Silent Crime: Burglars target thousands of West Midlands homes leaving victims shaken for life

The survey carried out by the online insurance company Quotezone.co.uk found that in 2022 across the West Midlands alone, some 15,844 homes were burgled.

A burglar can take two minutes or two hours to turn over a dwelling, but the feeling of violation after car keys or sentimental family heirlooms get snatched can last a lifetime.

Victims cross the social strata. Everyone deserves to feel safe when they close their front door.

The more professional thieves tend to target the mansions and supercars of the rich, but victims in less affluent areas more often than not are victims of opportunist thieves chancing on windows and doors left ajar or unlocked, or local criminal gangs perhaps targetting motors for chop shops.

Former Wolves striker Raul Jimenez and his family were at their Claregate home in 2022 when prolific criminal Patrick Rafferty and his gang broke in. Creeping around downstairs, Rafferty helped himself to electronics and the keys to an Audi Q8 and a Range Rover, worth over £130,000.

A few miles away in West Bromwich, a disabled vulnerable pensioner living in shared accommodation was awoken by 6ft 3in Peter Hines towering over her bed, rifling through her purse which had been on her bedside table. Worlds apart, but the multi-millionaire footballer and the woman, aged in her 70s, might have felt the exact same empty feeling in the aftermath of the crimes.

Rafferty, 36, was jailed for seven years for his part in ten raids and Hines, 65, of no fixed abode, was jailed for 27 months.

Judge Simon Ward regularly jails home invaders at Wolverhampton Crown Court and understands how the crime undermines the very fabric of our society.

Sentencing Walsall teenagers Rio Halls, 18, and Kyron Clifton, 19, who went on a devastating crime spree across the Black Country raiding over 50 homes to steal car keys, Judge Ward spoke of the "misery" they caused.

The judge said: "People should have the right to feel safe in their own homes. Your victims no longer have that piece of mind.

"If I added each sentence for all the lives you have ruined you would not get out of prison until you were much older, but I have to take into consideration your ages."

Judge Ward sentenced Halls, of Clare Road, Coalpool, to six years and six months and Kyron Clifton, of Dangerfield Lane, Darlaston, to four years nine months.

An unexpected consequence of security of cars improving is the thieves bypassing breaking into vehicles: now they want the car keys, and that means breaking into homes.

A gang jailed earlier this year always looked for keys, but they also helped themselves to jewellery, sunglasses, laptops, phones and even bananas out of a fruit bowl.

In the aftermath, victims often relate that the thing which plays on their mind the most is the question "what if?" The Walsall gang usually broke in when the homeowners were in bed, with children lying yards away during their raid.

Revealing their most raw emotions in court a victim said: "Knowing they were in my home while we all slept upstairs was very unsettling, it is very scary. Who knows what could have happened if we had woken up?"

It took prosecutor Nicholas Tatlow 45 minutes to list all of Halls' and Clifton's crimes. The victim added: "This really affected the community. We lived in fear. There were several of these crimes in a small area over a short space of time."

Mr Tatlow said another victim spoke of how they struggled to sleep knowing criminals had been in their home. Yet another was woken in the early hours by a bang and shouted at the hooded men in their doorway.

Another victim in Bilston watched CCTV footage of their three cars being driven away in a convoy.

A Bushbury mother has never forgotten being awoken by her cars being driven from her drive and explained how watching security camera footage of the ten-minute long unfolding drama made her blood run cold.

A "mob" of thieves had entered her home and wandered in and out of ground floor rooms while the family was sleeping upstairs.

The mother said: "As a result of this I feel paranoid. I feel as if I have been targeted for this attack. I have viewed CCTV and they came directly into my driveway.

"It was as if their entire purpose was to target my house - I was shocked at how many of them there were. There were more of them than us in our home.

"Knowing they came into my house mob-handed and the thoughts about what could have happened makes me very uncomfortable. I wonder who has been watching me. It is a horrible feeling which makes me feel unsettled and upset, when I am at home and when I am not.

"It makes me feel sick knowing there are people out there who feel this is acceptable."

Among the burglars was Ethan Holness, 20, who was also jailed for seven and a half years for his part in the death of his passenger in a stolen car in 2021. He pleaded guilty to a further 21 crimes including burglary and car theft earning him another two years in prison.

Burglaries often led to a whole host of practical problems, whether it be living without a car until a replacement is found, filling out reams of insurance paperwork or going back and forth to the vehicle pound, mechanics or police stations.

The victim added: "I have been left with the expense and stress sorting out the repairs and replacement of the car and being made immobile whilst trying to get my family around."

In the end she got to see justice served and given the satisfaction of seeing this burglar jailed.

But she is in the vast minority of burglary victims because over the last five years the numbers of break-ins which go unsolved in the West Midlands fluctuate between eight and nine out of ten.

Home Office figures show that a shocking 16,371 burglaries went unsolved across the West Midlands between June 2022 and June 2023 which is the equivalent of 45 burglaries going unsolved every single day.

In the period just 1,206 cases resulted in a suspect being charged or summonsed which was 5.62 per cent of all burglaries in the region.

For crime prevention tips visit police.uk/cp/crime-prevention/protect-home-crime/keep-burglars-out-property/.

*Be part of our Silent Crime survey: Click here to have your say on crime in your neighbourhood. Answer our survey on under reported incidents in the Black Country, Staffordshire and the Wyre Forest.