I had modest plans for the Christmas just gone: get my family around, crank up the pizza oven, eat a whole box of shortbread on my own. More than anything, I wanted to relax. I hoped to be so intensely calm, in such exquisite respite, that I would simply become an amorphous blob and slide happily into my new life in a nearby drain.
Then my house was broken into.
I was asleep. In a dream, I heard my own car being driven away.
When I went to the window, I couldn’t see it. I stumbled to the front door and stood there, rigid with the slow realisation that the reason I couldn’t get outside to take a closer look was that my keys were not where I had left them, because they were in the car that had, in the past three minutes, been removed from its usual place in my driveway and the sound of it leaving hadn’t been a dream at all.
On the phone to the police at 12:37am, half-asleep, I looked at my empty driveway, uncertain whether I had perhaps forgotten it at the supermarket. I thought my keys were missing, I explained to the dispatcher, but equally they could be in a jeans pocket I hadn’t checked yet.
I found the knife later. Outside by the bins. I knew it was from my kitchen because it still had egg yolk on it. The people who took the car had grabbed it on their way to the table by my bedroom door. They had taken my keys and wallet as we slept a few metres away, holding a carving knife my child had used to make dinner.
Eight police came. I don’t even know what they all did – one seemed to be there exclusively to welcome each additional cop as they arrived. It was 1am, then 2am, then 3am. My cat was missing. Every nerve from my brain to my toes was malfunctioning. I sat on my back step with my head in my hands and called my cat’s name, pitifully, my voice shaking because my whole body was shaking.
When daylight finally broke, I had Tasks To Do. I called my insurance company. I picked up a hire car. I had the locks changed. My parents took me out for lunch and I blinked at them until they made me go home again. In the afternoon, I saw a pink hoodie in the middle of a nearby street and immediately recognised it. I went back with gloves to collect what had been discarded, while a neighbour watched me with suspicion. I found letters with my name on them, an Aldi catalogue, my favourite earrings smashed into pieces.
I did not find my feeling of being safe in my own home.
Twenty-four hours later, someone from a distant police station called to say they had found my car, locked and empty. No, they didn’t think my favourite childhood CD was in it. No, sorry, nor the card written in my 97-year-old grandmother’s beautiful scrawl (“Happy birthday, I miss you every day.”)
It was kids, the police said. Joyriding. They’d topped up the fuel tank and done a runner, eventually abandoning the car on the side of the road. Kid stuff.
Perspective, please
Home invasion is a hot topic in my part of Melbourne. Two days later, state MP James Newbury tweeted about its prevalence in his electorate of Brighton. “BRIGHTON HOME INVASIONS,” he writes (caps his). “Despite State Labor denying that Brighton has been victim to home invasions, our homes are under threat.” He cites two recent incidents and “dozens of affected streets over recent months.” His proposed solution has, for some months, been to reinstate the Brighton police station, which was closed in 2010.
I live right next door to Newbury’s electorate, in Sandringham District. Actually, I’m in a pocket of Bayside Council known as a hotspot for various lower-level crimes.
But Bayside has one of the lowest crime rates in metropolitan Melbourne – the second lowest of any council on the peninsula. Residents of Bayside are more likely to be millionaires than to be victims of a home invasion.
On the other hand, the council where my car was found has a much higher than average crime rate. The part of Melbourne where locals claim these children live recorded almost four times as many criminal incidents in 2022. School attendance is lower, home ownership is lower, wages are lower, unemployment is higher.
I remember a friend who worked in the Victorian justice system telling me what happened to children who went to juvie. She said: first they’re there for some petty crime, then they steal a car, and the cycle repeats into their adult lives. Her anecdotes are backed up by evidence. Once children come in contact with the criminal justice system, it’s really, really hard to get out.
These young lives are often shaped by circumstances beyond their control. Children who commit crimes are “characterised by high levels of instability in their lives”, with low literacy and poor employment prospects. There’s evidence linking childhood abuse and neglect to involvement in crime. Factors considered in early intervention are difficult family situations, substance use and mental health issues.
I’m a member of the alleged wave of Bayside victims of aggravated home invasion and I don’t want those children to be locked up.
But when I tweeted this position, a lot of people were angry. Someone could have been killed by my car. Was that what I wanted? If they hadn’t robbed me, these tweets claimed, they would have robbed someone else. Was that what I wanted? Why should someone else become a victim because I loved crime so much? Why did I wish aggravated assault on people in their homes?
“If you feel bad about it,” said one, “visit them in prison”.
Anger and gratitude
I’ve had to tell a lot of people about what happened. Insurers. Car salesmen. Banks. VicRoads. They say, “Oh my god, that’s awful!” And it is. I don’t sleep very well any more. A few nights ago, a car went tearing down my street around 3am and I sat bolt upright like I was in a movie and hyperventilated for an hour. I check every lock a dozen times and hide my new keys in a different spot every day. Some nights I find myself simply staring at the dark garden in case someone is there.
I’m angry that my safe place has been violated. I’m angry that I’ve been made to feel vulnerable and exposed. I was already an anxious person and now I find myself forced to manage a new set of invasive thoughts (no pun intended).
But this is one night in my otherwise safe life, a random event that wasn’t even about me. Maybe I’m being naive, but I can afford to talk to my therapist about how it’s made me feel. I can replace my stolen car. I will sleep again. The relative impact of this one night on the whole of my life is nothing compared to setting up a child to reoffend, effectively sentencing them to a life spent in and out of prison. Becoming a violent social media vigilante intent on locking young people up strikes me as being the least useful course of action.
Like so many of Melbourne’s issues – homelessness, mental illness, poverty, lack of services and so on – the solution lies in providing equal access to essential human needs: safe housing, affordable education, government payments to support a living wage, community rehabilitation, skills training and employment pathways. My teenagers aren’t breaking the law, not because they love police but because they don’t need to. They are warm, they are fed, they are secure, they are loved.
The box of shortbread I had set aside for Christmas remains unopened in my pantry. It expires in March. Sometime between now and then – probably while I’m watching Escape to the Country repeats on my laptop because I can’t sleep in case someone breaks into my house again – you’ll find me eating the whole thing, grateful for my tremendously good luck.
