Australian Dad Goes To Dangerous Extremes To Protect His Daughter

Parents will do anything for their children. They will give up all they have, risk their own lives, and at times shift their own moral values to make sure their children are safe and totally happy.

Stephen Pattman was one such parent. He was desperate to protect his teenage daughter, even from herself. After she had begun dating a local boy with a troublesome past, he knew that he had only one option left, although it seemed misguided…

Life in Suburbia

Stephen Pattman was a simple man. A landscape gardener living an ordinary life in suburban Australia with his wife and children. Both his daughter Chloe and his son Chris, were in their late teens and like all 19-year-olds, they had their little eccentricities and difficulties.

Chloe, for instance, had recently taken up with a young man named Al Bilal. Bilal was a father’s worst nightmare. He was a street tough, a hood, and with any luck, a temporary fling. As time went on, it became clear that he wasn’t going anywhere, and that wasn’t even the worst of it…

As it turned out, Ali Bilal was the president of one of the most feared motorcycle gangs in all of Australia: the ACT Rebels president. He wasn’t just some ordinary hoodlum after all. In fact, he was so feared and respected by his fellow gang rebels that they gave him the name Tony Soprano.

The ACT Rebels

The ACT rebels, or the Rebels Motorcycle Club is an outlaw motorcycle club in Australia. It has 70 chapters with over 2,000 members nationwide, making it the largest such club in the country. As with many motorcycle clubs, the Australian government and law enforcement consider the Rebels to be a criminal organization, which of course didn’t make Stephen Pattman feel any better about his daughter’s beau…

Pleading With Her

Despite their status as a conglomeration of criminals, the ACT Rebels still claim to be merely a group of motorcycle enthusiasts and not gangsters. Either way, it wasn’t the type of group that Stephen was comfortable having his daughter spend time with. For two years, Stephen tried to get Chloe to leave her bike boyfriend.

Few Options

Stephen Pattman was at his wits’ end. He didn’t know what to think or what to do to help Chloe. “I could either do nothing and just watch her end up where — how creative can your mind be — where does she end up?” he thought to himself. Or he could consider one other extreme option…

If You Can’t Beat em…

It finally dawned on Stephen that the best way to make sure nothing happened to his daughter with the ACT Rebels, was to become part of the ACT Rebels himself. That way, he could be there to make sure no harm came to her. And so, Stephen and his son Chris decided to join the gang themselves.

Rules of the Club

The ACT Rebels has a number of rules written into their constitution. As expected, the club promotes the riding of Harley-Davidson motorcycles and all members must own one in order to join, Surprisingly though, drugs are “looked down on” within the club, with heroin and smoking methamphetamine being totally taboo. With these rules in mind, Chris and Stephen joined…

 

Well-Equipped

Both men used their savings and bought a Harley Davidson motorcycle. They also purchased a single Magnum Revolver handgun….just in case. They met with Bilal and the rest of his chapter and were allowed to join. Before long, they had seamlessly integrated themselves into the gang.

Life as a Rebel

Stephen and his son had taken extraordinary steps to protect Chloe and now they were in the midst of a group of men and women who weren’t exactly criminals but weren’t exactly the Boy Scouts of America either. They spent three years running with the rebels until they finally realized that they’d made a huge mistake…

What Have I Done?

Afterwards, Stephen would think about his time with the ACT Rebels saying: “I found myself in situations where I wondered, ‘What the hell have I gotten myself into?’” It was becoming all too much for the Pattman boys. They had to get out, but how could they do it now? Were they in too deep?

All Too Much

Once again, Stephen Pattman was faced with a difficult decision: stay and be complicit in the things the gang was doing and the crimes they were committing, or leave and be at the mercy of a spurned biker gang for the rest of his and his son’s lives. The father and son quit the gang and as expected, their departure didn’t go as smoothly as they would have liked…

Repercussions

One of the rules of the ACT Rebels is that members are only permitted to join the club once and that they may never to join another motorcycle club, even if they leave. Stephen and his son knew their departure was going to result in some repercussions, but they had no idea how severe.

Leave Us Alone

Once the patch was off their jackets, they knew their safety would be compromised. Stephen was no longer worried about Chloe, but about his own safety, and that of his son Chris. Despite his pleading that they be left alone, father and son were harassed by their former gang mates at every turn, and things only got worse from there…

Confrontation

Stephen had asked time and time again that the ACT Rebels leave his family alone, but they refused. Finally, he could take no more. One day, he and Chris were standing on the side of a street in Canberra, in northern Australia, when they were confronted by a gang member who pulled up to them in a car.

Safety Precaution

Chris, who was holding the very same Magnum Revolver they had bought for protection, quickly passed it over to his father. In a panic and at the very end of his patience, Stephen fired the gun into the car. The bullet went through the driver’s headrest and out the rear passenger window, but not before hitting the driver’s ear and causing temporary hearing damage…

Run Away

Stephen and his son ran for it. They knew that if they didn’t they would be hunted down and killed by any number of the ACT Rebels many members. They fled to a national park, where they lived off of the grid for almost a year until finally, the guilt proved to be too much for Stephen to bear.

It’s Time

Stephen came back and turned himself into the police. And thankfully by then, the ACT Rebels had stopped trying to find him and his son. He pleaded guilty to an act of endangering life and unauthorized use of a prohibited firearm and is currently awaiting sentencing. As for Chloe Pattman…

Silver Lining

Overall, despite the possibility of being sent to jail, Stephen doesn’t regret joining the motorcycle gang. He’s even spoken to Chloe since he returned to society and she told him that though she was still with Bilal (it wasn’t a passing fling after all), the former president is no longer in the gang scene.

Afraid for Chloe

According to Stephen’s last interview with “A Current Affair” Australia’s TV analogue of “60 Minutes”: “He (Bilal) claims he is out of that lifestyle now, and I hope he is true to his word because I do and did fear for my daughter’s life being around that scene.” At the very least, this is a story about the lengths some parents will go for their children.