” he admitted.

The couple quarrelled over their tight finances and Vincent’s shady dealings. 

At the time, their third child – a son – had just been born.

“More expenses, more problems, a lot of doctor appointments,” said Vincent, admitting that he sometimes missed those appointments.

“Then Vivi will call me, scold me, then we will fight. I feel like this family 太多麻烦 (too much trouble) already lah.”

“I just wait to be arrested, or die”

Desperate for money – and feeling like he was too deep into crime to get out – Vincent started trafficking drugs.

Afraid of implicating his family, he stopped going home.

Instead, he would stash the drugs in hotel rooms, and would sleep in his car parked in carparks and alleys.

During drug deals, he would meet buyers at the top level of multi-storey carparks.

“They ask me why. I said, ‘If the person who comes is CNB (Central Narcotics Bureau), I will jump.'”

“If the person who comes is CNB, I will jump.'”

Aware that Vincent was not in a good place, Pastor Philip Chan from The Hiding Place, repeatedly phoned to check in on him. (Pastor Philip passed on in 2020.)

Guilt-stricken, Vincent stopped answering his calls. When Pastor Philip texted him, Vincent blocked his number.

Concerned, Pastor Philip asked another pastor to check in on Vincent.

Vincent still remembers answering the call.

“How far are you?” the pastor asked.

“Very far,” Vincent replied.

“Can you come back or not?” the pastor asked.

“Cannot.” Then he hung up.

Said Vincent: “There was no turning back. I just wait to be arrested, or to die. No hope already.”

A wife’s heartbreak

Left to juggle full-time work in sales and three children at home, Vivi nearly sunk into depression.

“I had a lot of negative thoughts and emotions. I was disappointed by what he was doing. Then all the bills … I needed to find money,” she said.

Vivi kept everything to herself. She did not know how to share what she was going through with friends or family. And feared that they would not understand if she did.

“Die die I need to trust God because I believe that only He can help me.”

She struggled to answer questions about Vincent from well-meaning people at church – and eventually stopped going.

“I didn’t know what to say. Then when I start saying, the emotions come and I want to cry,” said Vivi.

It was an extremely lonely time.

The only one she could turn to was God.

“Die die I need to trust God because I believe that only He can help me.

“Whenever I feel emotional or sad, I would listen to worship songs. After I talk to Him, I feel a sense of peace,” she said.

Why did she decide to stay in the marriage?

“Because of the three children. I don’t want them to grow up in a broken family. And I believe that this marriage is God-given.”

But sticking it out was far from easy.

Feeling helpless over her husband’s situation, and knowing that he could not help himself, she prayed for his arrest.

Wake-up call 

Three years after Vincent’s descent into crime, God answered Vivi’s desperate prayer.

While out on an errand, Vincent was approached by seven plainclothes police officers – he was known to be aggressive toward law enforcers. He was arrested for loansharking activities.

“I was relieved,” admitted Vivi.

“That time, I remembered it as, ‘Apart from me, you become nothing’,” Vincent recalled.

It was a wake-up call and a rebuke: He had gotten himself into this position, hurting his wife and children in the process. It was all because he believed that he had rebuilt his life on his own strength.

He had gotten himself into this position, hurting his wife and children in the process.

Over the next week, alone in his cell, he was forced to confront all that he had done.

“I talked to God the whole seven days,” he said.

As he reflected, Vincent realised how gracious God had been to him; he had not been arrested for a more serious crime like drug trafficking, which would have kept him in jail for more than a decade.

Convinced that he needed to reset his life, he called Vivi. He asked her to bail him out so he could return to The Hiding Place.

She was reluctant: “I didn’t want him to come out to create more trouble.”

But she agreed to, after Pastor Philip told her he was willing to take him.

“Really meh? Pray?”

In the next five months at The Hiding Place – before serving a 14-month jail term – Vincent was given a second chance in life and in marriage.

There was much undoing to be done.

“That time I was still very proud and arrogant. I still felt that the whole world is the wrong, I’m not in the wrong,” he said.

