D: Chelsea Stretton

As excuses for poor behaviour go, Chelsea had just about the best.
She had witnessed her mum's murder. The murderer was her mum's
boyfriend.

The boyfriend was a petty drug dealer, well known to the police, who
preyed on vulnerable women, preferably those with a drug habit.
Chelsea's mum fitted the bill perfectly. She was in her thirties,
unsightly, desperate for the attentions of a man, and had both a
council flat and a penchant for self-medication. He had gotten his feet
nicely under the table, when he made the decision to have full sexual
intercourse with Chelsea's mum's cousin in full view on the living room
sofa. She considered turning a blind eye, then thought better of it,
giving him his marching orders. When he refused to budge, she made a
call to a relative who was friendly with various members of the
infamous Kinsella family (Irish-descendant gangsters). Realising he had
lost the battle to stay and bully, he took her life with his bare
hands. Chelsea tried to intervene, but failed, lucky to be left only
with superficial bruises.

The police found the boyfriend. He is still doing a life stretch in
Strangeways. They tell me he shares a block with a few Kinsellas and
every so often receives a punishment beating, sanctioned by the screws.
Chelsea was, when I met her, on her third set of foster parents.

It's hard to imagine what it must be like to go through something like
this, then return to school and be told to concentrate on the formulae,
abstract nouns and molecules that didn't seem all that relevant in the
first place. But this she did, cutting a sad and distressed figure for
a while, hardly saying a word and causing problems for no-one.

Then, gradually, (although to those who taught her, the change felt
sudden) she became predisposed to bouts of unpredictable violence,
followed by displays of uncooperative, defiant bravado.

Though it was she who originally made me feel I was up against it,
Chelsea was actually one of the more biddable characters in 9B5. Like
so may strop-merchants, she was completely different on a one-to-one.
She always regretted her behaviour deeply. She'd sit there, twiddling
her greasy straight bob, exuding remorse, to a point where you were
tempted to say, "Ah never mind. It's not your fault." But of course
never did. One had to walk a tightrope with her. She wasn't allowed to
justify any blow-ups with her situation, and would be punished like any
other; but, at the same time, she required a slightly different
approach, and more tender loving care than most.

Chelsea and I had a good long talk. I pulled a few strings and got her
on to extra counselling (which had up until now been woefully
inadequate) and an anger management course. Success was encouraging but
limited to begin with. The point was, I very quickly gained her trust.
She saw me as someone who cared, who got things done, a provider, a
rock. She learnt that she could rely on me without wrapping me round
her little finger.

Her aggressive tendencies disappeared over the following six months.
Recently, she struck a truly horrible 9B5 kid called Kyle Farnham with
a chair, when the teacher ill-advisedly left the room. Kyle had made a
crack about her dead mum.

With a palpable air of having been let down, the full crestfallen
expression, I told her she was to be excluded for a week; whilst
thinking: "Couldn't you have hit him harder; and more than once."