Lost youth: A story of hope

THE five pupils in Father Chris Riley's English class are some of the baddest seeds in the State: streetkids, dope fiends and one-man crime waves. Uncontrollable and unteachable last year, they have changed so much they now sometimes sound like philosophy undergraduates. "It's about cognitive distortion," 16-year-old Daniel is telling the class. He's facing charges over the theft of nine Toyota Taragos ("The cops don't look twice at a Tarago," he explains) but today he's more concerned with the theme of the English lesson, which is "change".

"Cognitive distortion is when you see what you want to see," he continues. "The police see you and think, 'He's nothing but a streetkid, worthless.' We don't see them as individuals. We think of the institution."

In 2000 Daniel was a mess. "Pot gives you a mellow feeling, everything is all good," he explained. "Speed keeps your blood flowing, gives you heaps of energy. On heroin you're nice and lazy; you couldn't be bothered doing anything."

Daniel was spending about $500 a week on drugs, living in a squat in Redfern and earning cash by breaking into houses. Now he's on the return leg of what's usually a one-way trip.

Stark new advertisements from Father Riley's charity, Youth Off The Streets (YOTS), declare that when a teenager hits the streets it will be just two days before he's sexually assaulted and five days before he uses heroin. He'll by dead by 21, says the ad.

That's a simplification. Many streetkids develop drug problems while still at home, and they're the victim of assaults years before they first sleep rough.

Father Riley estimates that 90 per cent of the boys who come through YOTS have been sexually assaulted; the rate is higher for girls.

Another of the pupils in Father Riley's English class, Ian, left home at 15. He saw some tough things: he's never really recovered from watching a couple of his friends crash an Asian wedding in a Brisbane park. "They saw a couple of Asians by themselves and he picked up a small reflector pole from the side of the pathway and he just laid into them, full tilt. It was hard core." he says, shaking his head. He treated the side-effects of street life with a copy of Sun Tsu's The Art Of War and $150 per day worth of pot before he was diagnosed with post traumatic stress and put on anti-depressants.

Luke Horder, 16, stole phones in the day and slept on the Sydney-to-Newcastle train. He stole meals from food halls. "Those food vans are too scary,' he says, "All those old deros."

YOTS runs the food van that operates each night by The Wall, Darlinghurst. Many of the boys who eventually make it to Foundation House first come into contact with Father Riley and YOTS via the food van. "If they tell us they want to get off the streets then we try and organise it straight away," says Father Riley.

It's not an easy path: a two week detoxification program at Merrylands before they're eligible for one of 110 beds YOTS can offer at 16 locations around the State.

Daniel had four attempts at detox before he made it to Foundation House, on a farm in the NSW southern highlands where the staff take a firm but gentle approach to helping the kids: "Praise is the most effective strategy, but I'm not afraid to say no,' says Father Riley.

The black-clad Catholic priest who's followed everywhere by his cantering great dane, Woods, mixes real life with his lessons. A class discussion of Scott Monk's book, Raw, touches upon sexual abuse. 'One of the worst things that could happen here would be if sex abuse was happening and we didn't pick it up," he tells the boys. "Father's heaps good," says Daniel. "He tells you how it is, straight, he won't bulls**t to you. If he thinks you won't make it, he tells you."

Luke spent 10 months on the farm before he spent a night drinking while on home leave. Father Riley sent him back to detox. Why does he want to go back to the farm? "I'm sick of that life," he says, meaning the drugs and the crime and everything that goes with it.

Ian: "Think about when you've got a brand new squash ball and you're bounching it against the wall and catching it. If you use a brand new squash ball it will come back pretty quick. After a while it loses its bounce and then it won't bounce back very much at all. I didn't want to get to the point where I was flat."

John Miller, 24, got out before he was flat. He came through the YOTS programs at 14 and now he's back helping to teach at Foundation House. He brings a sense of reality to the young men about how to re-enter the world and reclaim lives they've barely lived. "You do leave here with a feeling of great accomplishment," says Mr Miller. "Your ego rises from zero to 100 but the things you have accomplished are quite minimal by society's standards. Because you're not going to go killing everyone every five seconds, it puts you on a level with everybody else."

http://www.dailytelegraph.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,4007900%255E3163,00.html