Once he's out, he's back to his old ways': Canberra mums on the youth crime rehab crisis

Résumé détaillé

Hoping their kids change, many just learn how to commit new crimes.

The sight of police leading your child out the front door under arrest. The endless, agonising wait for bail. The paralysing dread of what they will do next.

Sometimes, the hope is that they'll be re-arrested because at least they'll be safe.

For a growing group of Canberra mothers, this is daily life, a quiet, relentless trauma endured by parents whose children are in the juvenile justice system. Some of these women have never had a brush with the law themselves, not even a speeding fine.

Yet their children's offending has plunged them into a cycle of courtrooms, holding cells and heartbreak.

Melissa* arrived in Canberra as a little girl in 1988, built a life, made friends, started a family and joined the public service. More than three decades of quiet stability shattered in the summer of 2020.

"I got a call saying my son was involved in a crime and was being taken to Bimberi," the 42-year-old Belconnen mum said.

What followed were six gruelling years of as her teenage son's offences escalated from car thefts and assaults to domestic violence charges.

"I've witnessed him being arrested at our home on multiple occasions," Melissa said. "It is deeply traumatising, though the police have always been respectful. For the first few years, I was completely consumed with worry."

Often it is the mothers who carry the emotional burden of standing by their children through the legal system.

Début de l'article, extrait de The Canberra Times. Pour lire la suite, ouvrez l'article chez le média.