Source: Telegraph, The (UK)
Contact:  Sat, 03 Oct 1998
Author: Michael Fleet

MOTHER TOLD POLICE ABOUT DRUG DEALING SON 'TO SAVE HIS LIFE'

AN accountant who found drugs and money hidden in her son's bedroom told a
court yesterday that she turned him over to police in an attempt to "save
him".

The woman told police what she had found and then agreed to fetch the
15-year-old boy from a friend's house and bring him home, where detectives
were waiting for him.

The privately educated boy, who cannot be named, was given a two-year
supervision order yesterday after he admitted five charges of possessing
cannabis and one of supplying the drug.

He was described at Lewes Crown Court as an "over-achiever" who was an
outstanding sportsman and gained 10 top grade GCSE examination results. But
for six months he had been dealing in drugs, buying cannabis and selling it
on to others in order to fund his own UKP300-a-week drug habit, the court
was told.

His mother told the court that she was alerted to the fact that her son was
involved in drugs by her daughter. "I was having a few words with my
daughter and she retaliated by saying I should be looking at what my son
was up to," she said.

Later that day when she returned from work, she searched her son's bedroom
and discovered cannabis resin with a street value of UKP250 and a wallet
containing UKP127.

"I went downstairs and my husband said I didn't look well," she said. "I
took him up to the room and we thought what we were going to do. We decided
to call the police. I thought I had to get it over with."

After examining the find, the police said they would wait at the family's
home in East Sussex, until she had brought back the boy from a friend's
house. She said: "I went to collect him but I couldn't tell him what I had
done. When we arrived the police were waiting for him and arrested him."

Luisa Morrelli, defending, asked the woman how her son reacted to her
"shopping" him. She said: "He was angry with me because I had reported him.
But he has realised I have saved him from wasting his life. We are both now
close again and he understands why I did it.

"He has taken a mature attitude. He feels guilty about the people he sold
drugs to and the humiliation he has brought about," she said. A few weeks
after the initial arrest the boy was arrested again with a small amount of
herbal cannabis in his pocket.

Miss Morrelli said: "He knows he has brought shame and humiliation on his
family. He has shown genuine remorse. From the outside he seemed to have it
all, being intellectually gifted and being a talented sportsman and from a
good family. And it was because he was from a caring family that his family
took the proper steps and that is why he finds himself here today."

Judge Anthony Scott-Gall told the boy: "You are a young man regarded as
having enormous potential. You have every right to feel ashamed." 
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Checked-by: Mike Gogulski