24
Apr
2014
By Calvin at 10:29 GMT, 10 years ago
This from the Victim Support website, which I missed earlier this month....
Children whose homes have been burgled are more likely to struggle at school and have trouble sleeping, according to new research from Victim Support and home security specialist ADT.
Nearly 300,000 children are believed to be the victims of break-ins every year in England and Wales.
The first major survey into the impact of burglary found that two thirds (63 per cent) of parents who had children living at home when they were burgled support the partnership’s call for tougher sentences for burglars who target family homes. Judges can already take into account if a child was at home when a burglary happened, but the Take No More partnership wants that rule to be strengthened to include any home where a child lives.
A quarter of parents (27 per cent) said that their child’s sleep was affected following a break-in at their home, while one in ten (11 per cent) parents reported it had a negative impact on their child’s performance at school. A third (32 per cent) of parents found their children’s sense of personal safety and well-being affected and one in ten (10 per cent) reported an increase in their child’s bed-wetting. Parents reported their children were affected even if they were not at home at the time.
Of the adults whose homes were burgled as children, more than a third (37 per cent) still feel that the experience affects them in adulthood. One in three (35 per cent) sleep with the light on and 44 per cent now prefer to sleep with someone else in the house.
Two in five parents (39 per cent) say that their children needed emotional or psychological support following the burglary. But a separate survey of young burglary victims carried out by Victim Support and ADT suggests that the impact on children may often be greater than even their parents realise.
Of the 53 children and young people questioned, nearly one in three (30 per cent) admitted they still suffered nightmares, and nearly a third (30 per cent) said that the burglary had knocked their self-confidence.
Residential Business Director of ADT, Mark Shaw, said: “These statistics reveal, for the first time ever, the true scale of the impact burglary has on children. Domestic burglary is a high volume crime, but it’s wrongly perceived as being just one of those things. We want to address this in our Take No More campaign by deterring burglars and supporting victims - especially children, who are often the forgotten victims.”
Assistant Chief Executive of Victim Support, Adam Pemberton, said: "These findings paint a disturbing picture about the hidden impact burglary has on children. We know that this is a serious issue for tens of thousands of families across England and Wales. Victims tell us time and again that they suffer far more than material loss when their home is burgled.
“We believe sentencing should more accurately reflect this kind of psychological harm. It is critical that families have access to crime prevention advice to help them avoid becoming victims and can get practical help and emotional support if they do experience break-ins."
Single mum Sheree’s home in Leeds was broken into in December 2013 while she and her two teenage children were asleep upstairs. The burglars took her car, widescreen TV, iPad and all their Christmas presents but, most importantly, left her family traumatised by the experience. Most affected was her 14-year-old son who, four months on, is still not sleeping properly at night.
Sheree says: "My son refuses to talk about it, but he now won't go to bed without the light on. I sometimes go upstairs at 11pm and he's still wide awake, sometimes he's just walking around his bedroom. His schoolwork is suffering, he's falling behind a little bit. I'm so worried about him."
ADT and Victim Support have pledged to work together for the next three years through the Take No More campaign to run free crime prevention schemes for householders, increase awareness of support services for burglary victims, and campaign to ensure that those victims get justice in court.
Visit www.victimsupport.org.uk/takenomore or www.adt.co.uk/takenomore for more information.
Follow the campaign on Twitter #TakeNoMore @VictimSupport or @ADT_UK
Donate to the Take No More campaign
TCPW Comment: Whilst this research importantly highlights the suffering of children in the aftermath of a burglary one could make a case for other sections of the community, particularly the vulnerable, the elderly and disabled and what about the psychological effects on a young person living alone? I know that when my neighbour got burgled and I got injured as a consequence of grappling with the sod it took my wife and I ages to get back to a normal sleep pattern. The fact is that burglary has lasting effects on all victims and I would hope that sentencing would take account of this, no matter who the victims might be.
I also don’t understand Adam Pemberton’s call for “access to crime prevention advice”. The fact is that our police services provide mountains of advice through leaflets, words of advice and on their websites. And dare I mention it that the website you’re reading this on (to which Victim Support has declined to link) was written by a former police crime prevention guy and is visited about 1,200 times a day! The problem ladies and gentlemen is that it is very difficult to convince the general public to follow the advice – that’s the challenge!
Is your home secure? Take the Home Security Survey on this website http://thecrimepreventionwebsite.com/home-security-assessment/468/home-security-survey--diy/
