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Home | The brat files | Chill-out zone | From adversity to adventure | Find out more
Age: 15
Danni, whose parents are separated, lives in Loughborough with her mother, Joanna, a sales manager, and her stepfather, Chris, who runs his own design company. Danni was supposed to be attending state school, but she has hardly been going.
Danni had problems from a young age. She says she started smoking tobacco at the age of nine and dope at the age of 11. By the time she was 13 she was regularly drinking and using drugs. At 14, she began going missing from home on a near-daily basis. And she was arrested on several occasions, as her behaviour spiralled out of control.
'She has spent more time running away than she does at home,' Joanna says. 'Danni has been reported as a missing person about 70 or 80 times in the last 12 months. She has used the police as a taxi service. She would wait until two, three o'clock in the morning because she knew the police would pick her up and drive her straight to the door.'
Joanna and Chris have become increasingly distressed and desperate as a result of her behaviour, but they are convinced that there's a 'wonderful child who wants come out'.
Joanna adds: 'If Danni carries on the way that she is then she will just move out when she's 16 which we don't want to happen. She's clever, she's bright, she's loving and she's very much wanted here and I'd hate for her to throw all that away.'
Mum Joanna was in no doubt about how she felt about Danni going to the camp. 'I think there's a certain amount of relief that we can actually go home and not have the police banging on the door, night after night,' she said.
Although Danni stayed longer in Utah than some of the other brats, since coming home she’s been doing really well. 'There's been a 100 per cent improvement over what she was like before,' says her Mum. 'Then she was running away and heavily involved in drugs and pretty much out of the education system. Now she is doing a childcare course in college and since November 2005 she has not run away once.'
Think you know better? Are you a teenager and think you can sort out other people's parents? Get a word in edgeways on the forum.
See also: Julia, Georgie, Lucy, Rosie, Poppy and Lydia
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