By PAUL BRACCHI

Last updated at 23:08 08 March 2008

The tour of Julia Anscomb's once beautiful home on the Sussex coast began in the kitchen.

"This is where we found Bailey," she explained. Bailey is a lovable, shaggy-haired mongrel puppy and much loved family pet.

When Mrs Anscomb and her husband returned from a weekend away recently, Bailey was lying unconscious on the floor.

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Wild: Gemma has yet to return home

He'd been drugged. The incriminating evidence was left at the scene: discarded ecstasy tablets.

"He did eventually wake up, but for days he was very quiet, hardly moved and wouldn't eat his food," revealed a visibly distressed Mrs Anscomb yesterday.

Near the spot where the "comatose" canine was spreadeagled - and where Mrs Anscomb was now speaking - is a brand new luxury fridge. At least it used to be. Someone has vandalised it with a knife.

"It cost £600 and, as you can see, it is now covered in scratches," said Mrs Anscomb. "It's ruined."

As for what happened to the washing machine (or, to be more accurate, on top of it), Mrs Anscomb, 37, could barely bring herself to say; she has been told it was where "group sex" had taken place.

All this . . . and the "tour" of Mrs Anscomb's home had only just got under way. The dog, the fridge, the washing machine, it's just the start.

In the lounge, Mrs Anscomb's once pristine cream carpet is still covered in stains.

"When we first got back, it was literally black," she said. "It was soaked through with alcohol, mud, cigarette ends and chewing gum.

The Anscombs' dog Bailey was left 'comatose' after chewing pills

"It took three of us, on our hands and knees with scrubbing brushes, about 24 hours to clean, and this is as good as it is going to get."

An even worse scene awaited her in the dining room where the laminate flooring was four inches deep in beer. "It will have to be replaced," she said.

Upstairs, the walls are still covered in black marks, the carpet has now become "dull brown", and the canopy above her eight-year-old daughter's bed has been ripped off.

"We also found underwear between the sheets and a pair of handcuffs," said Mrs Anscomb. "What were they thinking? This is a little girl's room."

Nor, it seems, was such activity confined to her daughter's bedroom (or the washing machine).

Pointing to her own kingsize bed in the master bedroom, she declared: "There were six people in there having sex at one time. We feel totally violated."

Elsewhere in the Anscombs' smart "newly decorated" semi in Worthing were traces of cocaine, marijuana - and enough empty vodka and rum bottles to fill a recycling plant.

The bill for the damage is still being counted. It will run into "many thousands of pounds".

Two laptops were also stolen, along with an iPod, expensive jewellery and a passport. Oh yes, and 57 calls were made using the house phone.

How Mrs Anscomb, who works in advertising, now bitterly regrets taking her husband Robert - Gemma's stepfather - to a West End show for his birthday and leaving her 15-year-old daughter in charge of the house.

She thought Gemma could be trusted. She thought she was a good girl.

"She gets all As and Bs at school...she has never been a problem before . . . she has always been responsible..."

Of course, hindsight is a wonderful thing. But if Mrs Anscomb had taken a peek at Gemma's page on the social networking site Bebo, perhaps she would not have needed hindsight.

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Julia and Robert Anscomb's house had graffiti scrawled on the walls and totally wrecked rooms

It's littered with expletives and references to "getting wrecked". Her home town, Gemma says, is the "biggest sh******. I can't wait to move".

Describing her attitude to life, Gemma, who is posing seductively in several pictures, admits: "I do things I shouldn't do, I say things I shouldn't say.

"But at the end of the day there [sic] actions I choose to take, and they come with their own consequences. But I'd rather take them consequences, then [sic] never to take a chance."

Consequences there certainly have been. Gemma - and six "guests" - have now been questioned by police after her so-called evening in "to watch a video with a few friends" (as she told her mum) spiralled into a night of debauchery involving more than 50 young people.

