The Daily Telegraph from London, Greater London, England • 15

I a a THE DAILY TELEGRAPH WEDNESDAY, MARCH 4, 1992 15 I is Don't fret, our teenagers will tough it out robots sliced, CHANGING TIMES Lesley Garner dismem- tell them later how much I hated it I felt as though were talking to Martians: But life imitates art and teaches its own lessons. It's all very well arguing that the end justifies the means, until possibility you are, being faced wiped out by the means. On Sunday we set off for a family treat: the Rumbelows Cup semi-final between Tottenham Hotspur and Nottingham Forest at White Hart Lane. The children, who are passionate Spurs supporters, were wearing all their kit, the yellow hats, the shirts, the Spurs scarves. We had just reached that point in North WEDNESDAY MATTERS IKE Garrison Keillor, feel been like a quiet saying it week.

has When he the phrase it usually followed by some kind of in Lake Wobegon, suburban London. On Friday night the children set the tone for the weekend by getting Terminator 2 out of the video shop. They thought it was brilliant, but drove the adults to the kitchen. On Saturday the 14 year old went with friends to shop in Covent Garden. One friend's mother rang mid-afternoon to ask if I had heard from them because there was another IRA bomb scare and half the West End had been cordoned off.

She was worried that they might have tried to come home by Tube. In fact they had been thrown off the bus in Oxford Street and had to work their way to Covent Garden in the company of other displaced persons. When they finally arrived safely. back in peaceful Put- ney my daughter and her friends were randomly attacked by a roving gang of overgrown 12 year olds looking for a fight. One of them unwisely thumped my daughter who, outraged, thumped him back.

He then pulled out a knife. "It was only a small knife," she said, "the kind you clean your nails with." But a knife it was, and he started thrusting it at them. They went into a pub for adult and the boys melted away. It wasn't fear they felt, the girls explained afterwards; it was shock. It was only six in the evening and the High Street was full of people.

While her sister was defending herself in the High Street, the 12 year old was having a second run-through of Terminator 2 with three of her friends. I watched from Why a spell inside gave fresh hope to 'Tart Number One' CRIME OF Kathryn George-Harries explains to Elizabeth Grice how a stormy affair with a 75-year-old magistrate changed her life ATHRYN GeorgeK Land Harries a quick has fiery tongue. hair Today she is composed, classy and witty, but it is easy to imagine the energy she once poured wrecking her elderly lover's home in the drunken, jealous rage that landed her in jail for three months. the murderesses I met prison' she says lightly, "had committed their crimes domestic arguments. They chose the gun.

I chose to go for the Meissen. Nobody's worth doing life This is the woman, a 29- year-old trainee solicitor, who made herself notorious when she described herself in Swansea Crown Court last year as "Tart Number With the same joyful disregard for convention, now about to take the platform as a celebrity ex-con. What lends spice to the situation is the fact that the Law Society has allowed her to resume her legal training: the female celebrity ex-con will soon be a practising lawyer. The rebel turned reformer is campaigning for alternatives to prison, especially for female offenders. Her fellow inmates at London's Holloway prison, Pucklechurch in Bristol and Drake Hall open prison in Staffordshire, where she spent most of her sentence.

said she wouldn't want to remember their problems when she got back to her job and her posh friends. But later this month she will be speaking at a conference on crime and unemployment at Cambridge Uni- behind the sofa clothed in human a flesh stabbed, shot and bered one another while the heroine dreamt she was in a nuclear attack and burnt vividly away to a skeleton before waking up and setting about a scientist with a flamethrower to prevent (I think I've got this right) the deaths million people. At least, that's what my daughter said when the four of them got into a violent argument over whether the woman was right or not. The perniciousness of the film was not just in the dazzling images of violence it threw at them, but that it had my gentle daughter fiercely arguing that the heroine was justified in going on a ramdestruction. I watched it with them out of curiosity and when I tried to London where the streets begin to be inhabited groups of people obviously going to a football match when the car radio told us about the bomb at White Hart Lane station.

Another bomb was said to have been planted in the stadium, which was being searched; kick-off had been 90 minutes. There was a moment there, sitting in a Tottenham back street while the rain poured down, when I wondered if I weren't mad, taking my children into a 30,000 crowd and an IRA bomb scare, but the children wouldn't hear of going home. Trapped in the From rebel to reformer: when George-Harries told a job agency she had been in Holloway, they took it to mean a college an enormous amount of good. It has given me the opportunity to turn a bad experience into something positive." George-Harries started her sentence last March and was released after three months for good behaviour. Though she has no complaints about her treatment, she feels the criminal justice system is particularly unfair to women and quotes Home Office statistics to show that 30 per cent of first-time women offenders are likely to be given a custodial sentence, compared with nine per cent of men.

"I think it is because a female criminal is an aberration society. She is not seen as normal." Before her sentence, she admits she had thought much about prison. What shocked her most the discovery that drugs permeate prison life "heroin, cannabis, cocaine, anything, you wanted could be obtained" but there is no attempt at counselling or rehabilitation. the place for people with addictive problems," she says. "It may sound idealistic, but there are altern a tives.

