Saturday night, my wife and I were having our first cinema since weeks. We had decided to let the 17 years teen-ager who lives next door keep an eye on our 3 babies while they are sleeping. Our apartment was burglarized by her and 8 “friends” of her.
“I was alone, everything went well”
23:15, Saturday night. We are back from the movie. She tells us the evening went well. The babies slept constantly and she had no problems. She hardly stays a couple of minutes with us and flees back to her home.
“Darling, did you notice the kitchen table is covered with water? I ask my wife
– Yes, she must have let some glass fall.
– Darling, where is all the stuff that usually lies on the top of the settee?
– Oh, I don’t know. That’s strange. And did you notice how much air perfume she sprayed in the bathroom?
– Maybe she smoked there. Hey, she must not have been here alone: there are two alien teeth brushes in the bathroom!
– Gosh, she must have hosted her boyfriend!”
“We were two but except that everything were OK.”
23:30, Saturday night. We ring her door bell. She comes back to our apartment for some explanation.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I admit a friend of mine came for helping me with some math exercise.
– Please don’t lie! You left two teeth brushes in our bathroom! You did not do math with teeth brushes! You must have enjoyed your night in our home with your boyfriend.
– … Yes… I did. But everything went fine for your babies. They are sleeping well and deeply.”
My wife gets her back to her door and explains to the father of the babysitter what happened. He is furious. The teen-ager almost looks like she is sorry.
“In fact, we were six.”
23:45, Saturday night. I get back to our apartment meanwhile in case the babies wake up with our noise. They are quietly sleeping. But I suddenly notice something else…
“Hey, Darling! Look at that! There’s tobacco spread over the ground in the office room! And the computer: It’s been shut down and its screen must have fallen on the ground or something because it’s not at its usual place. And the network won’t start up! And our room! Our bed has been moved and my books have disappeared… They are now in the living room!”
We get back to our neighbour’s apartment and ask for more truth, with anger.
“I could not let them go away! They were five friends of mine. But I had not planned they would come.
– Write down their names immediately, her parents ask.
– No, I can’t. I don’t have a pencil…
– Are you kidding or what?!?
– OK. Here are the names. But I promise my boyfriend was not there, please don’t blame him! We were only 6.”
“Yes, we were seven.”
00:20, Sunday morning.
“Your boy friend WAS here. You said it.
– He was not.
– He was.
– He was not!
– He was!
– He was not!
– (Her parents are shouting at her) He was!
– … Yes… He was… she cries.”
She cries and explains: “They forced the entrance. I did not ask them to come. I could not let them go. They brought some chaos so that you would be upset about me. And your babies just cried once but I managed to get them asleep quickly. And it’s neither my boyfriend’s fault nor mine…”
Meanwhile, I investigate through the apartment and notice that several cakes have been stolen from the fridge and cupboards. One pizza has been eaten near the piano: there is still some ham on the floor. The cover of the radiator in the living room has been broken: they must have tried to sit on it. The medicines we store in the office have been partially moved to the bathroom cupboard. Our bedroom furniture has also been visited.
We let her parents and her have an argument and maybe some sleep.
1:30, Sunday morning. Back to our apartment, we go through a comprehensive inventory of what happened there. I notice that the computer was shut down at 21:06. They must have confused the light switch of the room with the general switch of the power outlets. And the computer must have been abruptly shut down. They then switched it back on but could probably not access it because they don’t know the password. And the network router did not appreciate being rebooted so violently. I fix the network to get things back in order. I notice that the computer was shut down once again at 22:07. She must have tried to cover their tracks.
More importantly, some pieces of jewellery have been stolen from our bedroom. A pearl necklace, a gold bracelet and several medallions are missing from our small “treasure chest”.
“As a matter of fact, we were nine.”
8:30, Sunday morning. We bring notice to our neighbours that several jewels were stolen and we’re heading to the police station. Her mother and her come with us: her mother had been working for 15 years there! She looks half furious half despaired about what her daughter did. The police men start doing their job.
13:00, Sunday afternoon. We ask the neighbours on the floor above if they heard anything unusual during this night and they tell us how angry they are about the noise we did: people were shouting so loud in our apartment! Our TV was three times as loud as usually! And our babies were loudly talking in their bedroom until late in the evening! Things went not so well indeed. Yet another lie from the baby sitter.
