A woman who was forced to flee the country after her son racked up significant drug debts has spoken of the trauma her family experienced after becoming the target of drug-related intimidation.
'Alice' - whose name has been changed to protect her identity - said her family was left with nowhere to turn when drug dealers seeking repayment from her son started to threaten, intimidate and attack her family.
She told RTÉ's Prime Time that she had no other choice but to build a new life outside of Ireland with her young family following a phone call from her son in which he told her that her family’s lives were under threat.
"He rang the house phone, he says: 'You've got to get out now. They're going to shoot you if you don't get out,'" Alice said.
For Alice, this was the final straw after a string of attacks and threats, and she decided to leave the country over concerns for the safety of her other children.
"Your biggest fear is [that] one of your daughters is going to be snatched and raped in retaliation. Are they going to force one of your sons into being a drugs mule just to pay off his brother's debts?" Alice said.
"I couldn't send my children to school. They weren't safe. They could have been pulled out of the schools or pulled off the bus anywhere. It was so, so traumatic," she added.
Alice’s family is one of many to have been subjected to this type of treatment in recent years.
According to figures from An Garda Síochána there have been more than 1,500 formal complaints about drug-related intimidation since 2021. But as not all incidents are reported, the full scale of the problem is unknown.
Drug-related intimidation occurs when a criminal or criminals allege that a sum of money is owed as a result of a drug debt. It usually involves family members of the person in debt being subjected to intimidation or the threat of intimidation.
Son's drug use
Alice's son started using recreational drugs when he was at secondary school. This occasional drug use descended into addiction and ultimately drug dealing.
Alice, her husband and their other children are not involved in drugs. They tried unsuccessfully to steer their son away from drugs.
As his drug use escalated, he left school, and he could not hold down a job. He became aggressive towards his younger siblings and the neighbours started to complain about his behaviour.
"We gave him multiple chances. But in the end, and it's a terribly hard thing to do, to put your child out. We put him out because we had to consider the safety of our younger children," Alice said.
Her son went abroad but he was not long gone when people started knocking on the door looking for repayment for drugs. Alice and her husband paid the money in the hope that the problem would go away.
"These were smaller debts, €300 here, €400 there, but once people get wind that you're paying up, more come knocking on the door," she said.
"We didn’t have a lot of spare cash, but we paid off these few smaller dealers because we were worried about the safety of our younger children."
When these dealers were paid, things calmed down and life returned to normal for a few years. Then, their son returned home, claiming he was a new man.
"We welcomed him back with open arms. What fools we were?" recalled Alice.
Things were good for a little while but then her son's behaviour changed as he started "keeping bad company" and taking drugs again.
"His mood was more aggressive. He wasn’t his normal self," said Alice, who believes her son was in the grip of cocaine addiction.
The family got more complaints from people in their area about their son. Gardaí called to the house multiple times looking for him. Alice and her husband were left with no choice but to throw their son out of home again.
When he was thrown out of another house he was staying in, he returned home seeking access to the family home.
"It’s a hard thing to say to your child that 'you can’t come in'. So, he would camp out and sleep in the garden," said Alice.
"But the behaviour was so erratic. He was so aggressive that he tried to kick the doors in. We ended up having to get the gardaí out."
Drug-related intimidation
The family had to go to court and get a protection order to keep their son away from the family home.
However, this did not bring an end to their ordeal. As her son's drug activity increased, the intimidation of Alice's family escalated.
Drug dealers regularly called to their home looking for money. More often they would ask about the whereabouts of their now estranged son.
"We were followed in the car sometimes. We did not know, was it the gardaí following us? Was it drug dealers following us? That level [of] paranoia, the fear, you're almost afraid to go out of your house," Alice said.
The threats eventually spiralled leading to aggressive and violent attacks.
"Somebody broke into the house. They smashed the interior of our house. They broke sinks off the wall, toilets off the floor, smashed TVs, they wrecked the house. It was absolutely horrifying," Alice said.
She kept asking herself why these people were attacking her home, where there were younger children, when her older son no longer lived there, and they had nothing to do with drugs.
It was after this attack on her home that Alice got the panicked phone call from her son telling her that their lives were under threat.
Alice and her family stayed in hotels for a few nights. They moved to a different hotel every night out of fear they would be found by the drug dealers. Then her son contacted them to say it was safe to return home, but the threats still loomed.
Alice and her husband were "totally paranoid" and they took out a loan to install security cameras on their home.
"My husband and I took turns at nighttime, staying up and watching the security cameras with a mobile phone in our hand, just in case we had to call the gardaí or get out," Alice said.
Even though Alice had long thrown her son out of the family home, drug dealers called to the house making threats and saying that they needed to see him.
Support
It was around this time that Alice approached the Family Addiction Support Network (FASN). Run by volunteers, this small organisation offers support to people affected by drug and alcohol addiction.
Alice said families in situations like hers need therapy, support, sympathy and counselling.
She added: "They need counselling because, yes, we've been through a horror and it was traumatic, but I also feel that overwhelming guilt of what my son has done to other people.
"FASN was really, really good for me, but not all towns have FASN. They were great to have the peer-supported people who didn't judge you and understood what you were going through."
FASN helped Alice and her family find some temporary accommodation after their home was ransacked.
After that attack, they felt helpless and made the decision to flee Ireland.
She recalled: "When you're in a situation like that, it’s like being caught up in a whirlwind or a tornado. You're snatched off the ground and your world is just spun around and you have no control of it. There's nothing or no help for you to grab onto.
"So, we realised then we had to go."
She said to the other children: "I know this isn't what you want, but we have to leave."
Some of her children were taken out of school without getting to say goodbye to their friends.
Alice said: "We left our home, careers and children's education. We had to leave everything and then not be able to tell anybody where we were going, not to give our friends a forwarding address for their safety."
As Alice left Ireland, she said she felt ashamed at what her son had done. She is haunted by the fact that her son may have inflicted pain on other people.
She said: "It’s that constant fear eats at you and it will send you insane. I remember crying as we were driving away, and I thought, it's not if, it’s when he is murdered, nobody is going to know where we are. No one is going to be able to tell me that my son is dead."
Due to her son’s drug dealing, 'Alice' is now living a very different life abroad.
Alice said: "I wouldn't say we're happy. It's not the life we had wanted. It's a huge thing to leave everything and have to start from scratch.
"It's traumatic, but at the end the day, to be able to sleep at night and to be safe is huge."
If you have been affected by the issues raised in this story you can speak to someone by contacting one of the numbers at rte.ie/ie/helplines.
Reporter Conor McMorrow and producer Lucinda Glynn’s report ‘Drugs, Debts and Threats’ will be broadcast on the 12 September edition of Prime Time on RTÉ One and RTÉ Player.
