The foster mum who took in a 'vulnerable' boy of 16 - only to find he was a drunken asylum-seeking thug of 26

Susan Johnson became a foster mother after her daughter left home

But she has faced 'a cavalier attitude to her safety' from the care system

Twice she has had foster 'children' she was incapable of caring for

One Afghan 'boy' turned out to be chain-smoking man of 26

Another British 15-year-old emptied her bank account of £1,000

But she continues to foster, despite her family's objections



The aggression in the voice on the other side of my spare bedroom door was both startling and frightening — not least because it was supposed to be coming from a young boy.

I’d knocked respectfully before delivering clean washing to my foster son, Farood.

‘Keep out,’ he snarled back in a deep, threatening baritone.

I was beginning to think this ‘poor, vulnerable, 16-year-old lad’, as he was described by social services, who had asked me to look after him, was not all he seemed.

Lucky escape: Foster mother Susan, whose identity, we have disguised, had a 26-year-old Afghan asylum seeker placed with her after he claimed to be a 16-year-old boy when he was picked up by authorities

Since his arrival 12 days earlier, Farood, an asylum-seeker from Afghanistan, had behaved disgracefully. He constantly reeked of alcohol and treated my house like a hostel rather than a home, coming and going as he pleased.

But it was his physical strength and raw aggression that I found the most frightening.

I’m a 60-year-old widow and retired school secretary, only 5ft tall, and I live on my own. This ‘boy’ on the other hand, was more than 6ft tall, stocky and had a demeanour and physical strength beyond his supposed years.

Where there should have been spots, there was stubble.

Where I’d expected a cowed and frightened child in need of love and a good meal, I found the arrogance and, quite frankly, terrifying swagger of a grown man.

Intimidated and frightened, I quickly stopped trying to enforce any house rules. I could almost see the aggression that bubbled off Farood, how could I match his brute physicality?

Even when I found condoms left casually on his bedside table and received a complaint from my neighbour about him leering at her teenage daughter over the garden fence while he smoked endless cigarettes, I felt powerless to act.

But when I tried to raise my concerns with my key worker — that Farood wasn’t the 16-year-old I’d been told he was — I was fobbed off.

‘Just hang on to him for a couple more days,’ I was told, with the assurance everything was being done to look into Farood’s background and find a more permanent placement.

'A fter more than a week of sleepless nights wondering whether I was safe in my own bed, I begged, pleaded and insisted that Farood was rehomed'

Finally, after more than a week of sleepless nights wondering whether I was safe in my own bed, I begged, pleaded and insisted that Farood was rehomed — I watched him being driven away, racked with guilt and a sense of failure.

Weeks later, however, that guilt turned to anger when I discovered, to my horror, that all my suspicions about this ‘cuckoo’ in my nest were correct. I learned from my social workers that Farood was in fact 26, not 16.

Police had accessed criminal records in his home country that showed he’d previously been in trouble for theft and brawling. He was now in a detention centre while the Home Office considered his asylum application.

No one had even thought to assess all this before placing him under my roof a year ago. I still shudder when I think what could have happened. And no one has ever apologised to me for the danger I was placed in.

This was a million miles from what I’d ever imagined the reality of being a foster mother would be.

I went into fostering three years ago because I wanted to help improve disadvantaged children’s lives.

After retiring, and watching my own daughter leave home, I was at a loose end, loath to pass the next 20 years attending endless coffee mornings and volunteering in the local charity shop. I still felt I had plenty to give.

Wooed by recruitment posters of smiling, photogenic children, I got in touch with my local council’s fostering unit. Those posters showed images of happy families — the foster parents often a similar age to myself — alongside emotive words suggesting that someone like me could really make a difference.

There are currently around 78,000 British children in the care system — around 62,000 are accommodated in the UK’s 50,000 foster homes.

But research by the charity Fostering Network has shown a shortfall of around 9,000 foster parents — hence the billboard recruitment drives up and down the country like the one that pulled me in.

The local authority placed me on a training scheme, which lasted a year. It was to prepare me for a world that was sickening to even consider.

I attended courses, with question-and-answer sessions and training videos. I was warned I might need to become a temporary parent to youngsters who were victims of terrible neglect; starved or beaten by the very people meant to protect them. Members of their own family might even have raped them.

Understandably, I expected a challenge, but I was determined to work hard and do my best.

What I hadn’t anticipated was the sheer incompetence and cavalier attitude to my safety that was shown by my employers.

I discovered that, instead of the valued linchpin in a fragmented society, I was the lowest common denominator in a system that was broken. A system that seems to gloss over children’s problems in an attempt to make them sound appealing to potential foster parents, and fulfil ‘targets’.

Belated checks: Weeks after Farood was taken from Susan's care police accessed criminal records in his home country to find he'd previously been in trouble for theft and brawling - and was really 26. (File picture)

In the three years I’ve been doing this job, I’ve been misled, lied to, ignored and placed in situations — like with Farood — that could be seen as farcical if they weren’t so dangerous.

For this I earn just over £1,000 a month before tax, out of which I am expected to feed, clothe and entertain the ‘children’ in my care.

I’m afraid to say that I would advise anyone considering going into this worthy profession to think long and hard. Sometimes, it’s not the children who are your biggest challenge, but the government agencies who are employing you.

Most of my foster children have been short-term, emergency or respite placings to give other foster carers a break. Some were as young as three, and I was desperately sorry for their plights.

Indeed, saying goodbye was often a wrench. No matter how many times you tell yourself these are not your children and you mustn’t forge too strong a bond, the pangs are still there when they leave.

