Crime fatigue drives Victorian family interstate

Danielle Beaton can’t take it any more. Sick of being targeted by gangs and feeling unsafe at home, Melbourne family is leaving.

Danielle Beaton with husband Eric and daughters Tanahya and Aalihya at home in Truganina in Melbourne’s west. Picture: Luis Enrique Ascui

Danielle Beaton has had enough. The mother of three from Hoppers Crossing in Melbourne’s west and her family of five are midway through packing up their house ahead of a move to the Gold Coast later this month.

They’ve endured an attempted home invasion, a ransacking and three car burglaries in the past year and now they’re taking drastic action and moving north.

“We’re just tired,” Mrs Beaton said.

“Our car has been burgled three times this year and I can’t even turn my back on my kids while they’re playing on their bikes in the street.

“We’ve got family (in Victoria) but we’re not prepared to go through it any more.”

The problems started in early 2017 when a gang of teenagers of African appearance would plonk themselves in the front garden and make a ruckus.

“It was just intimidating stuff, and then you call the police but they’re always gone by the time they get there,” she said.

The family was at home one evening in March and saw the front doorknobs rattling and heard teenagers on the property.

Those kids ran away when the family’s two dogs started growling.

About two months later, the family went through the real deal, however, when they arrived home from Kmart one evening to find the whole house had been ransacked.

“The kids’ rooms had been trashed, drawers taken out of chests and dumped everywhere and stuff smashed for no reason. And just the weirdest stuff was taken,” Mrs Beaton said.

“There was a pack of smokes on the kitchen bench on top of an iPad.

“They took the smokes, but left the iPad.”

The thieves also left a late model Samsung phone, but made off with an old prepaid mobile.

Rattled, the family called a property manager friend and ­arranged to move into a new rental property in neighbouring Truganina the next day.

But the problems didn’t stop. Their car — a 2004 Ford Territory — has been broken into three times, often as part of a wave in which the thugs target every car in the street looking for garage remote controls.

By November, the family had decided they’d had enough.

Mrs Beaton is a property manager and her husband is a road worker.

They made the decision to leave Melbourne in November and lined up new jobs before Christmas.

They were sick of feeling unsafe in their home, but Mrs Beaton also said she was beaten down by having to drive her children to and from school and between their part-time jobs every day because she was too nervous of the gangs in the neighbourhood to let them walk from the bus stop to the house.

“It sounds stupid, but when you’ve got a 15-year-old daughter and you know a gang is heckling her from the park and threatening her as she walks home, what are you meant to do?” she said.

“We’re just sick of feeling ­unsafe.

“I’ve got kids who should be able to catch a bus to the local plaza to meet their friends. That’s just not happening here.”