In their damning letter to the Royal Court as the man – Elias Benyoucef – was jailed for drug offences, the couple label Children’s Services ‘dysfunctional’, ‘broken’ and claim they are guilty of ‘failures at every level’.
Benyoucef was locked up for four years and six months for his role in minding thousands of pounds worth of class A and B drugs. It was the culmination, the court heard, of a downward spiral into crime that had started with him being smuggled to Jersey illegally and passed around care agencies like a game of ‘pass the parcel’.
The couple criticised the government for failing in their care of Benyoucef from the day he arrived in Jersey, for doing little to track down his real mother and for not supporting him once he left their foster care.
In the letter to the court, which included a picture of Benyoucef’s mother, who he longs to meet, and Benyoucef with his school friends during ‘happier times’, his foster parents said they severed ties with Children’s Services in 2018.
‘We loved our role as foster carers but [it is] impossible to work in such a dysfunctional service, where we witnessed a failure
at every level and in catastrophic ways by not meeting basic human rights needs for our young people. We could fight no more,’ they wrote.
In response, Mark Rogers, director general of Children, Young People, Education and Skills, said he could not comment on individual cases but said the government recognised that ‘in the past, it had not done enough to protect, support and nurture vulnerable children and young people’.
During yesterday’s sentencing, the Royal Court’s Superior Number, which convenes only for the most serious offences, heard how the now 23-year-old was smuggled into Jersey, illegally, from Morocco when he was five years old, unable to speak ‘a word of English’.
The JEP understands that he was brought to Jersey by his uncle Nacer Eddine Benyoucef, a former takeaway food manager who was jailed in 2008 for raping two women.
The letter states that he came into the care of his foster parents in 2011 for two years, which they say Benyoucef said was ‘the happiest time of his life’.
‘I wish he was never taken from Morocco, I will always wonder how he would have fared, but he was. I wish he was never in the Children’s Service, but he was. I wish he never experienced all the things he had to experience, but he has,’ the letter said.
The parents said that their fostered son, a talented drummer and rapper in his youth, left their care and was then supported by Children’s Services’ ‘leaving care team’ quickly becoming unemployed and homeless.
‘What followed was unforgivable, the worst type of poor management I have ever seen (until the next time), in short it never happened and, as predicted by us, without the right team around the child he quickly became a NEET [Not in Education, Employment or Training].’
Advocate Michael Haines, defending, said his client had had a ‘shockingly complicated upbringing’ and compared Benyoucef’s life in the Island and his various stints in care, in homeless shelters and ‘sofa-surfing’ to a game of ‘pass the parcel’.
Outlining the case, Crown Advocate Richard Pedley said States police officers raided an address on Wellington Road at about 7.30am on 17 January. ‘Commercial quantities’ of cannabis worth up to £14,300 and MDMA powder valued at up to £3,000 were recovered. Personal amounts of the drugs and MDMA tablets were also found as well as various drug paraphernalia.
Benyoucef admitted all of the offences. By doing so he was in breach of a previous community order imposed for a grave and criminal assault last year after he broke a man’s jaw and bit him at a dance festival.
Delivering the sentence, the Bailiff, Sir William Bailhache, said the sentence would seem like a long one to the defendant.
‘But there is life afterwards and you can turn things around,’ he said. ‘You can be positive about your future.’
Mr Rogers added in a statement: ‘We are currently making wide-ranging improvements to address the historic failings so that every child in Jersey has a bright future. The government’s ambition is for Jersey to be the best place for children to grow up in, but we acknowledge that progressing from a low base isn’t proving either quick or easy. Our practices, systems, processes and reputation all need improving, which is a long-term endeavour but one that we are fully committed to bringing about.’
The Bailiff recognised Benyoucef’s longing to get in contact with his mother and that it was difficult for him to get back to Morocco because of his criminal record and the fact he is now a British citizen.
Read the letter in depth in Tuesday’s JEP.