But I had a rude awakening to the harsher realities of being a foster parent when Jack arrived at my home in January 2011. He was to be my first long-term placement.

Jack, who was 15, verbally abused me daily, screaming in my face when I tried to reprimand him for staying out late or playing truant from school.

'Jack, who was 15, verbally abused me daily, screaming in my face when I tried to reprimand him for staying out late or playing truant from school'

I’d try not to let him see how much this disturbed me, but afterwards I would sit shaking in my bedroom as I wondered what I was meant to do next. Jack repeatedly ran away from my home, got into trouble with the police and was permanently in scrapes at school.

Before he was delivered to me, I was told he’d run away from home because he was terrified of his mother’s latest in a long line of boyfriends. Neither social services nor the boy himself could or would give me any more information.

Jack was small, slight and seemed undernourished.

My heart went out to him, but he was distant and guarded. He simply wouldn’t let me in.

The social worker left me with the usual emergency contact numbers, and the details of Jack’s school, along with a vague suggestion that he’d ‘got into a minor bit of bother with the police’ some years earlier, but couldn’t — or wouldn’t — tell me any more.

I lost count of the number of times I sat up all night because I didn’t know where Jack was.

I dreaded to think what my neighbours thought I was embroiled in, with the police turning up on my doorstep at all hours of the day and night as they delivered my foster son back to me. I was clearly out of my depth. But with quotas to fill and boxes to tick, it seemed my — and Jack’s — personal welfare was bottom of social services’ list of concerns.

At first, I felt as though I was failing Jack, rather than the system failing me, by putting him with a lone foster mother woefully unqualified to handle him.

The usual lines and assurances were trotted out.

‘Give him time,’ they’d tell me. ‘He just needs to settle.’

But while Jack was ‘settling’, he was actually helping himself to the contents of my bank account.

Early on in his stay, he’d seen me tap out my PIN number while we’d been shopping — something I later learnt experienced foster carers are wise to.

My training hadn’t prepared me for this. He had memorised my PIN and would take my bank card out of my handbag at night. I discovered this only after a bank statement showed I’d lost more than £1,000 in transactions that were carried out when I was sleeping.

They were all from the weeks since Jack moved in. Jack stormed off when I confronted him. His social worker merely shrugged and told me to report him to the police.

Fleeced: Another of Susan's charges, a 15-year-old boy called Jack, spied on her using the cash machine then took her card to make withdrawals totalling £1,000 from her bank account as she slept. (File picture)



But in a twist that renewed my faith in my ability to help troubled youngsters like Jack, my foster son returned home before I made the call to police. He admitted what he’d done and broke down in tears, seeming genuinely remorseful.

I thought this could be a turning point in his life, and was prepared to write off the lost money as an investment in my foster son’s future.

But days later, Jack launched a violent attack on a fellow pupil at school. The other lad was left bruised, battered and missing a chunk of hair. I was shocked.

Heaven knows what sparked the violent outburst, but for me it was the final straw.

'Who was to say I wouldn’t be Jack's next punchbag as he vented his frustrations on a world that had treated him appallingly?'

I desperately wanted to help this poor lad, but what could I do?

Who was to say I wouldn’t be his next punchbag as he vented his frustrations on a world that had treated him appallingly?

Tearfully, I watched as Jack’s things were removed from my home. I never got to say goodbye to the lad himself, he was simply spirited away to another address, another chapter in his wholly inadequate life.

The last I heard is that he ran away from his new home, got himself a criminal conviction for burglary and is now in a facility for young offenders. He’s also due to become a father himself any day now.

And no, I never did see that £1,000 again.

During my post-Jack debriefing, I was promised that his was an extreme case and that more care would be taken to make sure future placements would be less challenging, and that my safety was of paramount importance. And then came Farood. Police had picked him up early that morning after he was spotted climbing out of the back of a lorry.

I was used to children being handed to me at short notice.

Wearily, I accepted what had become par for the course when I was told there was very little information available about his background.

He shook my hand confidently, before striding into the house to use the toilet.

I turned to his social worker — a young chap in his early 20s — in exasperation. ‘He is not 16,’ I said, utterly aghast. ‘He’s probably older than you.’

The social worker shrugged his shoulders and said his department was only relaying what Farood had told them and the police.

‘If you have any problems don’t hesitate to call,’ he told me. Torn between my instincts and what I saw as my duty, I said goodbye.

Thankfully, I escaped serious harm — but it’s not melodramatic to suggest how terribly wrong this placement could have gone.

After Farood was collected, I was reassured that every effort would be made to ensure nothing like this happened again.

The assurance was swiftly followed by the set speech, that ‘fostering needs people like me, and that it would be a terrible loss to the service if I walked away from it now’.

For a while I did wonder if walking away was precisely what I should do. I’d had two lucky escapes, what if next time my luck ran out?

That was certainly my grown-up daughter’s concern, who has repeatedly asked me to retire.

But I couldn’t let go of the idea that since I’ve had such a stable and happy life myself, I really should be giving something back.

Which is why I’m still taking children in. I am still a foster mother, which is why I cannot be fully identified in this piece.

I have a 14-year-old girl living with me at the moment. Chloe had been shunted from one foster home to another while a long-term placement is sought for her.

I don’t know much about her background and I suspect I never will. All I know is that for now, we get on well, and she respects my home and my rules.

Once Chloe has moved on, I will be opening my doors once again.

It is a prospect that, to be frank, terrifies me. But I feel I must try to help those less fortunate.

I just hope it’s not a decision I will one day regret.