Signs of sanity?
Posted: Thu May 17, 2012 1:05 am
A single mother dubbed 'Ma Baker' after she let her three feral young children run wild on a housing estate has been run out of town.
Karla Walker, 32, was evicted from her rented home in Prestwich, near Manchester, after her out-of-control sons, now aged 11, 12 and 13, brought misery to neighbours for three years.
They invaded gardens, jumped on cars, vandalised fences and smashed windows. One neighbour was wrongly branded a 'paedophile' while another’s pet rabbit was mauled to death by the family dog.
Police were inundated with complaints of loud music, late night parties and the youngsters hurling foul mouthed abuse.
But Walker - named after the iconic mother Kate 'Ma' Barker who fiercely protected her four gangster children in the 1930s U.S. Midwest - defied a string of legal warnings about her sons' behaviour.
And today she hit back at the eviction saying her sons got the blame for all crime in the neighbourhood and she should have had 'more support' from the authorities to curb her children’s behaviour.
She was taken to Manchester county court after fed up locals compiled a diary detailing their ordeal. During one 11-month period the children breached a court order telling them to behave 25 times.
A judge then gave Walker a month to leave her house on the Polefield estate before finally evicting her when she failed to leave. She and her family are now in a hostel.
But one neighbour, 53, a fork lift truck driver who asked not be named for fear of reprisals said the behaviour of the children cost him his job and almost wrecked his marriage.
He said: 'I’m just so relieved that that family have gone because they gave us years of hell. Those feral kids would come onto my property, my garden, climbing on my car and on my shed and I lost count of the number of times I had to report her.
'She was given a number of chances to make sure her kids behaved but she seemed to think it was not her responsibility.
'I just couldn’t reason with her and I don’t think she could control her kids. I asked her politely to keep the kids off the property but they made my life an absolute misery from the noise and the bad language and most of the time it occurred when they should have been in school.
'We could not sit in the garden because of the bad language. They would say typical things like "f*** off" they even called me a “paedophile.”
'My wife is a teacher and they used to taunt her. They damaged the car and threw dog dirt on my car. There was constant noise, music, shouting. It was in the early hours but culminated throughout the day.
'They had a dog which was let loose on a neighbour’s rabbit and apparently it killed it. How she allowed her children to get away with it I just don’t know.
'It put a strain on my marriage and I had to pack my job in because I wasn’t sleeping at night and I was getting up for work and was absolutely exhausted. I had to explained to my manager I wasn’t only a danger to myself but others too.
'I was suffering from stress it was just a total nightmare. I have been here almost 25 years and we even looked at moving.
'But how could we sell our house knowing what the neighbours were like and you have to tell the potential buyer? I still suffer from anxiety and stress. It’s affected me mentally. At last we’ll get a bit of peace and quiet.'
Another neighbour said: “One or two people used to call her Ma Baker because he seemed to be so protective of her sons. She let them get away with anything.
'They were constantly running in and out of gardens and were little beats. Some people lost count of the number of times their car windows were smashed.'
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