Not That There's Anything Wrong With That

FAKE Tahitian prince Joel Morehu-Barlow fled to Australia after a complaint was made to New Zealand police about an alleged criminal offence seven years ago.

The revelation will embarrass the Crime and Misconduct Commission, police and Queensland Health, which last year dismissed a complaint about Barlow without a proper investigation.

The Sunday Mail has discovered Barlow's childhood "castle" was really an ageing weatherboard home with a tin roof in Thames, on New Zealand's North Island.

His mother the "Queen", Andre Barlow, was last year convicted in the Wellington District Court of stealing almost $25,000 from her lesbian partner's inheritance funds to pay her bills.

Oh dear.

-- Nora

Repent At Leisure

Whingers who complain that social conservatives want to 'take us back to the 1950s' might want to take a look at this piece from the Daily Mail.

Problem families are each costing the taxpayer an astonishing £75,000 every year, new figures reveal today.

Ministers have been horrified by research showing that on average £9billion is spent each year on 120,000 families blighted by jobless parents and truanting children.

More than two-thirds of this is devoted to protecting children – via social care and child support – and tackling the crime and anti-social behaviour such families often generate.

Oh my.

What to do?

Well why not go back to the 1950s? The majority of children born to parents who are married, the majority of households with the breadwinner in work, less crime.

To be sure the genie is out of the bottle but any modern government that fails to endorse and strengthen marriages and whole families (mum, dad and the kids) and work to create an improved economy and the employment it brings, becomes directly culpable for the disintegration of prosperity and social order.

-- Nora

UPDATE:
Desperately sad. Completely avoidable.

And by the time Kelsey was 17 she was dead – strangled by Willcocks in an alcohol-fuelled row over claims of sleeping around.

In the words of his barrister, ‘they were much too young, both of them’. Stuart Driver QC added: ‘It was a disastrous cocktail, because they had powerful adult feelings but the immaturity of children.’

Yesterday at Chester Crown Court, Willcocks was jailed for a minimum of 16 years after being convicted of murder.

Description: He's A Fab Dresser With A Penchant For Louis Vuitton

It is tempting to mock the ineptitude of our Queensland Bligh Labor Government in allowing a fraud of massive proportions go on under their nose and to laugh at our Premier's statewide BOLO for Joel Morehu-Barlow - but that man has solen $16 million of our money.

A pittance in government terms but let's see what $16 million could buy the state of Queensland:

It could pay for the fit out of the Queensland Symphony Orchestra's new headquaters, pay for the state's migrant settlement program, pay for the refurbishment of the Mackay Police Station and the Queensland natural disaster awareness campaign.

While Morehu-Barlow's current whereabouts are unknown, one can have a guess where he might show up in February.

-- Nora

UPATE: Monday, December 12. Caught!

Wolf?

The media is filled with implicit praise today as yet another school child proudly reports escaping the clutches of yet another slavering predator.

I'm sorry to be the one to ask the question - did this event actually occur?

This is the latest in a long line of child abduction alerts on the Gold Coast over the past few months, not uncoincidentally occurring in the aftermath of the discovery of the remains of Daniel Morcombe and the subsequent arrest of a suspect in his abduction and killing.

There is no doubt that the Daniel Morcombe case is true and tragic and his parents' attempts to bring something positive from the event through a child safety foundation in their son's name is very commendable indeed.

However I believe there is a link in the recent rise in reporting incidents and the statewide school tour by the Morcombes.

Children, as we know, are susceptible to suggestion. They are also keen to impress their peers and their adults and will either embellish stories or make them up from whole cloth which is why it is important to deal with lying at a very young age.

Could it be that the reports of attempted abductions could very well be a form of mass hysteria unwittingly encouraged by parents and the media?

I don't believe these children are lying for any malicious reason, I believe that at heart they want to demonstrate to their teachers and parents that they understand the 'stranger danger' message and what better way to do that than by giving the adults from whom they want approval, a real life scenario that demonstrates the their ability to look after themselves?

This is why educators who encounter claims of sexual abuse are counselled by psychologists to be very careful in evaluating those claims and give clues to look out for.

