Get off your back and close your legs for 5 minutes to do some parenting, you poor excuse of a mother. Set an example, your son is a little c*nt. Your problem is now the world’s problem. Thanks.
That’s the message I got on Facebook after an online vigilante group named and shamed my son. My son Jake* is 16 years old, and for the past year, he’s been in and out of juvenile detention. It started out with a trespass charge.
And now he steals cars – luxury cars… Apparently millions of dollars worth.
Jake’s spent the best part of the past year locked up, and is currently inside.
He doesn’t see what his crimes do to everybody else around him. Our house is severely damaged by police from repeated raids with and without search warrants. The neighbours hate us. Me and Jake, and visitors to our house are pulled over leaving our street and regularly searched by police. A neighbour even told a visitor to our house not to “hang around over there cause you’ll end up in jail too”. What a wanker.
A lot of people want to blame me for my son’s crimes, they always say it’s the parents’ fault. But do they know what it’s like to be the parent of a teenager driving a high powered v8 sports car in a police chase clocking speeds most people will only read about? All with the lives of half a dozen other young teenagers in their hands?
Do they know why or what drives my son to break the law? I want to tell them a bit more about our lives.
Ten years ago, we were just like any other family. My husband and I thought we were pretty lucky, with three healthy children. That all changed very quickly. Jake’s younger brother and sister were diagnosed with a rare genetic disorder. It’s classed as a terminal illness.
Just as we were struggling to cope with that news, my husband was diagnosed with melanoma. It was already very advanced. Jake watched his father die very slowly and painfully at the age of 10.
I tried to get him to see a counsellor but he’s not the kind of kid that wants to go and talk to somebody he doesn’t know.
I can totally understand people being pissed off about having their hard earned cars stolen. But these lads, whilst doing adult crimes, are still children. Their brains haven’t matured yet, they don’t react the way adults do. And so a very expensive game begins
When kids are told constantly they’re bad or no good then that’s what they think. It just pushes someone who’s struggling on that line of good and bad, right over the edge.
I worry about the stress on him. Everyone expects him to fail. Only Jake can prove them wrong. He’s almost seventeen, and that means he could face going to big boy’s jail.
Believe me, sometimes I want to just lock the door and say to Jake, I can't do it anymore. But every time I feel that way, I also know he's still my son. He's always going to be my son.
Hear from Paula, Jake, and members of the vigilante group on The Feed at 7.30pm tonight (Wednesday 17 May) on SBS VICELAND.
*Names have been changed for legal reasons
Top Comments
With one breath you say his brain hasn't matured yet, with another we hear he didn't see a counsellor because he didn't want to. That should never have been his decision. He needed professional support. It was your responsibility to ensure he received it.
There comes a point when you as a parent have to say enough is enough. So he is broken and hurting, we all have pain, we all have broken places, some never escape the source of their pain, and others are left with very deep emotional scars. You need to be the parent, take him to counselling, sit there with him until he begins to open up. My brother was a 'bad kid', he did drugs, drank, and committed vandalism when he was older he got arrested three separate times for DUI's, the third time, my parents washed their hands of him and told him he had to serve out his sentence, they were not going to bail him out this time. He spent three months in jail, after that three years of AA, counselling, house arrest, and community service. He learned his lesson though and hasn't touched alcohol since. A little tough love goes a long way and so does counselling. He is crying out for help and just needs someone to listen to him.