14:30, Sunday afternoon. Two policemen visit our apartment for investigation. We notify them that we found the medallions: they had been moved to the piece of furniture where we store our clothes. Gods only knows why. With shock and despair ;-), we then discover yet another horrific crime: they stole the TV remote!
(They could have killed our babies and destroyed our house but they should not have stolen the remote! What can an honest family become without the TV remote!?!)
18:00, Sunday afternoon. The mother comes back to us with fresh information from her former police colleagues: they listened to the 6 accomplices and their parents. The teen-agers declared they were invited by our baby sitter for a birthday party and did not do anything wrong. They said it’s all the baby-sitter’s fault. They did not even go to any room other than the living room (the baby sitter says the contrary). But they also mention 2 other guys who they also invited and who wandered with suspect intents through the other rooms. We eventually learn the party gathered 9 teen-agers in our apartment.
22:30, Sunday afternoon. Hopefully, the day ends with relief and joy: we found the TV remote. It had been hidden between the settee and its cover.
The other partiers will be heard by the police tomorrow. We are still hoping our jewels will be given back but at least, we’ve got the remote. ;-) And hopefully the babies seem not to have suffered too much from this.
Good news that they all cooperated (more or less…) in the end and that the police seems to be pretty good on top of it. And that your babies weren’t hurt.
Hopefully that girl learns a lot from it, preventing even more stupid mistakes in the future :-)
Damn! This seems to be unbelievable !
That is a scary story.
It can be tough to find and keep trustworthy babysitters.
When our boys were but babies we had a teenage babysitter we liked quite a bit: very conservative and maternal it seemed. But later we found out she had a boyfriend. Who was part of a gang. Rough looking young lad, and a little scary acting. And, it turned out, sometimes the boyfriend came to our house when our babysitter was babysitting.
I dropped the babysitter off « home » one night after babysitting and found out that her new « home » was some seemingly communal gang apartment on the edge of a « turf » boundary with a rival gang.
« Drop me off on the street, » she advised, « as you shouldn’t pull in to the driveway or you will get into trouble with the gang. »
« But you have to drop me on on the OTHER side of the street, if you drop me off on this side, I’ll get shanked. »
All this in a small sleepy town where we felt comfortable leaving our front doors unlocked.
We decided we did not really need to go out anymore.
EP
only found your page here, and reading the entry freaks me off…
good thing your babies are fine, and things are progressing positively… hope they are settled by now.
now i should further proceed with my work, else i could not answer your emails on recommender soon :)
Thanks for your comments, all. Latest update about this story:
The teen agers were eventually questioned by the police. One of them admitted he had stolen some money but two friends of him confirmed he had put the money back in place before leaving because they blamed him for this. We also found another piece of jewelry that was moved to some other odd place in the apartment. But the pearl necklace that was missing must still be some sort of trophy for one of the guys or girls.
Anyway, they all claimed that « it is the baby sitter’s fault » since she invited them in. The baby sitter started reimbursing us for this necklace and her parents and we are fine with this nice effort of repairing things. There was eventually no legal action against the teen agers given the fact that the only significant material loss for us is this missing necklace and none of the children were convinced of having robbed it.
We further learned from the little sister of the baby sitter that she was used to hosting her friends at home every saturday night when her parents were getting out… Her parents were badly surprised by all this event and they had some « explanation time » with her… Hopefully this will result in some positive change for their family. Given that the other teen-agers were « officially » questioned by the police, we hope that their parents also reacted to this story.
As a somewhat funny epilogue of this story, while doing some routine visit in our residence area, the police found a group of teen-agers wandering through the cellars of our buildings. The group fled but two of the teen-agers were caught by the police tham. One of them had some hashish on him. They were both held as prisoners at the police station for a couple of days. From the police point of view, it seems that it was the same group who visitted our home… except the baby-sitter who was forbidden by her parents to ever get back closer to her former friends and… who did not appreciate being designated by them as the main author of the party they had here…
it is really very unbelievable that you have a believe in someone, and you say to stay in your home and after that, that person broken your faith, it is very shameful, but here is one thing is good that your kids are safe
This is unbelievable. I mean, hey, I understand that she would invite her boyfriend over (which she shouldn’t), but this has gone way way too far. She literally packed the house with her friends. But you know what I really don’t know how to interpret – the toothbrushes. What was that all about?
Well, luckily everything worked out fine.