Homeless
Girl - Jazmin's Story
 A mother by 16 and an x-con by
18, Jazmin was raised by her alcoholic father for the first eight years of her
life and foster parents until she was 12 years old.
She
ran away from foster care to escape a foster father who was violent.
Living
on the streets using whatever drugs or alcohol she could get her hands on to escape
her pain, Jazmin was using heavily when she became pregnant at 15 years old. After
giving birth as a 16 year old girl, Jazmin's new bub was taken into care by the
department.
This was a lot
for a young girl to try and cope with… things were about to go from bad to
an absolute nightmare. The
drug binge lasted about two weeks before it happened; the drug binge was funded
by a crime spree. She was 'off her dial' as she says, 24/7 with only one night's
sleep each week. Thursday
night she was robbing a convenience store, screaming at the girl to give her the
money as she staggered around barely able to stand up. Jazmin
was so drugged that the cashier thought she had a chance to call the Police. Not
so, Jazz realized as the girl went for the phone and jumped the counter to stop
her. In the struggle, the girl behind the counter
hit her head and later
died of a brain injury in the Ambulance on the way
to hospital. Manslaughter. As
a child she was sentenced to two and a half years imprisonment at the state's
institution for juvenile offenders. "It wasn't
long enough, nothing could have been long enough," she said. "It weighs
on my heart every moment of every day of my life that I killed someone. I will
never forgive myself." The
day she was released, Jazmin stole again and caught the first bus inter-state.
At eighteen, and only a couple of days out of prison
Jazmin met Rebecca and was soon introduced to me. While
she was living on the street, between the ages of 12 and 16, Jazmin kept herself
in school. Not only was it important to her to eventually grow up into an adult
and have a future but it provided a sense of normality. "Kids
go to school, she said - so that's what I did, I went to school and kept
going
to school every day despite how hard it was being homeless." Jazmin
was alive when she sang. We would sit around in a group and just sing. She knew
all the words of all the cool songs, having printed them off the internet at the
local drop-in centre. It brought us all to life
really, sitting there together singing and chatting, talking and listening to
each other. Sniffing paint
was a very cheep way for her to get high, $3.50. Prolonged use lead to a very
mature decision to go into rehab. They scanned her brain and showed her the damage
she had done. "My brain
is only half as big as it should be, she said. The paint has just eaten it away,
I've been sniffing since I was a little kid and this is what has happened." | 
