A HARROGATE family have returned from a break in London to find a trail of devastation, after a night's partying led to around 100 teenage gatecrashers wrecking rooms, stealing valuables and even trashing the shed and greenhouse. Police say the daughter of the family allowed a couple of friends to use the house in her absence, and they invited a few others. But the get-together became a much more riotous affair when crowds of other teenagers got wind of it and turned up uninvited.
The family cut short their break to return and found every room damaged in some way, and TVs, DVD players, cash and jewellery missing. Without dwelling too much on the foolishness of the young girl who handed over the key to her parents' house and the exact nature of the punishment that will ensue, we can assume that, technology being what it is, many of the people who turned up uninvited probably didn't even have a direct link to her. In another recent house-trashing episode, word of a party organised by 18-year-old Rachel Bell from County Durham, while her mother was away, got out on the internet contact site MySpace under the heading "Let's trash the average family-sized house" party.
When it came to it, her friends were in the minority. The message found its way into the darker recesses of cyberspace, and revellers lugging suitcases of booze found their way from as far away as London to the quiet cul-de-sac. Around £20,000 of damage was done, and at 4am, a posse of neighbours brandishing golf clubs chased the last of the partygoers away.
Teenagers, for all the canniness with new technology, don't seem to be quite switched on to the problems inherent in using the convenience of texting and contact websites. Jackie and Alastair Jonas had heard some hair-raising party stories, but eventually succumbed when their daughter pleaded to have her 16th birthday celebration at home in the suburbs of Sheffield. Her parents would have preferred to hire a scout hut or room at a rugby club, but relented and said she could invite 50 people to the 7.
30pm-midnight party. "We'd heard about parties getting out of hand, with gatecrashers, too much booze and damage done, but all of Jane's friends seem so nice," says Jackie. Nonetheless, they stripped the three ground floor rooms almost bare and put no-smoking signs everywhere.
"We also told her that when she invited people, which had to be in person, not online or by text, she had to warn them not to bring wine or spirits, as we would be out front, policing the booze. We provided enough drink for a couple of beers or alcopops each, plus loads of soft drinks and food." Jackie and Alastair planned to spend the evening at the front gate, checking arrivals on a guest list, like bouncers at a club.
"By that day, Jane had admitted, infuriatingly, that she expected 'about 73' people, as she couldn't leave certain friends out," says Alastair. "On the night, Jackie and I spent hours in the driving rain turning gatecrashers away. Had we not been there, around 150 people could have been crammed into the house.
These strangers claimed to be friends of our daughter's, but we had never heard of them and neither had she. "Some of them tried to get around to the back of the house via neighbours' gardens, but we heard them and threw them out. Others went up the road and bought booze somewhere, then came back every hour to see if they could get in.
"They said Jane had invited them by text or online. They couldn't tell us which school she went to or, in some cases, what she even looked like. If we had not been there, there could easily have been trouble and damage, as they would have somehow got in.
We may be a bit strait-laced, but I can't contemplate ever going out for the evening while a teen party is happening. Too much can go wrong. "They were obviously people who had heard about the party via a friend of a friend of a friend, and were looking for something to do.
I don't understand why they would want to spend an evening in a house they don't know at a stranger's party, but it's difficult to get inside teenagers' minds at the best of times," says Alastair. As it was, only the usual amount of mucky woodwork was left after a good evening. Jane never got to hear quite how miserable her parents' evening had been, but they've vowed to hold any future parties somewhere else, where the management provides the bouncers.
Mark and Judi Thomas only found out a week later, on the grapevine, that a party and sleepover attended by their 15-year-old daughter had turnedinto a house-trashing session when a gang of older teenage boys turned up and bullied all the boy guests out into the street then locked the door on them. As the girls hid upstairs in the bedrooms, the uninvited guests trashed the ground floor, tearing curtains and breaking a couple of windows. Police took 40 minutes to respond to a phone call, by which time the living room was devastated.
Officers threw the boys out and the girls spent the rest of the night cleaning up. No-one could figure out how the strangers had heard about the party, and the assumption was that it was down to too much texting by someone who was actually invited. "We didn't know that no parent was in the house, or we wouldn't have let our daughter even go," says Judi.
away overnight, and the group of 15-year-olds who were left in the house could easily have been beaten up or raped. some reason they decided not to call us. "Youngsters seem to be incredibly naive about the power of the technology they carry in their pockets.
It's a great thing, but has a truly negative side, too. We are now very wary about parties, and ask all sorts of nosy questions about who is in charge. Sleepovers are also off the agenda for now.
" A HARROGATE family have returned from a break in London to find a trail of devastation, after a night's partying led to around 100 teenage gatecrashers wrecking rooms, stealing valuables and even trashing the shed and greenhouse.
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