Also of concern is that an innocent enquiry by an adult to a child for directions, for example, can result in a witch hunt that ruins the lives and reputations of innocent people as in this example:

One incident in Livonia involved a tow-truck driver who assaulted a man he had seen asking two boys on the street for directions. He turned out to be a tire salesman on a business trip from Akron, Ohio, who had gotten lost with no knowledge of the slayings.

The fact of the matter is, children are more likely to be abused by people they know - whether they be someone online who has cultivated a relationship with your child, a teacher, sports coach or a family friend.

Child welfare is a serious issue and adults have a responsibility to address with issue soberly and seriously, making sure that we allow children to not only be safe, but to feel safe.

Children rely on the adults in their lives to keep their world safe which in turn gives them confidence to grow, learn and explore. If adults and the media are hysterical, fear-filled reactionaries, then what hope do our children have?

-- Nora

UPDATE: Girl's abduction report 'invented'. Told you so.

Preach It Brother Bill

In the light of these statistics:

A CHILD crime wave is sweeping Victoria with almost 10,000 children aged 14 and under dealt with by police in the past year.

Exposure to sex, violence and alcohol, broken families, and boredom in sprawling housing estates have been linked to a surge in kids accused of robbery, assault, rape and other offences...

...A startling 9860 children aged 10 to 14 were accused of committing crimes last financial year. It was 1532 more than the year before, and almost a third of all alleged juvenile offenders.

Most were accused of shoplifting (2119), damaging property (1642), burglary (1355), assault (1029) and stealing cars or their contents (1022).

Dozens were also quizzed over robbery, arson and sex offences - including 24 alleged rapists."

Where is our Bill Cosby?

Comedian Bill Cosby has warned black Americans to "stop looking for somebody to blame" and to confront the ills facing their communities...

...Cosby, who starred for many years in his own series, The Bill Cosby Show, and who has a doctorate in education, told several hundred people at a conference of community associations that some of his critics within the African-American community were "intellectual panhandlers" who enabled destructive behaviour by staying silent or blaming racism...

...He said adults were equally complicit if they failed to speak up.

"I haven't seen the demonstrations saying, 'I'm not allowing my children to listen to this'," he said. "It's killing us. We're not talking about it, and we're not beating it down."

-- Nora

A Graphic Illustration

Once upon a time newspapers at least only romanticised criminals who could be passed off as big-time, such as gangsters like Squizzy Taylor who gave the appearance of being 'big men' (metaphorically speaking, of course).

But these days the tarts of the media just can't help themselves. They'll romanticise any bottom of the barrel crim, especially if there are tits under 30 involved:

HER passion for street art sent her halfway around the world on a year-long sojourn to learn all the tricks of graffiti from London's secretive underground community... to express her flair with a spray can... (in) laneways in the industrial area at nearby Marrickville.

Yesterday, friends of the vibrant graphic artist made an emotional pilgrimage to the Eastern Suburbs drain where she lost her life to farewell the St Peters student.

It's a grave pity she's dead. As they say, it's a waste. But if she wanted to be a graphic artist as she claimed, she could have become one without graffiti.

The fact is:

...she loved the thrill of edgy street work in a risky location...

And she was a criminal, a member of the widespread and loosely associated gangs of graffiti vandals who are a blight on our communities. As the story notes, Legge was even able to go on a virtual study exchange program to London!

Recently, in one Gold Coast location, a brand new wall of attractive feature stone beside a park was tagged by some useless drone before it was even finished. Who know is he or she is among those garffiti vandals increasingly used by other criminal gangs such as bikies to run and sell drugs.

Additionally, it is not uncommon in the hardcore graffiti community to use rape of girlfriends as a weapon to warn each other out of claimed territories.

So to turn a blind eye to a vandal's tag is to close ones eyes to a creeping criminality which can destroy everyone's lives.

The Daily Telegraph's eulogy seeks to raise a tear for this person and indeed her story does deserve one for her parents' loss and her own wilful waste.

But the media needs to stop romanticising criminals and also realise that, as the saying goes, the difference between art and vandalism is permission.

