More than 90,000 Victorians left traumatised by home invasions

The full extent of trauma left behind by Victoria’s home invasion epidemic has been revealed, with tens of thousands of households impacted.

More than 90,000 Victorians have been victims of aggravated burglaries in the past decade amid a youth-driven boom in the crime.

Victoria Police figures show there has been a total of 37,668 residential aggravated burglaries since 2014, when widespread house break-ins by young offenders started to grow sharply.

That’s a rate of one in every 75 Victorian homes.

With an average 2.5 people per home, the number of victims would potentially run beyond 94,000.

An aggravated burglary is a crime category in which there is a break-in on a property while someone is at home.

The daily average in Victoria last year was 15.

There were 2420 aggravated burglaries in 2014, the beginning of a decade-long era of rampant break-ins by teenagers which shows no sign of abating.

The total had surged by 130 per cent last year to 5590.

More than 90,000 Victorians have been victims of aggravated burglaries. Picture: Nine News

Most of the increase has been generated by groups of teens sneaking into houses in the dead of night to snatch car keys and steal residents’ cars, preferably high-powered European models.

Many of the victims sleep through the violation, waking to find intruders have skulked in and stolen their wheels.

In the early days, much of the offending was in the outer southeastern suburbs but the thieves have steadily expanded their horizons.

Police have in recent years tried to target youths who travel up the Monash Freeway from the Dandenong and Casey areas then turn off to the north or south to affluent suburbs.

While the number of burglaries has jumped in nearly every area across the state, well-to-do suburbs have experienced the biggest spikes.

Bayside suburbs saw a 673 per cent spike in reported agg burgs in a decade.

Bayside suburbs reported 201 incidents last year, up 673 per cent from just 26 ten years ago and burglaries have spiked by 572 per cent in Boroondara.

Break-ins across suburbs in Glen Eira rose by 575 per cent, while Whitehorse saw a 455 per cent increase.

A decade ago, there were 37 reports in Kingston.

Last year, the number of incidents sat at 182.

The biggest jump in Victoria was in Monash, where aggravated burglaries have risen by an alarming 1760 per cent in a decade.

In 2014, the area reported just 15 incidents.

Last year, that rose to 279.

The practice was initially known among youth offenders as “missioning”.

It has since become entrenched, growing to the extent that police have been forced to run a special seven-day-a-week overnight operation called Trinity.

One police source said he was frequently asked what parents were doing about their children but a high proportion were living away from home in state care.

“The parent in most of these cases is the State of Victoria,” the officer said.

He said many of the worst offenders are on multiple sets of bail and a dreadful influence on younger, impressionable children.

“These are the kids that need to be locked away. They’re the pied piper kids,” the source said.

Their crimes are often compounded by extreme driving behaviour in stolen cars which frequently reach speeds of over 200km/h on freeways.

It comes amid a major shake-up to Victoria’s bail laws that would allow kids as young as 14 years old charged with serious crimes to be tracked with electronic monitoring devices

Police Minister Anthony Carbines said while a small number of youths were behind a rise in aggravated burglaries, police recovered most stolen vehicles.

“Criminal activity has no place in Victoria and we have delivered record investment and increased powers for Victoria Police to crack down on crime and hold perpetrators to account,” he said.

Black Rock mum “terrified in her own home”

Noeleene Flynn is fed up with a lack of action against youth offenders who are regularly breaking into Bayside homes. Picture: David Caird

Mum of two Noeleene Flynn fears that her kids will be woken up to the sounds of machete-wielding teenagers breaking into their Black Rock home.

The Bayside mum told the Herald Sun multiple home invasions on her street in recent months had left her “terrified in her own home”.

She has since installed cameras, an alarm system and has made a habit of double checking every door before she goes to bed.

“I’m spooked by the front lights coming on at 5am,” she said.

Ms Flynn, who decided to speak out for her traumatised neighbours, said she was “sick to death” of hearing that teenagers are terrorising her suburbs.

“People in my street, in my town of Black Rock have had enough,” she said.

“Enough is enough.”