“I still felt that the whole world is the wrong, I’m not in the wrong.”

He recalled ranting to Pastor Philip for four hours, blaming Vivi and everyone else for all that had happened.

Throughout those four hours, Pastor Philip listened patiently. Then he told Vincent two things: “Go read the Word of God, and pray.”

Vincent thought: “Really meh? Pray?”

But since he had nothing else to do, he heeded Pastor Philip’s advice. It was valuable.

Deleting his past

Making an exception to the halfway house’s regulations, Pastor Philip allowed Vivi to visit Vincent every day; he knew that it was vital to restore the Qucks’ marriage.

Every evening after work, Vivi would drive to The Hiding Place, then at Jalan Lekar, to have dinner with her husband.

Afterwards, they would take a walk and talk about their family. Most evenings did not end well.

Vincent admitted: “I was still very arrogant. I will quarrel with her, I will scold her and ask her to go back.”

At night, when Vincent read the Bible and spent time with God in prayer, God would rebuke him.

“I would see the bad things in me and reflect,” Vincent said.

The next evening, he would apologise to Vivi. By then, she had learnt to let her husband’s harsh words roll off her back.

“But two days later, I will scold her again,” he said. “Then God scold me again, and I’ll pray and say sorry,” he said of how God was changing him.

“Two days later, I will scold her again. Then God scold me again, and I’ll pray and say sorry.”

“Piece by piece, He stitched our marriage up nicely.”

Vivien noticed a change in Vincent’s attitude. When she took their children to see him on weekends, she found him more present and involved.

Spending more time with his Christian brothers in the halfway house, and with his family, Vincent came to treasure these relationships.

Determined to break from his past, he deleted his Facebook account. He had used it to keep in touch with old friends and carry out vice activities.

He has not looked back since.

Grateful for “cost” of 14 months

Vincent saw the second chances  he received – from God, from his wife, from Pastor Philip – as his very first personal encounter with God.

“Prior to that, I had a very secondhand faith. You ask me to pray, I pray. I see you do, I do. But there is not really a true encounter, no relationship,” he said.

“If my prison term was 14 years, how to reset?”

He is grateful for God’s grace: He was allowed to reset his life at the “cost” of only 14 months, the length of his jail term.

“If my prison term was 14 years, how to reset?”

In a video taken on the day he came home to his children after his release in 2020, his younger two children – then two and three – were wary, and unwilling to approach him for a hug.

“I will never forget that moment when they nearly could not remember me,” he said. 

“Once you taste that honey is sweet, no one can take that away from you.”

“It’s really because of God’s mercy and grace that our relationship has been restored.

“Without God, where would I be right now? Despite me being unfaithful to Him, He is still faithful to me,” he said.

“Because of how my life has been restored, I know that Jesus is real. Once you taste that honey is sweet, no one can take that away from you,” he said.

Vivi, too, has experienced God’s faithfulness.

“He may not immediately grant me what I want exactly, but He will guide me through it.”

Joy in the routine

In the last four years since his release, Vincent has kept on the straight and narrow by being content. 

“Last time I tried to chase all the things – you drive a Mitsubishi, but you want a Lexus, you want a bigger house,” Vincent said.

“Last time I tried to chase all the things – you drive a Mitsubishi, but you want a Lexus.”

“Even though now, money is left hand in, right hand out, I still feel very happy. I feel at peace. It’s a peace that the world doesn’t provide.”

Now a sustainability and recycling consultant at an e-waste recycling company, Vincent lives a simple life. He goes to work, and comes home to spend time with his wife and children.

On weekends, he and his family go to church before spending time with the brothers at The Hiding Place, who hold him accountable for reading the Bible daily. He is also involved in prison ministry.

“It’s very routine, but I find joy in this routine,” he said.

According to Vivi, Vincent is more grounded, less arrogant. He is a better husband and more present father.

“I’m still a work in progress,” admitted Vincent, grateful for his wife’s faithfulness despite his flaws. 

“She hated what I was doing, but she never hated me.”

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A version of this story first appeared in Salt&Light. 

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