Melbourne's knife attack scum

November 04, 2007, Herald Sun:

MELBOURNE'S knife culture has to stop. I know personally how this culture has created numerous innocent victims.

I was in my front yard with my wife Colleen when two scumbags attacked us. They wrongly thought I had reported them to the police for trying to steal a car.

I was punched and then they stabbed me in the side, the knife slicing 15cm inside me.

They were attacking my wife with a block of wood and I hadn't realised I had been stabbed, so I kept getting up.

That's until I went down for the last time and they broke my nose with a kick to the face.

I am a Vietnam veteran and already suffered Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome. Since the attack in February last year, I have suffered nightmares. The nightmares mix up Vietnam with the stabbing; I get a double dose.

Sometimes I wake in fright, thinking the attackers are coming after me. Before bed I lock everything; you become a prisoner in your own house.

Colleen is really traumatised too.

It's made me wary of strangers. I like to talk to people and give them a helping hand, but that's changed.

On the telly you see there's another stabbing, another party gatecrashed.

I'm 58 and when I was young you didn't see the stabbings there are today.

It comes down to a lack of discipline and respect. The parents don't discipline their children and the schools don't ...

The man who stabbed me was charged with causing serious injury.

His lawyer argued that because I was stabbed in the side, not the front, he wasn't trying to kill me.

But I "died" three times and had to be revived.

The courts have to impose maximum sentences ...

I got life.

The young have to be taught to pay respect to others.

It seems common courtesy has disappeared in this society ...

In my younger days, no one carried a machete around. No one gatecrashed a party and stabbed the hosts.

Now it seems you don't know who could be carrying what or who could come to your front door armed ...

I've come close to taking my own life after this. But that's giving in to these scumbags and I won't do that.