ONE FAMILY'S BATTLE AGAINST CRACK

The First Of Seven Chapters Of The Family's Story Begins Today

It was the second day of spring, but Rodolfo Borello wasn't feeling
the promise of new life. In fact, he felt as though his world was
crumbling around him.

He rose from his bed after yet another anxious night of listening to
the nocturnal comings and goings of his teenage sons, stumbled into
the bathroom, and turned on the shower. Standing under the pelting
hot water, he closed his eyes, feeling the soothing effects of the
steam filling the room. He hadn't slept properly in months and these
morning showers had become the closest he'd come to relaxing. His
wallet was on the other side of the shower curtain, tucked inside his
sweatpants laying on the counter. This is what it's come to, he
thought sadly. I'm so distrustful of my own kids that I can't let my
wallet out of my sight, even to take a shower.

Julian, then 14, and Nicolas, 16, were deeply loved by Rodolfo and
his wife, Jennifer de Freitas. And by all accounts, their upbringing
was run-of-the-mill, with no major crises. The boys played sports and
were average students. Like many siblings who are close in age, the
two competed for attention - Julian by being difficult and Nicolas by
being good.

Sure, Rodolfo and Jennifer weren't the strictest of parents, and they
knew their kids were experimenting with marijuana. But when they
compared notes with friends who also had teens, they were assured
that everyone was smoking pot; that it was no big deal.

But lately, it was becoming clear that whatever their kids were up
to, it was destroying them, and Rodolfo and Jennifer felt
ill-equipped to deal with it. Moreover, they were hurt, confused and
angered by their sons' erratic antics.

The stealing and the lies and the avoidance would turn out to be the
classic single-minded behaviour of crackheads. But for a long time,
the parents remained in the dark.

For months, the disappearing money had made Jennifer and Rodolfo feel
as though they were losing their minds. They could have sworn they'd
made a withdrawal at an ATM, and yet, hours later, the money wasn't
where they'd put it. Once, when Rodolfo tried to use both his
personal and business bank cards, they were refused. A call to his
branch revealed the cards had been cancelled because someone had
tried using several different PINs to gain access to the accounts.

"I remember it as a very dark year with all these confusing things
happening," Jennifer said in the family's leafy backyard. "A lot of
it was our ignorance and just trying to deal with this constant
barrage of little things."

A friend who'd visited their house in January called the next day to
say he was missing $85.

The stereo that their eldest son had saved so long to buy,
disappeared, but when confronted, Nicolas said he'd traded it in for
something better. Then the laptop vanished.

"Once you start to realize something is wrong, you don't really know
what to do about it," recalled Jennifer. "So you shut down. You
always think about it and the thoughts are running. For example,
Julian looked like a skeleton but my mom showed me a picture of his
uncle, and he looked the same, so I thought it was a genetic thing.
As for his behavioural problems, he'd always had those."

Searching for clues one day in his youngest son's room, Rodolfo came
across a blackened spoon encrusted with white powder. When
confronted, a defiant Julian said it wasn't his; he'd found it. A
search of Nicolas's room turned up bank account statements with a
balance of zero, despite his full-time job at a butcher, where he
cleared $300 a week.

Sipping his morning coffee after he got out of the shower, Rodolfo's
thoughts were interrupted by the shrill sound of the phone. It was
Jennifer, asking him to get her digital camera out of the drawer
where she had placed it just the night before, and bring it with him
to their graphic-design firm's office.

They'd always given the boys the benefit of the doubt, but now
Rodolfo felt the panic slowly rise in him as he opened the drawer to
no camera. He knew weeks of Jennifer's work from a recent research
trip to Argentina was on the memory card and if it was lost, she'd be
devastated. But after searching the house, it was clear the camera was gone.

"I went crazy," he recalled. "I thought one of their friends took it,
not them, because it was such an awful thing to do to her."

Livid, Rodolfo called the friend's house and began screaming at him.
The thought of Jennifer's sadness over weeks of destroyed work was
too much for him and he began to cry.

Later, in their large kitchen, at the back of their Mentana St. home,
Rodolfo demanded explanations, but Nicolas and Julian, as usual,
denied any wrongdoing. They had become so adept at covering for each
other, that Rodolfo and Jennifer didn't know what to believe anymore.

"We have to do something because the camera's missing and all this
money is missing," Rodolfo told the boys. "What's happening here is
too big for us to deal with and we need some help. We can't sleep, we
can't keep living like this. It's not the way normal people live.

"We're going to find counselling because I don't trust you guys."

Jennifer then asked Nicolas whether he was on coke or taking pills.

"If I was doing coke, I'd be sniffing all the time," Nicolas screamed back.

Enraged by the accusation, he smashed a window in the kitchen, which
opens up to the backyard, and beyond it, the alley where the kids
used to ride their bikes and skateboard as youngsters.

Nicolas tore upstairs to his room and threw clothes in bags. Julian,
sobbing, screamed that he didn't want his older brother leaving him
and Jennifer, always the cool, in-control one, at least on the
surface, broke into tears. Rodolfo followed Nicolas up the stairs and
found him sitting slumped over on a chair in his room. He gently
placed his arm around his son's shoulder and leaned over him. The
tough-guy act that Nicolas had been playing for months softened and
tears rolled down his sunken cheeks. "I've done some awful things,"
he said. "I've been doing crack for a year-and-a-half and owe about
$2,000 to a dealer."

Rodolfo half-horrified, half-relieved that there was at last an
explanation for his sons' behaviour, simply replied, "OK, we'll get some help."

Jennifer's thoughts darted from wondering whether to pay off the debt
for Nicolas, or take a baseball bat to the dealer who sold him the
crack, ordinary cocaine that has been concentrated by mixing and
heating the drug with baking soda until the water evaporates. Or
would it be better to flee to Argentina in a Mosquito Coast kind of
way to get them out of the situation, or stay and help them through it?

Later that night, as Jennifer and Rodolfo went to bed feeling they'd
perhaps made a breakthrough, Nicolas snuck out of the house, and
anxiously dialled a number on his cellphone as he walked along the sidewalk.

A young teen living with his parents appeared on a nearby balcony and
threw down a rope to which Nicolas tied the family's DVD player. The
teen hoisted it up to the balcony, untied it, then lowered a baggy
containing a couple of rocks of crack. Alone in the alley, Nicolas
placed a rock in a small, wood and brass pipe, held a lighter under
the bowl until he heard the water in the rock crackling, then inhaled
the vapour coiling into the air. The euphoria was about as lasting
and genuine as the apology he had given his parents just hours before.

*In the Clutches of Addiction*

Julian, Nicolas and their parents agreed to share their very personal
story with The Gazette in the hope of helping others battling addiction.

Today: Chapter 1

A drug problem uncovered

Tomorrow: Chapter 2

Nicolas on the road to rehab

Monday: Chapter 3

Julian makes it to Portage

Tuesday: Chapter 4

Sticking with the program;

Daily life in rehab

Wednesday: Chapter 5

Support group for parents: What went wrong?

Thursday: Chapter 6

Family therapy

Friday: Chapter 7

Bringing the boys home