Bella May Culley: Thailand, Tbilisi and every parent's nightmare

Daily Mirror

15-05-2025

It is every parent's nightmare.
That phone call to send a shiver down your spine, spark a search for a solicitor or send you remortgaging your house.
Bella May Culley's ordeal will be the cautionary tale in thousands of homes this summer as teenagers - fresh from their A-levels - push for permission to go on girls' trips or lads' holidays.
Eighteen-year-old Bella May, from Billingham in County Durham, had told her parents she was travelling in Thailand.
The most recent pictures, on Tuesday, showed her being led into a court in Georgia - 4,000 miles away.
She is accused of smuggling dozens of bags of cannabis into the country.
The Georgian interior ministry says Bella May is facing 20 years.
Without knowledge of the facts of the case, there are no judgments from back here in the UK.
Only sympathy for her mum, father and aunt who flew out to Bangkok last weekend after she'd failed to check in with them.
And a collective empathy with the dilemma facing so many parents whose teenagers want to be let off the leash in a foreign land this summer.
You can lay all the groundwork, set so many boundaries and counsel them all your can about the dangers of alcohol, drugs, reckless sex, the wrong type of friends and protecting their drinks in nightclubs.
But we've seen so many cases, over the years, detailing the extent to which some young men and women can still be groomed into indulging charismatic strangers offering a bag full of cash and promising to pay for the rest of their holiday.
So many, in fact, that the TV show Banged Up Abroad has dozens of examples across its 15 seasons.
Furious debates have raged over the years on Facebook forums, X and other social media platforms with parents arguing over the wisdom of allowing young people, just out of secondary school, to go on holidays where the action is likely to be a far more raucous than lounging by the pool, building sandcastles and an all-inclusive menu.
On the one hand is the reality that you can't shield your kids forever. On the other are the perils facing your teenagers and mine.
The answer is for us parents to make ourselves even more aware of the dangers - and how to guard against them.
The other is to put more work into establishing trust, so that our young people are able to make good decisions which might ultimately save their lives.
ends