Youth crime Qld: More shelter needed to stop crisis

A Whitsundays teenager believes the youth crime crisis won’t go any anytime soon unless more is done to give vulnerable children a safe place to turn to. See how she’s turned her life around.

Macy at the Proserpine Youth Centre

A Whitsundays teenager believes the youth crime crisis won’t go away anytime soon unless more is done to give vulnerable children a safe place to turn to.

It comes as the state government struggles to grapple with rising youth crime rates with 17 per cent of young offenders responsible for nearly half of all crimes committed in 2021-22.

Macy, 19, had tried to help out her mum and stay at other people’s homes as their two-bedroom house in Proserpine was “overcrowded”, herself sharing a bedroom with two of her siblings.

And so she would float between her grandparents’ home and those of friends.

But it was at a family friend’s home, where young children lived, that she was sexually abused.

“A lot of bad things happened there,” Macy said.

“I got touched and I was getting video recorded on a daily basis.

“When I was going through that, I just didn’t know where to be, I didn’t feel safe anywhere.”

Macy said she had found a haven in the Proserpine Youth Space, a centre dedicated to helping vulnerable teens like herself.

Renee and Macy at the Proserpine Youth Centre

Youth Space Coordinator Renee Buckley said more needed to be done to help kids like Macy, citing a 13-year-old girl who had been kicked out of her mother’s home and then gone on to suffer domestic violence and sexual abuse while staying at her father’s or at her boyfriend’s place.

“We’d give her (the 13-year-old girl) food, personal hygiene items, we’d give her as much as we could,” Ms Buckley said.

“But if we had somewhere safe for her to spend a couple nights or even a few months while we worked everything out, it would have been invaluable.”

Proserpine Youth Centre space

Ms Buckley said it was distressing to meet kids who had chaotic lives and the only way to give them shelter would be to send them 125km away to Mackay.

She said this fractured any social connections the child had built and left them even more vulnerable.

Ms Buckley said they were fundraising to build a centre that could provide short-term and emergency accommodation – via six to 10 beds in secure, staffed dormitories – for youth aged between eight and 17.

Macy said she believed more youth shelters could make a tangible difference to youth crime rates.

“Younger kids have got that mind where it’s right to break into someone’s house, steal cars – all this type of stuff. Because what? It is fun and games or is there something going on for this to happen?” she said.

“That’s why we need something like (the youth shelter) around here because I find they (the children) would get a lot of answers.”

Proserpine Youth Space offers any child who needs it friendly faces to chat to including about mental health, information about sexual education, and programs like making care bags for the homeless.

Ms Buckley said it had been amazing to see Macy develop into a real role model over the years, with the teenager now a youth leader at the space helping to run programs.

She said the centre managed 25 children each day, and up to 150 youth each year.

You can find out more about the centre on its Facebook page.