Brandon was a tough guy who beat up two troublemakers at a party one day. It was the start of his nightmare at the hands of the UN gang
Glenda Luymes The Province
Monday, September 17, 2007

Brandon, who's just 19, is living in exile in a small town east of the Rockies. Forced into the UN gang, he eventually had to flee in fear of his life.

He can't hide from the nightmares.

It has been two years since Brandon escaped the UN gang and fled Abbotsford to start a new life.

Somewhere along the way, escape has become exile.

Speaking in a Tim Hortons doughnut shop in a city east of the Rockies, the 19-year-old says he is homesick and haunted by memories of the month he was forced to work as the gang's debt collector.

But like a modern-day Cain, he cannot go home.

Friends tell him there's a price on his head, and the bruises and burns he suffered while in the gang's employment mark him, making him easily identifiable.

So he remains estranged from his family, agreeing to tell his story under a false name in the hope that it will change something; that somehow, it will provide a way home.

- - -

When they came for him, Brandon was having a smoke in the ravine behind his high school, Abbotsford Senior Secondary.

It was June 6, 2005, about 3:30 p.m.

The Grade 11 student had been grounded after an argument with his grandma, and while he'd told her he'd be home after his last class, he was doing his best to delay.

A Honda Civic pulled up to the edge of the ravine and a few guys got out. Brandon recognized one of them from a party he'd attended on the weekend.

"I'd sort of been in a fight with him," he says.

In fact, it had been a rout.

Brandon, who admits he enjoyed the fight at the time, took on two large guys after they "disrespected" his girlfriend. He beat both.

Seeing one of them get out of the Civic, he thought he was "really going to get it."

He dropped his unfinished cigarette as the group surrounded him. A golf club connected with the side of his head and he dropped.

"You work for us now," someone said.

Brandon didn't know what that meant, but he wasn't naive either. These guys meant business, and he suspected they sold drugs. But he thought going with them would be less painful than a beating.

He was wrong.

At an Abbotsford crack house his abductors called "The Ghetto," he was given ecstasy pills and beaten so badly his eyes were almost swollen shut.

He was told he was now "muscle" -- a drug debt collector -- for the UN gang.

- - -

Police first became aware of the UN gang between 2000 and 2002.

Originally a collection of Abbotsford thugs, the group grew more structured as its members became involved in drugs and weapons trafficking.

They began calling themselves the United Nations gang, a nod to their multi-ethnic make up, which includes young Caucasian, Indo-Canadian and Asian men.

Police will say little else about the gang.

But the trail of past news reports detailing drug busts, weapons seizures and drive-by shootings is more telling.

At the time of Brandon's abduction, Abbotsford Police Chief Ian Mackenzie told media the UN gang had about 35 to 40 members and associates.

Vancouver Police recently estimated that number has grown to about 100 members and 100 associates, and while the gang remains strong in Abbotsford and Chilliwack, it has also branched out to other Fraser Valley communities.

Vancouver police have spotted UN members at downtown bars, where there have been reports of run-ins with the Hells Angels.

Gun expert and security company owner Barry Alden says the UN gang has a reputation for violence that "even the Angels are afraid of" and credits the group with preventing the bikers from establishing an Abbotsford chapter.

But Abbotsford Police Const. Casey Vinet says the gang's associates and alliances remain fluid.

"They're allies one moment and enemies the next," he says.

The UN made headlines last month, when at least one known member of the gang was arrested with three members of his family after Abbotsford Police allegedly found guns, body armour, more than $20,000 in cash and a quantity of cocaine in their home.

All were promptly released on $1,000 bail when they appeared in court the next day.

"I'd categorize the UN as a street gang that's on its way to becoming a criminal business organization," says Dr. Mark Totten, a research director with the youth services bureau of Ottawa who has studied gangs for the B.C. government.

In fact, the case of the UN demonstrates why police are concerned about youth gangs, which have the potential to grow into more structured and serious criminal groups.

