Migrant parents ask courts to send kids back to Africa to separate them from criminal friends

Migrant families whose children have started committing serious crimes have begged the courts to let them send their kids back home to Africa.

Migrant parents of some of Melbourne’s worst teenage criminals are so desperate to get their kids away from the toxic influence of the city’s youth crime gangs that they have been asking the state’s court system to let them send their kids back to their home countries.

This week alone, a suburban Children’s Court alone dealt with two cases of desperate families wanting court approval to send their sons back to their home countries.

The first case involved a teenager whose family recently migrated to Australia from South Africa for a better life, concerned about their home country’s descent into lawlessness.

But in Melbourne, the boy fell in with a group of teenagers who were responsible for a string of car thefts, ram raids, armed robberies and cigarette thefts.

“He was trying to avoid (his home country’s) circumstances (of lawlessness) … he has found his way towards it in this country,” the teenager’s lawyer said.

The court heard the teenager typically served as a getaway driver for the gang, but sometimes played a more violent role in its crimes.

A flight takes off from Tullamarine Airport.

Police helicopters tracked him driving at speeds of up to 170km/h while fleeing from one of the string of ram raids and hold-ups he took part in.

He and his mates targeted milk bars and petrol stations. But one of their most harrowing crimes involved the random robbery of an electric scooter from 10-year-old boy.

“It’s just shocking,” a Magistrate said

The gang’s robberies and ram-raids involved them taking almost $100,000 worth of cigarettes, which the group is understood to have sold to black-market tobacco dealers.

One of the teenager’s victims, in a statement read in court, said: “It has become almost impossible to trust anyone … I feel unsafe.”

The woman is thinking of closing her business of more than a decade following the robbery.

The teenager is yet to be sentenced, but his despondent father wants a Children’s Court Magistrate to rubberstamp his plans to send the boy back home, as far away as possible from his mates, for an indefinite period.

The Magistrate said the teenager was part of a growing number of teenagers with no criminal record who commit serious crimes, seemingly motivated by money.

The Magistrate said it was “bewildering” how a teenager from a good family, with no criminal record, could perpetrate such serious crimes.

It is unclear whether the courts will impose a sentence that allows the teenager’s family to send him back home.

Families of troubled teenagers have asked the Children’s Court to let them send them back to their home countries, away from bad influences in Melbourne Picture: NewsWire / Luis Enrique Ascui

The second case involved the family of a prolific alleged car thief and armed robber who had sought, and were granted, court approval for their son to return to live with relatives in Uganda.

The request was a last-ditch attempt to keep the child away from the bad influence of a gang of older offenders, who he had fallen in with.

He was due to leave Australia on Tuesday.

Police are yet to determine precisely what happened at Tullamarine Airport, but the child either refused to board the plane, or snuck off after boarding.

The father ended up stuck on the flight to Africa alone, and is expected to return to Australia early next week.

Police allege the boy then went on the run in Melbourne, committing a series of burglaries and car thefts.

He had been judged too young and too immature to be held criminally responsible for his actions.

He was arrested on Thursday morning and locked up at Parkville Youth Justice prison.

He will be held there for the foreseeable future, either on bail or under a secure welfare order.

“That is for his own safety … clearly, his risk-taking behaviour places him at risk of harm,” a Children’s Court Magistrate said.