By Calvin Palmer
A “Super Sweet 16” party turned sour for Georgina Hobday despite her parents attempts to avoid gatecrashers and the wanton destruction of their $1 million ($1.4 million) home in Brighton.
Parents being parents, Sylvia and Michael Hobday had not figured on the power of the Internet, in particular Facebook.
Sylvia is an advertising executive and Michael is a professor at the University of Sussex. I find it hard that they could have been so naive.
Their careful plans to restrict the number of guests to 100 teenagers, and to have them monitored by four of their adult friends who manned the doors as unofficial bouncers, were trashed when 400 teenagers turned up after news of the party spread over the Internet, including Facebook, and by text message.
Of course, it didn’t help that Georgina in her infinite teenage wisdom sent the invitations via the Internet. Needless to say, they were quickly forwarded to others and text messages began circulating informing people in the area of a “hot party” nearby.
The uninvited guests have been described in some newspapers as yobs. Once again revealing how certain sections of British society are hopelessly out of touch.
It turns out many of the drunken youths who turned up were from independent schools and, in the absence of alcohol, would be looked on by Georgina’s parents as “nice boys.”
The gatecrashers, a more apt term than yob, scaled walls, smashed windows and plant pots, littered the house with beer cans and bottles and even stripped lightbulbs from their fittings at the Victorian house in Montpellier Crescent.
The four adult “bouncers,” faced by this tsunami of testosterone, had little option but to call on the police to help out. When police officers arrived, some of the teenagers tried to hide underneath decking in the garden. It took several officers more than 30 minutes to clear the premises of unwanted guests.
In the aftermath, talk of the FRA began. The Facebook Republican Army searches the Internet looking for parties and then arrives in numbers to make any parent’s worst nightmare a reality.
It was claimed the Hobday party had been deliberately targeted by this group in the same way that a party in Worthing, Sussex, was targeted last year. Police said they had “no intelligence” that such a group was involved.
The first the Hobdays knew of the invasion came an hour after the first guests arrived. Police called Prof. Hobday’s mobile phone to tell him the party was out of control.
Georgina organized the party with two friends. It was to be styled on the MTV series My Super Sweet 16, which documents the lives of wealthy teenagers celebrating their coming of age, and was held on Saturday night.
Sylvia Hobday said: “The My Super Sweet 16 programs have made the 16th birthday a big deal. A few years ago it was always their 18th birthday and they could go to clubs but it seemed that realistically the only place Georgina could have her party was at home.”
After the horde of teenagers had descended on her home, Sylvia said: “It was an absolute horror show. I will never have a party for my daughter here again. She had no idea who most of the people were rampaging through the house.
“The garden has been ruined, the grass is just mud. People were walking through the pond and I heard one boy was trying to head butt the mirror.
“My front garden was full of people and some of them were climbing up the balcony trying to get through the windows.
“My floor was blackened with dirt left from shoes and there were cigarette burn marks around the bottom of the door. People had taken out lightbulbs and just stamped on them in the garden. They knocked over plants and smashed my garden shed.”
Sylvia added: “When I left the house there was no alcohol but when I came back there were beer cans and vodka bottles everywhere. I think Facebook is a major cause, as well as texting. I heard that a Bluetooth alert was going round saying, “hot party close to the Seven Dials.”
It took officers from 12 patrol cars to disperse the crowd which was spreading across the street.
“There was a sea of people, the place was overrun and it was difficult to move, which was a major safety problem that required a lot of police time and resources,” said Inspector Andy Richardson.
Sussex Police said the couple had done “the right thing” by bringing in their friends as bouncers but they had simply been overwhelmed.
Senior police officers are now warning against advertising parties and events on Facebook and other Internet sites such as Bebo.
[Based on reports by The Daily Telegraph and The Argus.]
Calvin Palmer's Weblog 