‘Traumatised, terrified’: Qlders living in fear as young crims run riot

Terrified families are altering their lives and changing their habits amid the state’s escalating crime crisis, concerned they will be targeted by brazen criminals breaking into homes while armed.

Queenslanders living in a state of fear are sleeping during the day instead of at night, camping out on the couch and creating easy escape plans in case they are broken into and even pulling their kids out of sports to avoid having to leave the house in the dark.

Terrified residents have been altering their lives and changing their habits amid the state’s escalating crime crisis, concerned they will be targeted by increasingly brazen criminals breaking into homes while armed.

Anxious children are also sleeping with their parents for months at a time and waiting until the garage shuts before getting out of the car.

It comes as damning new statistics revealed the number of youth offenders charged with stealing cars and robbery has tripled in the past decade

The Queensland Crime Report 2023-24 also showed the most common age of an offender in Queensland was just 15.

Teresa Knight and her husband are terrified in their own home. Pic: Adam Head.

Bob and Teresa Knight, who were victims of a violent home invasion in Geebung three years ago, said their family still doesn’t feel safe.

Mr Knight was knocked unconscious during the incident, while his wife said she would never forget having her head smashed into the concrete.

While the offender was sentenced to four years with a 12-month non-parole period last year, Mrs Knight said she was still getting up in the night, patrolling the house and making sure the doors were locked.

“Most nights, I toss and turn, I can’t sleep. I sleep during the day and I don’t sleep at night,” she said.

“I can’t even catch a public bus. My nephew was dying and I was going up to Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital by bus and I was making sure there were people around me before I took a seat.

“I just can’t take it any more, I am happier when we go away than I am when I am at home.”

Mr Knight said he travelled to Nepal, India, Thailand and Japan recently and at no point did he feel threatened at night.

Bob and Teresa Knight. Pic: Adam Head.

“But I wouldn’t walk out after 7pm at night, not in this place,” he said.

“It’s getting as bad as South Africa, where you can’t walk across the street unless you’re going in a group.

“South East Queensland and Brisbane in particular has changed over the last so many years. Once you’d wander around the streets of Brisbane at night time without a care in the world. Now you take your life in your own hands if you do it. We are turning into a third world country.”

The state government recently announced its “adult crime, adult time” laws would be expanded to 33 offences including the ramming of police and emergency services vehicles, arson, torture, kidnapping, trafficking in dangerous drugs, rape, attempted rape, sexual assault and attempted murder.

Coorparoo resident Rachel Connors who has had her property broken into six times. Picture: Lachie Millard.

Coorparoo resident Rachel Connors, who has been broken into six times since Christmas in 2023, said her children are traumatised and are missing out on extra-­curricular activities because the family doesn’t feel safe.

“I think it’s incredibly distressing to see a child go to bed with that sort of intense concern and fear,” she said.

“Our children’s sporting activities have been reduced. So there’s no early morning rowing or athletics training, because it means leaving at night time, reversing out of the driveway. And we’re concerned about being carjacked by youth criminals, so the children’s sport have been cancelled.”

Ms Connors said they are also more cautious coming and going from the house, because of the fear someone could turn up at any minute.

“Your sleep is continually interrupted, so there’s no peaceful sleep any more, not when it’s happening so frequently,” she said.

“We have changed our routine so I don’t go out walking in the morning.

“I’m still pretty nervous about going out in the morning, walking the dog.

“I think what people should be worried about is the escalating violence that they’re using, the brazenness of it.”

Phyllis McClymont, 79, was broken into while she was asleep, with the thieves snatching her husband’s phone, a car and many memories.

“The thing that I do every single day since it happened is at night when we’re ready to go to sleep, I make sure the lights are on all around the house,” she said. “Make sure all the doors are locked, I hide our phones, hide my handbag, hide my husband’s wallet, make sure my car is locked. I do that every single night.”

Trudy Reading, Volunteer Administrator Voice of Victims Brisbane. Pic: David Clark.

Ms McClymont said what happened in her home was “horrendous”.

“I’m scared, I go on with my life, but I really have never got over it. They came upstairs while we were sleeping and they had a knife because they cut a hole in the screen door,” she said.

Voice for Victims volunteer Trudy Reading said it is not only victims but the general public that are altering their lives out of fear.

Ms Reading said she knows of people who sleep on their couch to keep a lookout and plan an easy escape if something goes wrong.

“In terms of victims that we’ve spoken to, we’ve had elderly people who are pensioners, who have been a victim of a violent invasion and as a result they now sleep with all their internal lights on,” she said.

“It’s really hard to hear that people have that feeling of being unsafe and that feeling of the unknown and how they need to alter their lives.

“The most common thing I think we hear is that children are sleeping with parents after an incident and that can go on for months and I think that just has an impact on the whole family

“I’m not talking just young children, I am talking about teenage children that are sleeping with their parents.”

Ms Reading said her own son was one of a number of kids who wouldn’t get out of the car until the garage door was down.

Australian Clinical Psychology Association (ACPA) Queensland vice president Corey Lane said it was not uncommon for some people to get an increased level of alertness and vigilance when they had been victims of crime.

Queenslanders are living in fear in their own homes.

“There can be people who operate with significant anxiety and avoidance of the incident, or reminders of the incident, or more broad concepts of threat,” he said.

“Where that becomes extremely clinically significant and problematic (and) debilitating, that starts to fit within the definition of post traumatic stress disorder.”

White Cloud Foundation general manager Karen Gallagher said sleep was commonly affected.

“We just find people can’t sleep or there’s been change to their sleep patterns,” he said.