Moreover, her relationship with her mother may have broken down irretrievably. The two have not seen each other since "the morning after the night before" when Mrs Anscomb received a call from Gemma's worried grandmother, who was looking after her younger sister, informing her: "You'd better come back, Julia love."

By then, Gemma was in "hiding" at a friend's house. Now she is staying with her father. He and Mrs Anscomb split up seven years ago, but he still lives in Worthing, and sees Gemma regularly. Now, however, she is refusing to go home to her mum.

Yobs caused thousands of pounds worth of damage to Robert and Julia Anscomb's house

Poor girl, she's too ashamed and embarrassed, isn't she? The boasts she put on her Bebo page before the party were just bravado.

Clearly, Gemma must be racked with guilt about what happened?

Not if more recent internet postings are anything to by: "Yeahh it [the party] went wrong but it was well good. . . I mean it was f****** good."

It's a miracle Gemma even knew whether it was a "well good" party or not. Friends say she passed out at 7.30pm - after drinking to excess - and had to be carried to her bedroom where she remained "comatose", like Bailey the dog, until the next morning.

When she did finally come round, she took the opportunity of mocking her own mother on her Bebo page, boasting: "My mother thought it would teach me a lesson by putting it in the papers. . . all thats dne is make everyone go 'wow ur party made the front page' . . . i meann it wasssss goooodddd. . . and my mums a t*** nehowww. . ."

What a depressing - and disturbing - insight into the mindset of a not untypical teenage girl growing up in text-speaking, internet-obsessed, binge-drinking Britain.

Riotous events like Gemma's are increasingly common and have become known as "Skins parties".

They take their name from the Channel Four drama Skins, about appallingly behaved adolescents.

The producers have even set up MySpace and Bebo pages for the characters, and web-only mini episodes have been screened.

Now - surprise, surprise - youngsters, like Gemma, and Rachel Bell, 17, from Tyneside, are following suit in real life. Rachel, you may recall, was the girl who placed an open invitation on MySpace last year for what she called a: "Let's trash the average, family-sized house disco party." And they did.

More than 200 revellers from as far afield as London and Liverpool converged on her parents' detached house in a respectable cul de sac in Houghton-le-Spring and destroyed it in seven hours of drink and drug-fuelled mayhem, causing £25,000 damage.

Hardly a week seems to go by without similar stories emerging. Chippenham, Wiltshire; the Pennine village of Facit, near Rochdale, Lancashire; Croydon, South London - just a few of the other places where "Skins" parties have left a trail of destruction recently. And all decent middle-class kids.

Now Alberta Road, Durrington, Worthing. This is how the devastating events unfolded. Mrs Anscomb and her husband, who, ironically runs a property maintenance company, had bought tickets for the musical Spamalot on the Friday afternoon of February 22.

They booked a hotel for the night and planned to return on Saturday afternoon.

"I wasn't worried about what might happen while we were away," said Mrs Anscomb. "I just thought Gemma and two or three of her friends would watch a few movies and maybe go to bed a bit late."

In fact, Gemma's "night in front of the TV" was already causing a buzz on Bebo, where she had posted her address.

One message from someone who was going to attend read: "13 Hours!!! And ill Be At Yours!!!! Im Frigin Excited."

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Aftermath: A small amount of the alcohol drunk by the teenagers as they trashed the house

On the afternoon of the party, Gemma visited her immediate neighbours, a couple in their 60s, and gave them her mobile phone number. She told them they should ring her if the noise got too loud.

Soon afterwards, at about the time her mother and step-father were taking their seats at London's Palace Theatre, Gemma began drinking.

Witnesses say she downed wine and spirits. It was half-term, and throughout the day more of Gemma's friends arrived.

By 6pm, things were already getting out of control. Older youths had now heard about the party and started turning up at the front door.

To her credit, Gemma is said to have confronted one of them and demanded: "Who invited you?" But the boy replied: "It's our party now."

