A British young man who was once proclaimed “the youngest father in the UK” appears to have made a mess of his life. The 23-year-old Alfie Patten has a zipper of criminal offences behind his name and also had to answer for a judge yesterday for the umpteenth time.
To the surprise of many, Patten sprang the dance. “The prison is not the right place for him.”
Alfie Patten dominated all headlines in 2009 after he and his parents thought he had made his 15-year-old girlfriend pregnant. British media bombed the boy of 13 to “the youngest father of England”.
The shock was great after a DNA test showed that it was not Patten, but 15-year-old Tyler Barker, a familiar friend, that turned out to be the father of the girl Maisie.
That unexpected turn destroyed his (social) life, and Patten later told The Sun. I want to warn every 13 years old not to make the same mistakes as I did. It has ruined my life.
The now 23-year-old Patten is struggling with major depression and, partly because of this, ended up on the criminal path. He has been convicted five times over the years for various offences and spends almost all of his days drinking alcohol at his mother’s house.
The unemployed person in his twenties had to answer for the umpteenth time in court yesterday, now for the destruction of a van, a Skoda and a fence.
He did that under the influence, the officer said. Patten was drunk, aggressive and rude. He ran up and down the road and searched out screaming with road users. Police beat the man as he stumbled down the street.
His lawyer does not want to approve the deeds but does stand up for her client. Alfie wants to improve his life, find peace and not continue with his destructive and chaotic behaviour. He is only endangering his health.
The judge argued that Patten should have been given a prison sentence because he had previously received a suspended sentence. She let him go. “Your doctor thinks the prison would be a terrible outcome for you and I agree,” she explained.
Patten has to recover at home and go into therapy. The massive amount of alcohol you drink must have caused so much damage to you and your liver. You are going to have a tough time.
Although the British are used to more teenage pregnancies, the story of Patten caused quite a stir. Patten was only twelve when he would have conceived a child with 15-year-old Chantelle Steadman. The parents smoke a lot of money the day after the boom.
“I wish this baby were never born, but it is now,” father Dennis told British media. “Alfie is too young to do anything with it, but I’m going to try to save as much money as possible from this case.” According to the Daily Mail, divorced parents had already made several lucrative deals with the press.
The Patten issue led to a national debate on morality and teenage pregnancies in 2009 in which the then Prime Minister David Cameron expressed concern about “modern England.”
At his request, the government tried to stop the flow of teenage pregnancies by making contraceptives free and starting sex education early enough.
In 2009, more than half of the 40,000 pregnant young girls decided to apply abortion. The total number of abortions in England and Wales then exceeded 200,000.