PARENTS TELL
ously we love our son but it came to the point where we had nowhere else to go. Nothing we did worked and whatever punishment he received from police in the past hasn’t made a difference.”
District judge Daniel Curtis gave the boy six months as part of a one-year detention order. The teenager admitted affray over the roof protest.
The father begged the court to “stop wrapping him in cotton wool” and said previous slaps on the wrist had failed.
The dad told us: “He thought he could get away with anything.
“The straw that broke the camel’s back was this recent crime where he got on a roof, which is when my wife and I decided to write the letter. It was difficult but we’re glad with the outcome, it’s what he needs and hopefully he’ll be changed when he comes back out.
“He needs to go somewhere where he can be put in his place and realise there are a lot of people out there bigger and badder who would make mincemeat out of him if he was in a real prison.
“Now he is going to be missing his birthday and Christmas, so I hope that it finally sinks in that he can’t keep going the way he is going.
“Within the last year he’s started committing really serious crimes like burglary and aggravated theft.
“He’d even steal things from our own home and sell them so that he could buy cannabis. It was ripping the family apart.
“He seems to think he is some big lad, that he is above everyone else. He’d come home after getting arrested and just say, ‘I’m not bothered’.” District judge Mr Curtis told the boy at Grimsby Youth Court: “I fear you are potentially a young man who has a career of crime ahead of him. You simply can’t go on like this.” The father said his lad had been difficult “since he could start BY ANDREW BRIDGEN CONSERVATIVE MP FOR N.W. LEICS WHAT we have here is caring parents who want to stop their son descending further into criminality. It’s a
We love our son but this is what he needs. He must be put in his place WORRIED FATHER ON CUSTODIAL SENTENCE