-- Nick

The Sins Of The Father

SITE OWNER'S NOTE: This post was originally conceived as a peg to hang images of the 1970s comic book edition of Cross And The Switchblade and scans of pulp fiction covers for Nifty Knick Knacks. However the events of this week turned what was supposed to be a light piece into this piece on youth behaviour and crime.

News of teenage violence today is as shocking as it is common.

There is almost daily news of young gangs holding entire neighbourhoods to ransom, violently drunk party-goers bashing someone whose equally drunken remark offended them, psychopathicly murderous females or simply opportunistic criminal activity.

At the same time, the media shakes itself out of its summer silly season news torpor to create a celebrity out of a smart-arsed teenager whose drunken, orgiastic riot masquerading as a party.

As many commentators begin to question 'what the hell has gone wrong with our teenagers?', Nick and Nora invite you to step into their way-back machine to give you a little insight into what's wrong with today's youth.

We'll rapidly rewind the 'Trust No 1' of the 1990s, the post apocalyptic 1980s, the seriously bummed out 1970s, the anarchic 1960s to take a pause in the 1950s.

Not the nostalgic-soaked Happy Days but an era when the headlines screamed 'Seven Teen Agers Murder Polio Victim'.

The crime was a brutal one, members of a gang called the Egyptian Kings, having lost a pay-per-player stick ball game with rival gang Jesters, decided to compound their welshing with vengeance.

One night they lay in wait for their foes to appear, two teenage boys wandered through the park.

They were beaten and stabbed. One of the boys, a 15 year old who suffered a limp as a result of polio was killed.

So sensational did that crime and associated trial become, it finally awakened people to the reality of street violence. It also happened 50 years ago.

The crime and trial did two things. It resonated with Broadway audiences:

ACTION
Dear kindly Sergeant Krupke,
You gotta understand,
It's just our bringin' up-ke
That gets us out of hand.
Our mothers all are junkies,
Our fathers all are drunks.
Golly Moses, natcherly we're punks!

ACTION AND JETS
Gee, Officer Krupke, we're very upset;
We never had the love that ev'ry child oughta get.
We ain't no delinquents,
We're misunderstood.
Deep down inside us there is good!

A powerful radio show about the Michael Farmer murder 50 years on is here. One of the commentators in the radio program is Nicky Cruz.

His story of transformation from criminal gang member to gospel preacher is told in part in The Cross And The Switchblade which became a best-selling book, a not-so-good movie and serialised here in comic book form.

The Cross And The Switchblade tells the story of a small town pastor, so shocked by the violence went to New York to share the gospel.

Admittedly naive, David Wilkinson's honest interest in the physical and spiritual welfare of gang members over five years of welfare and ministry won many of them over.

So was there anything particular about the 1950s that would cause a generation to run amok?

With the benefit of hindsight we can see some similarities - lack of spiritual direction, parents who are themselves dysfunctional to the point where the only familial connection their kids experience is in gangs.

But not all children involved in criminal activity or who find themselves victims of crime and violence are poor or ill-educated, indeed the Corey Worthingtons or the Matthew Stanleys of the world come from decidedly middle-class, relatively well off families.

So what went wrong?

For further insight, step back into the way-back machine for a trip past the 1940s when war ruled the world, the 1930s when the effects of the Great Depression bit hard to the Roaring 1920s, home to flappers, gangsters, wild parties and hedonistic wealth.

There is a scene the 1936 film My Man Godfrey in which the title character has it out with the brattish twentysomething daughter of his employer:

Cornelia Bullock: You can't go on like this forever. You really like me and you're afraid to admit it, aren't you?
Godfrey: You want me to tell you what I REALLY think of you?
Cornelia Bullock: Please do.
Godfrey: As Smith or as a butler?
Cornelia Bullock: Choose your own weapon.
Godfrey: You won't hold it against me?
Cornelia Bullock: It's your day off.
Godfrey: Very well. You belong to that unfortunate category that I would call the "Park Avenue brat". A spoiled child who's grown up in ease and luxury... who's always had her own way... and who's misdirected energies are so childish that they hardly deserve the comment, even of a butler on his off Thursday.
Cornelia Bullock: [hurt and angry] Thank you for a very lovely portrait.

