As gambling difficulties escalate, people often deplete their finances and get into debt, leading to desperate economic situations. In some cases, this desperation drives them to criminal activities such as theft from friends or family, fraud, shoplifting, or embezzlement. Affected others report witnessing and, in some cases, being the victim of criminal acts. They also report experiencing emotional and physical violence, and neglect. Affected others face the dilemma of wanting to report the person who gambles but are uncertain about who to approach or fear potential repercussions or want to protect the person.
Taking money from employers tends to be what comes to attention as gambling-related crime. Affected others’ experiences of a range of financial and intimate abuse crimes can be hidden.
When the person who gambles is subject to criminal proceedings this has a big impact on family and children, especially as the criminal justice system does not recognise the dynamics of gambling harm.
Affected others describe how they experience crime such as extortion, stealing money, committing identity fraud, taking funds from joint accounts or the family business.
I was enabling him, and we ran a business then, exactly the same as we are now, and he had access to our business account, and he literally drained it. In one weekend when he was 24, he gambled £24,000 in one weekend. We lost everything.
A real problem for him was signing up to GAMSTOP, but then just making another email address, using his mum’s name, his sister’s name, which I guess if there was some having to provide forms of ID potentially.
Learning that if you lend that person money for food, that they would take it and spend it on gambling, that was a first hurdle. Then escalations to learning they would steal your credit card out of your purse, for example, or use their family’s name to make fake email addresses to get loans and get all sorts.
A real problem for him was signing up to GAMSTOP, but then just making another email address, using his mum’s name, his sister’s name, which I guess if there was some having to provide forms of ID potentially.
My 51st birthday wasn’t with him, but it was ruined by him because somehow he got into a joint bank account that was not supposed to be a joint bank account anymore. I took Nationwide to an ombudsman and that took me 10 months of hell and pain, but I got myself £700 back there in my bank account. They gave me £200 pound for him getting it out in the first place.
Some witnessed crimes such as shoplifting.
With other sorts of crimes, I think my dad had been engaging with shoplifting to drug sort of consumption. I’m not sure he ever dealt drugs, but I remember actually being outside in the car when he would go inside some houses. I’m sure some funny business was going on and I was just a kid and that happened quite regularly too.
Affected others recounted instances where large gambling-related debts resulted in court appearances.
[Partner’s family] have certainly had other experiences with him before I met him. Again, I’ve only had conversations where it’s been alluded to where they’ve had to go to court with him, I think as a student not being able to pay his rent, for example, and then having to go to court about that.
Domestic violence sometimes resulted in arrests or criminal convictions.
He went to prison for that time, came out and then COVID meant the court case would’ve taken until the end of August, and both myself and my son sat down and said, we can’t do that. We cannot live like this, waiting from January to August for this in court, we need to start working out how our lives are going to move forward. Anyway, we made an arrangement in court that he wasn’t going to be tried, but he had a band on his ankle, he couldn’t come into [county], he couldn’t contact us.
[My neighbour] called the police and that was the first time that he was arrested on what– common assault, I think it was. I can’t remember then. They knew about his gambling because I’d talked a lot about his gambling in the police interviews because I kept saying that I wanted him to get help but all the time I tried to get him help, he threw it back in my face.
I remember the police being called on my dad about a year before he passed away due to domestic violence at home and the police came and me and my mum and my brother didn’t say anything. Once they came, the police knew what had been happening…They took my dad away, and when they asked for a statement, we never said anything because we thought about how it might affect my dad’s job and all of these things and maybe in retrospect, we shouldn’t have. I don’t really know. I don’t think your child should be making these decisions, especially one that’s so emotionally connected.
Affected others faced worries about their family’s safety when their partner was released from prison.
The police, sadly– I won’t say stupidly because they have been good to me, bailed my husband back to this address on that occasion so I couldn’t come home with the kids because that’s where he was. It took a real couple of weeks with a free women’s help solicitor to get him out of the house so we could get back in again so the kids could go back to school. That was the main concern because my parents live 25 miles away so we couldn’t get the kids to school.
Instances of child neglect were reported because of gambling, such as children being left unattended for extended periods.
I remember reflecting on the taxonomy of harms not too long ago, and I remember there’s either criminal sort of crime parts of it so there’s like neglect and duress and all the stuff that we experienced where my dad would take us to outside the betting shop and he would go into the betting shop for several hours and I remember being there just sat in the car.