Gemma was not really in a fit state to stop him, and at around 7.30pm she could no longer stand up and was taken upstairs. Her big night was over.

The chain of events she had - unwittingly perhaps - set in motion was gathering momentum.

Some of the gatecrashers had brought drugs including cocaine, ecstasy and cannabis. The music became louder; the revellers rowdier.

They swarmed through the house, stubbing cigarettes out on carpets, spilling alcohol on the floor, and raiding the family drinks cabinet of champagne.

At 11pm, the neighbours rang Gemma's mobile - as instructed. "There was no answer on the number Gemma gave us," said Joyce Window, 66.

"It wasn't pleasant at all. We thought it was just going to be a small party, but it soon became clear it was getting out of hand.

"More and more people turned up. The music was so loud we couldn't sleep. We called the police."

Officers confiscated cans of beer from a number of underage drinkers, but were assured by some of the older guests that responsible adults were present and that everyone would try to keep the noise down. They left and the party continued.

In fact, according to two people who were inside the house, a scene resembling something from the "Court of Caligula" was unfolding in Julia Anscomb's home.

"There were males just wandering around in their boxer shorts or completely naked," said one young man who gatecrashed the party after finding out about it through word of mouth on the day.

"I saw a couple having sex on the washing machine and there were five or six girls and lads rolling around in the double bed upstairs. It was like watching a porn movie.

"This wasn't just teenagers. There were people in their 20s as well. Most of them didn't even know whose house it was. I didn't stay long, but I was there long enough to see what was going on."

Another gatecrasher, Sean O'Brien, a 25-year-old plumber, found out about the party on the internet. He arrived at 7pm and stayed until 7am.

"I saw one man have sex with three women on the washing machine. At about 2am, I went into one of the bedrooms and saw two boys have sex. Everything was going on."

When asked if he took part, he replied: "We all got involved."

Eventually, at around 4.30am the party petered out, and Gemma awoke. Remember that advertisement for Yellow Pages from the 1990s in which a brutally hung-over young man wakes up on the sofa to recall the wild party he threw the night before?

All he had to do was let his fingers do the walking and call a French polisher to put the damage right before his parents' return. Gemma was not so fortunate. She would have needed an army even to begin to tackle the destruction visited upon her home.

Gemma and a few friends did spend a couple of hours trying to repair the damage before giving up.

Panic-stricken, she called her grandmother at 8am, who then contacted Mrs Anscomb.

"My mum told me that Gemma had held a wild party and the house was like a bomb site," she said. "We rushed back to Worthing, by which time Gemma had run away to her friend's house.

"Nothing could have prepared us for what we found. The whole house was wrecked from top to bottom.

"I was absolutely fuming. I just couldn't believe Gemma would do something like this. She phoned me on the day after the party and said sorry, but I was so angry I put the phone down on her.

"What made me more angry was that she refused to come home and face the music and help with the clear-up."

During the days that followed, Mrs Anscomb discovered (from internet postings) more of the unsavoury details of what took place.

"I feel like moving out, but I doubt I would be able to sell the house due to the reputation it has got. I lie in bed at night thinking that people have been in here. It's disgusting.

"Gemma insists she is the victim because the party was invaded by gatecrashers. I appreciate that she didn't intend for things to get out of hand, but the fact remains that she had a party behind my back and advertised it on the internet.

"She lied and now she has to face the consequences.

"I know she didn't intend to wreck the house, but I'm angry as she ran away and didn't come home to face up to things. She should have had more respect.

"I have done everything I can to bring her up properly. But I must have gone wrong somewhere."

For the moment, mother and daughter are living apart. The have not spoken since Mrs Anscomb put the phone down on Gemma two weeks ago.

"She will have to work extremely hard to rebuild her bridges, but at the moment she has shown no remorse at all," said Mrs Anscomb.

That, of course, is evident from Gemma's Bebo page. In her eyes, after all, the party was "well good".