The potential could be there with a small-time Aldergrove youth gang called Eight Five Six that was recently caught selling dope in Vancouver, just as it was in 2006 when Vancouver Police caught a member of the Nightcrawlers youth gang with a meat cleaver at the annual fireworks show.

"It's the stuff people see in movies, but it happens more than people ever know," says Brandon.

- - -

Brandon was no angel in high school, but he maintains he didn't want to join the UN.

Imprisoned at The Ghetto, he initially resisted the gang's demand that he provide "muscle" on their drug debt collections.

His resistance earned him more beatings -- some with golf clubs, baseball bats, rods pulled from closets and home-made billy clubs made from pool cues.

Brandon was forced to go on drug deliveries and collections across Abbotsford. The gang introduced him to their drug buyers, who were told he would be back to settle their accounts.

And he was.

"They'd take me to crack houses and tell me that the people inside hadn't paid and that I had to go in there and beat the s--- out of them," he says. "I wasn't allowed to leave anyone conscious."

Brandon remembers one collection in particular at a house on McDougall Avenue in Abbotsford.

The front door was unlocked when he arrived with two UN members. He was high on something and ready to fight.

"Collection time," he yelled.

From out of the kitchen, a man Brandon hadn't known was in the house ran at him with a knife. Brandon grabbed something, maybe a fire poker, and hit the man hard.

"I was fighting for survival, that's how I look at it now," he says. "I was dead on the inside. My heart just went cold, and I took all my rage against the gang and took it out on those people."

Brandon says the shock and fear that characterized his first days in the gang's employment were soon replaced by co-operation.

"It was what I had to do," he says. "Before I left on a collection, two guys would beat me. I knew my job and I did it."

It was three weeks before the gang trusted Brandon enough to let him do a collection on his own. He was told to collect $1,800. He came back with $2,000 and gave all the money to the gang.

"After that, they knew they could trust me and that I could do the job," he says. "I never wanted the job."

- - -

The UN finally allowed Brandon to leave The Ghetto on June 25 -- his 17th birthday.

His family was just finishing supper when the front door opened, "and there he was," recalls his grandmother, Gail.

He was crying.

"I'm tired of running," he said.

Gail had no idea Brandon was part of the UN and thought he was talking about being grounded. She had been worried since the day he hadn't returned from school, even calling the police once before she received a phone message from Brandon saying he "had to do some more thinking" before coming home.

The message had left her confused.

Brandon and his three siblings had lived with Gail since they were young. Their mother was unable to care for them, but still visited once a week.

When Brandon returned, Gail was so relieved to see him, she put her questions on hold.

She hugged him and told him to settle down.

"Let's have your birthday. The kids are waiting," she said.

After ice cream, Brandon asked if he could go camping with friends at the Chilliwack River on the weekend.

Gail agreed, thinking of it as a birthday gift, but telling him to come home Sunday night because "we had some very big issues to deal with."

Brandon took his friend, Steve, who was living in the basement of Gail's house, promising he'd return.

While he was at the river, Brandon met a few members of the UN. They had another job for him. Steve -- "the kind of kid that would go along with anything" -- agreed to be a driver for the gang.

Brandon stayed at The Ghetto from June 26 to July 10, going out on drug debt collections whenever he was asked.

"I'm co-operating," he explains. "I put up the least resistance I could."

On July 9, he went with the UN to a house on McKenzie Road in Abbotsford, where he was forced to help beat up a group of drug-dealing youths who were mouthing off to a UN dealer.

It's a fight that still bothers him. Some of the youths were his friends.

The same night, police arrested Steve while he was on a drug delivery.

Officers drove him back to his basement suite at Brandon's grandmother's house, but he refused to tell an upset Gail where he had been and what Brandon was up to.

When she eventually found out, she was horrified.

- - -

Small white scars criss-cross Brandon's knuckles.

"I've got scars all over me," he says, balling his hands into beefy fists and holding them up.