Today there are a great deal of 'Park Avenue brats' who have grown up indulged with distractions and material possessions, wanting for nothing but consistent, effective discipline, the setting of boundaries and a realisation that the world doesn't revolve around them.

Gold Coast Bulletin columnist Robyn Wuth is on the right path when she wrote this week:

There you are, Australia. That's the youth of today -- aren't you proud?

Take a good look at the iGeneration and bear this frightening thought in mind -- this idiot and his stupid mates could be running the country in the next generation.

God help us all.

This is what the world is churning out these days and we have no one but ourselves to blame, us and the education system for turning out these ignorant little twits who are yet to have a thought, for teaching them more about their legal rights as horrid little brats instead of the three Rs.

Us, and the Government, and the legal system for making it harder and harder to discipline our children.

Us, and computer games, iPods and the internet for helping to turn out a generation of selfish little show-offs, publicity whores who want their 15 minutes of fame and then some.

Also, blame the parents of the 500 other kids who turned up and went wild. Where the hell were you? Did any one of them know where their kids were and what they were up to? I doubt it.

We can all feast on a sizeable portion of finger-pointing pie...

Long story, short: what's wrong with the kids of today? It's not just their parents, but also their grandparents, great grandparents and great, great grandparents.

The solution doesn't begin with government programs, police intervention or social workers. It begins with us.

What example do we set in our own behaviour and the standards we want to see in ourselves and others?

-- Nora

Risk Of Crime

Kerobakan jail inmate and condemned Bali drug mule Scott Rush received 'some novels, a couple of his boyhood favourite Mad magazines, new cotton shorts, thongs, fresh fruit and sweets' from his parents for Christmas.

"He didn't get a stereo or anything of that nature – nothing of the material type likely to be pilfered," (his father Lee) Rush said.

Indeed, attractive material possessions are likely to be stolen by drug addicts looking to pay for their next fix.

-- Nick

What's He On?

Victorian drug education group VIVAIDS chief Damon Brogan says police shouldn't raid traditionally drug-laden rave parties because:

"Confronted with such a police presence, some individuals are tempted to unwisely consume all their drugs in one go, rather than throw them away or risk arrest," Mr Brogan said. "If police operations are increasing the risk of death and harm in the community, perhaps it is time to rethink."

Perhaps it is time for the Victorian government to rethink the $800,000 in funding it provides to VIVAIDS each year.

-- Nick

Incorrect Footwear Causes Fatal Slip Up

Unfortunate:

The burglar bled to death in the man's frontyard after he tripped and slashed his throat while he climbed through a bedroom window.

-- Nick

Protected Species

When a youth club being built on the Gold Coast was hit by graffiti vandals a few weeks ago, a number of local youngsters reported their criminal peers to police.

Their actions earned praise from leaders of the club project and the local councillor and produced the Quote of the Week in the Gold Coast Sun (17 October 2007 - no on-line version available):

Senior Sergeant Murray Underwood said police would pursue the lead but would be limited in their options. "We will be looking into it but unfortunately they're juveniles so they're very much protected," he said.

That's why bikie gangs are:

...recruiting children to fence stolen property.

Ah, Queensland's glorious Gold Coast - graffiti and fencing one day; drug running and murder for hire the next:

Veteran investigative crime journalist Bob Bottom - who also gave evidence at the Brisbane hearings - also backed the introduction of RICO laws and telephone taps. He said the Gold Coast was a crime centre in Australia in much the same way that US gangsters flocked to Florida from where they ran vast criminal networks.

-- Nick

Update: Protected all right:

Five boys who stoned a father to death as he played cricket with his son have been imprisoned for two years each.

Not Karachi or Morocco but in Kent.

Double Jeopardy

It's an understandable reaction but at least one of the parents of the children who found Sydney's 'kid in a suitcase' needs to throttle back lest they traumatise their children even more than the event itself:

"Our kids all play here every afternoon. They go fishing every day so it's a frightening thing." (She) has been forced to rethink her son's once carefree visits to the local park... "Now this has happened I don't want my son walking home from school on his own, you just never know."

