My daughter could ‘come home in box’
Helpless mother’s fears for 14-year-old ram-raid gang girl
An Auckland mum has described the almost helpless feeling of watching her 14-year-old daughter get sucked into a life of stealing cars and disobeying authorities with a youth ram-raid gang.
She fears her runaway child “coming home in a box” and believes the disruption of Covid-19 lockdowns on daily school life started the chaos.
From what Zoe* knows, her daughter joined a group of about 15 teens — most of them like-minded school drop-outs — and has committed ramraids on businesses, including allegedly a Remuera retailer.
Zoe told the Herald of the day she looked out her window in the early hours to see her daughter being led down the driveway by two police officers.
Her teen daughter had ploughed a stolen car into the rear end of a Ford Ranger, near her home in Te Atatu¯.
She had been missing for two and a half days.
“I worry about that a lot, I was grateful she was home but I saw the debris from the crash — it was pretty bad. They just got out of the car and ran.”
Zoe said her household has been turned upside-down since the last Auckland Covid-19 lockdown and she has watched her daughter drift further away from school.
The “other friends” were a bad crowd, several of whom had dropped out of school, while Zoe said her daughter is “a follower, not a leader”.
“It’s pretty easy for young people, if they get stood down from their school, to end up hanging out on the streets,” she said.
“When they’re kicked out of school there’s no mainstream alternative — they’re just hanging out with kids who have been through the same things and they form a group.”
Zoe said keeping her daughter on the straight and narrow was the hardest thing.
“I ask my daughter what if it was her car, for example, that she’d bought with her hard-earned money which got crashed into, how would she feel? Put yourself in their shoes,” she said. “She just laughs and jokes about it.”
Some of the damage from her daughter’s activities has been charged to Zoe.
When asked about the belief held by some that parents should be held accountable for their children’s actions, Zoe said it depended on the circumstance.
“At 13 and 14 they know right from wrong, they can still do community service and be punished for it. Their parents could be the nicest people in the world and come from a good home, then they’ll go and do this leaving their parents to wonder, ‘How could they do this’?”
She said she loves her daughter and that she’s “a good kid”.
“She has the potential to be whatever she wants, but she won’t get there doing crime and wrecking other people’s lives.”
Zoe’s daughter is known to the police. She isn’t facing any charges currently, but has been referred to Youth Aid on several occasions.
Zoe believes Youth Aid officers were motivated to help young offenders, but that it doesn’t offer enough.
Police said Youth Aid officers aimed to keep young people out of the court system while making sure the offenders were responsible for their actions through alternative action.
A police spokesperson said young people went through family group conferences or youth court in the “most serious instance”.
Statistics released in September showed 1300 people aged 10 to 17 appeared in court during the year to June 30, compared to 1500 the previous year. The most common crimes were theft, assault, burglary and robbery and the majority were male.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Police Minister Chris Hipkins have also acknowledged a significant rise in specific crimes such as ram raids, while generally youth crime is down.
National announced last month its intention to introduce a youngoffender military academy, which would see offenders aged 15 to 17 sent away for up to 12 months for rehabilitation.
The idea was criticised by sociologists and criminologists.
* Name changed for legal reasons