Thugs make home a virtual prison (From The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald)

Thugs make home a virtual prison

A MOTHER says young thugs have made her family virtual prisoners in their own home through a five-year campaign of vandalism and abuse.

Suzanne Hill has lost count of the number of windows that have been smashed by youths throwing bricks, stones and eggs at her home in Glyndebourne Close, Bemerton Heath.

The divorced 49-year old, who lives with her two teenage children, had all six of her double-glazed living room windows replaced last Friday, only for one to be broken again on Sunday evening, just two days later.

"How we haven't been seriously hurt I don't know," said Mrs Hill. "One time there was glass showered all over my daughter's bedroom, but luckily she wasn't in there.

"Somebody is going to get hurt - our luck is going to run out. We spend every evening wondering when the next window is going to go."

But the problems have not just been damage to their home. Mrs Hill says that almost any time she or her children leave the house they are subjected to verbal abuse as well as being pelted with stones.

"My daughter is a volunteer Scout leader at Bemerton. I have to walk with her but all the time we're walking there and back we get stones thrown at us," she said.

"There's no other way of going, so there's nothing we can do about it."

The family has lived in Glyndebourne Close for ten years, but the problems surfaced around 2000, and things have got steadily worse over the last three years.

She believes they are being targeted by youngsters who started by bullying her son, but the whole family has suffered intimidation and abuse.

For the last three years Mrs Hill has been pleading with Raglan Housing Association, from whom she rents the house, to find them somewhere else to live, but to no avail.

"They are getting fed up with it - it must be costing them thousands. But they've told me there's nowhere available," she said. "I have tried the council but they said I haven't got enough points to get on their list. I'm at my wits' end as to what to do about it - nobody wants to know."

A spokesman for Salisbury police confirmed they had received several complaints about damage, and that a ten year-old boy had recently been arrested in connection with their investigations.

The youngster has been released on police bail until next week, pending further inquiries.