The resilience of children - and even adults - is greater than our 'wrap everything in cotton wool' society has led us to believe and the 12 year old boy in this event might be better served being allowed to deal with it in his own time and space rather than being barred from going fishing with his mates and walked home from school.

The fact that the found body had been in the suitcase for some days without a child being reported missing suggests complicity by the dead child's mother or father or both rather than a killer stalking the area. Drugs are also highly likely to be involved:

"It's putrid," (said one local) of much of the neighbourhood. "The area is full of drugs and drug dealers."

But don't they know drug taking is a victimless crime? /sarcasm

-- Nick

Update: House raided; one of three children apparently missing; not reported:

One local said the youngest boy, believed to be aged about two, had not been seen in recent weeks. "There was always the three of them. Then only two, the older two," he said. "We just thought (he was with the Department of Community Services)." (Emphasis added)

Tough Talk But Crims Still Walk

A SENIOR Brisbane judge yesterday vowed:

...to get tough on callous reoffenders who disregard their fellow citizens. District Court judge Helen O'Sullivan said she had finally lost patience with criminals who ignored judges' warnings and community obligations, saying recalcitrant offenders could expect the hard hand of the law in her court...

Then she let another one go, ignoring Crown prosecutors' arguments that a violent offender be jailed for breaching his correction order and ordering the man to undertake 180 hours' community service.

Meanwhile, a gang of young thugs on a rampage of assault and robbery in Adelaide are also repeat offenders allowed to walk again and again:

Many of the offences have been committed while gang members are on bail or serving suspended sentences.

-- Nick

Go Home And Go To Bed

It's not often one finds oneself agreeing with the nannies of the Australian Medical Association but:

The Australian Medical Association Queensland has called for a blanket ban on any pubs opening before 10am. "Anyone who needs to start drinking that early in the morning would seem to have an alcohol-related problem and our view is that they should be seeking assistance," president-elect Dr Chris Davis said.

Not surprisingly, Davis' viewpoint on a a review of Queensland pub opening hours has drawn predictable reactions in comments from readers who trumpet the 24/7 nature of modern life and demand their right to a beer at 7am. There's also the standard:

Until Brisbane wakes up to the fact that the rest of the world is running 24/7 - it will never get the 'Worldly' recognition it is looking for.

Of course, the rest of the world does not run 24/7. Nightclubs in Los Angeles and many other 'worldly' places around the world close at 2am and no one has a problem with it.

One is a bit fed up with so-called 'adults' whinging like kids because they can't have everything they want at any time they want it while closing their eyes to the damage their demands for constant indulgence is causing:

"I'm not sure it can get much worse," said Mr Evans, describing the behaviour of people within city centres on Friday and Saturday nights... Government studies show that 44 per cent of violent crimes are alcohol-related and that 70 per cent of weekend hospital admissions are linked to drinking. [1]

VIOLENT crime in Scotland has risen by 40 per cent in a year, according to new figures published today. Most of the increase was due to an increase in "minor" assaults carried out by people under the influence of alcohol. [2]

Rapes and serious assaults will soar if pubs are allowed to open longer, said the Council of Her Majesty's Circuit Judges, which represents 600 judges. The judges' report stated: "Those who routinely see the consequences of drink-fuelled violence in offences of rape, grievous bodily harm and worse on a daily basis are in no doubt that an escalation of offences of this nature will inevitably be caused by the relaxation of liquor licensing which the government has now authorised." [3]

The latter cited article is well worth reading in full, containing the following quote that could as well apply to Australia as Britain:

Judge Charles Harris QC said... "Continental-style drinking requires continental-style people - people who sit quietly chatting away at cafe tables." He said British drinking involved "standing up, shouting at each other in crowded bars, trying to consume gallons of beer at a time".

-- Nick

Now Who's The Dope

Interesting post on JF Beck's site and I'm have a little fun with commenter Perry.

-- Nora

Softly Softly

Crime no longer warrants vigorous police attention:

...car theft, or suspicion of it, is not in itself a serious enough offence to put the community at the increased risk caused by a pursuit... benefit of chasing an offender for traffic or driving offences would hardly ever outweigh the risks.

In future, criminals will be asked for their cooperation:

In a new scheme to be rolled out statewide, police will visit or write to repeat offenders asking them to come forward and seek help.

