'SEND MY BOY TO JAIL'
MOTHER'S DESPERATE BID TO SAVE HER SON
Fiona Norman wants the courts to jail her 21-year-old son for drink driving and traffic offences -and save his life Picture: JUSTIN SANSON
A DARWIN mum fed up with her son’s drink driving and traffic offences is showing the ultimate tough love in a desperate bid to save his life.
Fiona Norman wants the courts to send her 21-yearold son to jail — only then, she hopes, will he learn his lesson.
Mrs Norman said she had tried talking her son — who we have chosen not to name — about his driving, but the conversations only ended in shouting matches.
The final straw came last Friday night when her son’s partner, the mother of his month-old child, called in hysterics to let her know he had been involved in a serious accident near Virginia after a 21st birthday party.
He is still recovering in hospital.
‘‘I saw him lying in that emergency room and it made me sick. I had to go outside and physically be sick,’’ she said.
‘‘ Seeing him there I thought ‘ I could be looking at you identifying your body’.
‘‘I think he needs to go to jail now. I know it’s a really harsh lesson, but fines don’t seem to do anything.
‘‘ It’s just irresponsible. It’s selfish. They don’t seem to realise what they put their families through. He’s got a little son that’s just turned a month old; he could have missed all that.’’
In a short phone conversation with the Sunday Territorian, the son said he had only been caught drink driving twice — but the first ‘‘didn’t count’’ because he was only 15 and technically a juvenile.
He said the other offences were related to speeding.
Mrs Norman, who lives in Nightcliff and runs a small takeaway shop in Palmerston with her husband, says her son is generous, caring and great with kids but, like other young men, believes he is untouchable.
She says she has now stopped helping him pay the stream of car-related fines and debts in another attempt to curb his behaviour.
‘‘I’ve been to court with him before and I was stunned when they just fined him. They don’t realise it’s a lifetime if you kill someone, or you could kill yourself.’’