The marks remind him of different fights.

But the teen is marked in other ways as well.

"Every dream I have is like I'm back in that moment again," he says. "It wasn't the stuff they did to me. It was the stuff they made me do to other people.

"It's the guilt that hurts the most."

When the UN learned Steve had been arrested and released, they told Brandon to kill him.

Gail remembers that day well. Brandon called, sounding strangely desperate, asking to speak to Steve over and over.

She told him to come home, and he hung up.

Five minutes later a white car pulled into the driveway. Inside were Brandon and three men she didn't know.

"[Brandon] was in bad shape -- head shaven, shaking, black eye, swollen face and hands," Gail recalls.

He walked past without saying a word and went into the house. He came back with Steve in tow. He had been unable to hurt his friend and had decided to let the UN deal with him.

Gail didn't know what was going on, but she called Brandon's mom and told her to come down right away. She was there in minutes, ordering both boys into the house and telling the UN trio the police were on their way.

The gangsters took off, leaving Brandon to face two angry women.

It was time to tell them what was going on.

"I knew it was my only chance to get out," he says. "I remember telling them out on the balcony. I smoked, like, 15 cigarettes. I was crying."

Steve's aunt picked him up and took him away that night.

Gail decided Brandon should go into hiding as well.

- - -

When Gail first called then-MP Randy White to tell the politician Brandon's story, he was skeptical.

"It was so terrible that I thought there had to be more than meets the eye," says White. "I thought he'd crossed someone on a drug deal."

But when the outspoken MP actually met Brandon, his opinion changed.

"He was a sight to be seen. His face was black and blue . . . I was looking at a kid who had been tortured. For me, it was a wake-up call," he says.

White grilled Brandon numerous times on the details of his story -- if he was going to help this boy, he needed to trust him.

"Every time he told me the story, he was consistent. He didn't drift."

Together, White and Brandon visited then-Abbotsford Mayor Mary Reeves and filled her in on the situation. They talked to a member of the school board and social services.

Everywhere, they asked the same question: "Can you help?"

The pair also went to the Abbotsford police station. But, fearing for his life, Brandon refused to testify about his abduction, making it impossible for police to enroll him in a witness protection program.

Abbotsford Police Sgt. Daffydd Hermann confirms police investigated Brandon's story, but without his testimony could do little.

"We can't force a victim to participate in the process," he says.

Hermann says the file remains open, and police still "keep an eye" on Brandon's family for protective reasons.

"It's a difficult situation," he says.

White agrees, but he's disappointed nonetheless.

While Brandon's story was met with similar concern every time he told it, there seemed to be no solution.

"We'd be driving around and he'd duck down in the seat so he couldn't be seen," he says. "This was very serious, and no one could help. It still makes me upset."

v

The sky was overcast, and it was drizzling.

White had called Brandon the night before and told him to be ready.

"You're on the next flight," he'd said.

"I couldn't even tell people I was leaving," recalls Brandon.

On the morning of Oct. 16, White arrived at Gail's house. Brandon was waiting, his bags packed, his mom and grandma hanging on to him.

They were reluctant to say goodbye.

"I was . . . heartbroken," says Brandon, taking a moment to choose a word to describe how he felt.

White and Brandon drove to the airport in silence.

When they arrived, White gave Brandon his ticket and $100.

"I'm not much of a crier, but that was a sad day," says White. "I was watching something happen that I believed should not be happening.

"After all that work, the gang won. I was saying goodbye to a good kid. I was sending him away to live [somewhere else] forever and the bad guys were still running the show. Still selling drugs to kids. Still laughing."

White and Brandon talk on the phone occasionally.

Brandon wants to know when he can come home.

He's agreed to tell The Province his story because he hopes it will make a difference. Maybe it will pave the way for him to return home. Maybe it will prevent someone else from having to leave.

Telling the story is always hard. He's afraid the nightmares will return.

It's a risk he's willing to take.

gluymes@png.canwest.com