-- Nick

Newly Relevant

The case of Graeme Stafford, the man jailed for the murder of Queensland schoolgirl Leanne Holland, just gets worse:

POLICE working on the Leanne Holland murder case in 1991 ignored a vital lead: a blood-stained man acting strangely not far from where her body was dumped. The person who saw the man was never interviewed, and no attempt was made to find him. A note on the crime investigation log two days later said the information was "no longer relevant", as Graham Stafford had been arrested for the schoolgirl's murder.

What had actually happened was that the detectives had fallen into the most basic trap awaiting all investigators - they had let the presence of an 'obvious' suspect blind them to the possibility of others, causing them to make evidence fit their theory rather than testing their theory with the evidence.

Stafford was released from jail last year and is seeking a pardon.

-- Nick

Little Monsters Inc

Career criminal:

An alcoholic nine-year-old boy who waged a two-year crime spree has become Victoria's youngest prisoner... The boy, who began offending at the age of seven, came to police notice 35 times in two years, but he could not be charged because of his age. His crimes included car theft, stealing from cars and chroming and was also a suspect in a violent assault while on a train. The boy taunted police who arrested him, telling them he knew he could not be charged.

Victoria's Opposition community services spokeswoman plans to ask why welfare authorities didn't intervene.

However, such questions presuppose a breakdown of the system when, in fact, the system is operating entirely as a reasonable person would expect it to, not only in Australia but on a global scale, after a 40 descent into political correctness.

Other recent examples:

THERE will be no criminal charges over the multiple stabbing of a woman by a seven-year-old boy... the boy’s mother would have faced more serious action if she failed to send her son to school.

This UK Liverpool Echo story is via The Policeman's Blog where PC David Copperfield writes:

Meanwhile, Thames Valley Police are seeking a man who sexually assaulted Sue Turton by pinching her on the bum while she reported on the flooding in Oxford, although to get the detection they've decided to give him an £80.00 ticket under the Public Order Act. Sue, who's clearly sane and has better things to do with her time has declined to assist the police, but a detection's still a detection, even if it's an £80.00 ticket.

From the UK Telegraph:

Social services yesterday admitted failings in the case of a four-year-old girl murdered by her mother and her boyfriend, a cannabis addict.

-- Nick

The Hokey Pokey

You put your left foot in:

Lesbian bigamist who lied about marriage avoids jail

You put your left foot out:

Suzanne Mitchell, 30, a mother of five, admitted that she had lied about being single when she signed a civil partnership with Caroline Beddows, 24. She was given an eight-month suspended prison sentence for breaching the Civil Partnership Act 2004, which allows same-sex couples to “marry”.

You put your left foot in:

...(she) entered into a civil partnership with her girlfriend while still being married to her husband...

And you shake it all about:

Mitchell, from Shrewsbury, who is 12 weeks pregnant and has rekindled her relationship with her husband, Charles, was ordered to complete 100 hours’ community service.

Is that what it's all about?

-- Nora

The Dead Zone

Jesse James was 'a softly spoken 15-year-old who regularly helped his local pastor' and had the misfortune to live in Moss Side, a notorious inner-city suburb of Manchester, England, that is known as the British Bronx.

When the youngster was gunned down last year, it was suggested he might have been a member of a gang but police thought it mistaken identity and his mother vehemently insisted her “precious baby boy” was no gang member.

With the murder still unsolved, an inquest into Jesse's death has opened at which it is now suggested the youngster was accused of being a member of one gang in front of members of a rival group, sufficient enough in Moss Side to get you killed.

There's something else sufficient round there to get you killed:

Witness D, Jessie, and another teenage boy had been standing outside the West Indian Sports and Social Club in Moss Side. Witness D had wanted to “check out” a nearby party and set off on his bike. But as he did so, the other teenage boy had told Jessie that it might not be a good thing to follow his friends into the park on his bicycle... Earlier another witness, identified only as Witness A, also described the moment around 1am when Jessie was ambushed in the park.

One AM.

There's something seriously wrong when children shoot each other.

It starts when one in the morning is considered playtime.

-- Nick