6 She was soon holding surgeries for people wanting legal advice? George-Harries says she was quick to adapt to prison because it was the only way to survive. Her main job was working in the Known by other inmates as The Brief, an allusion to her profession, she was soon holding unofficial surgeries BRADFORD BINGLEY'S NEW RATES OF INTEREST. NEW RATES OF INTEREST ON INVESTMENT ACCOUNTS EFFECTIVE FROM 5TH MARCH 1992 Annual Interest Monthly Interest Scheme Rate P.A. Rate P.A. Island Deposit (£1 £999) 3.40 Island Deposit (£1,000 or more) 7.50 7.25 Island Growth (£5,000 or more) 9.20 8.80 Island Top Rate (£25,000 or more) 10.60 10.10 Island Bond (£50,000 or more) 11.50 All interest rates are gross.

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Fax: 0624 661962. risks of Aids and desperately middle of the same 30,000 an hour later as we struggled towards the gates, I had to stop myself saying: "This is how Hillsborough started." But when we got through to our seats the collective energy lifted 30,000 soggy spirits and the mass chants of hate inch sense. only added of occasion. For the worst thing that childreneathe weekend was that Tottenham lost. "Wouldn't you like to live in the country and be peaceful?" I said, as we reviewed the weekend.

They thought I was mad. Yet another survey, out this week, to prove that teenagers are weighed down by worry and care. Life in the Nineties has burdened them with every problem from drugs and crime and terrorism. Professor Ron Picture: PETER MACDIARMID COMPLETE COVER IN THE EUROPE UK AND THROUGHOUT An unexpected breakdown or accident can easily happen to you anywhere at any time. You could be on your way to work.

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Davie, who produced the survey. Teenagers at Risk says: "Teenagers feel more vulnerable to a variety of threats than any comparable group in living memory. Our children are anxious, vulnerable and very conscious of the dangers and hazards they face every Very conscious, yes. Anxious, It's their parents are worried. It appals me that my children have to grow up in where violence is commonplace at every level and where values of cult horror films are reflected.

by everyone from 12-year-olds to the IRA. It does not appal them. That's just the way it is, and they seem to remain level- and phlegmatic about it. Professor Davie says that 92 per cent of children aged 11 to 16 are acutely aware of the want more information about it. As it happens, my elder daughter and a group of her classmates are producing an Aids information pack as a school project.

They now know things about sex and communicable disease that many adults probably don't know, and my disquiet (and their teachers') over fact that these things we then simply annoys them. Aids is a fact in their life and they are pragmatic about it, besides being "The very thing well- informed, as we wound up our eventful weekend with a friendly chat about Aids, "you don't understand that the Nineties is completely different from the Sixties. Then you just thought you could do what you liked. We're far more And, in the face of their dayto-day reality, which includes bomb threats, familiarity with drugs, Aids, and random street violence, I'm proud to say I think they are. IN SHORT SARAH FOOT Design week at special for events.

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Price versity, well aware of her shock value as a former inmate. George-Harries had a clandestine, two-year love affair with a man three times her age. It began when he gave her a lift home one night. Graham Partridge, a former magistrate and local worthy, was 75 and she was "a vulnerable 25" when the relationship began. They both lived in the small rural community of Llangoedmor in west Wales, yet managed to keep the affair secret.

The discrepancy in their ages, as much as the dramatic way the affair ended, ensured the case maximum publicity. Late one night, in May 1990, George-Harries found Partridge. with another woman and went on a rampage through his house, causing £18,000 worth of damage. She broke nearly every window in his farmhouse, cut up rugs, shredded clothing and attacked a four-poster bed. She says she would never embark on such a relationship again.

romantic life is healthier now. I am putting away the Zimmer frames. "Looking she says, seems like the work of another person. Whether I had committed that damage in the Palace of Versailles or a council flat, it would still have been criminal damage in a domestic setting. I saw it all through the eyes of a lawyer.

"I was guilty and I knew I would go to jail. I went through the charge sheet systematically ticking off items. I am not bitter. In fact being in prison has done me for people wanting legal advice. She came out convinced that the experience did more to fit her for her career than academic study.

"'It doesn't matter how many flowers you can see out of your window or how much you are allowed to walk around on your own, it is a psychological game. You are wound up every single moment of every day. You have to allow it to wash over you without damaging you." At Pucklechurch, which she describes as cramped and dirty, she was locked up for 18 hours a day. "I know now why people reoffend, why they have such enormous difficulties finding a job when they get out. The stigma of a criminal record is worse for women.

I went to one job agency and naturally there was a gap in my CV. When mentioned Holloway they thought it was some sort postgraduate course at Holloway I said I had been unavoidably detained for three months they didn't bother to ask what for. The stigma of prison was enough. The fact I had allowed to practise by Society meant came prison she was welback into her large Cardigan. "It's so others without a famback on the streets.

not understand of women who are back into society a support system. broken and devasthe experience. offenders are little help outside easily reoffend and back inside again. argue that the alternacost a lot of mondisagree. It cost £600 keep me in prison.

problem is that prison not a vote were so perfectly with the theme of a on the links crime and unemin Europe that she to take part. George-Harries was traina property and planbut she now and has to criminal law. "I pretty radical in it would be worked for myself. after this experience no fear for me. Crime, Euro Soluconference is College, Cambridge, 25-27.

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