Expatriate couple return to find home wrecked

But their homecoming turned into a nightmare after a family of eastern Europeans wrecked their house – forcing them to remortgage the property to pay a 10,000 repair bill.

Kassie and Eamonn Holliday and their children Joe, 18, and Annie-Rose, 15, left the UK at the end of 2008 and decided to rent their three-bedroom semi in Goole out through a friend.

But phone calls and emails soon started from anxious neighbours to tell them of the havoc the Latvian family – a young couple with four children – had brought to the neighbourhood.

The house was sub-let and became a meeting place for dozens of friends and associates, with cars parked everywhere and music blaring out all

night.

Some nights nearly 30 men would cram into the front room, drinking and smoking.

From 12,000 miles away there was little the Hollidays could do, and it was not until they returned that they realised the full extent of the damage – which was so bad that initially Mr Holliday would not let his wife go in the house.

When she did go in she was shocked at what she saw: Bathroom, gas fires and washing machine wrecked, the carpets blackened, sinks used as urinals and trails of brown spit over the walls. When a rag and bone man had a look at what was left, he opened the fridge-freezer and recoiled – and would not take it.

Mrs Holliday said: "For 19 years it was our home but it wasn't home when we came back.

"I'd always fancied living abroad and wanted my teenagers to get a different view and not spend all their life in Goole. My husband is a social worker and he got a job managing a project.

"It was hard to live there because it's expensive and salaries are very low, but it is a beautiful country.

"My son, who is now 18, wanted to come back to go to sixth form college and I was struggling to get a job. So we made the decision to come back, but we felt it had been a really good experience."

Getting back possession of their own home proved an uphill struggle.

She said: "Despite our serving official notice for them to leave in time for our return they would not do so and stopped paying rent when we returned to the country, so were basically squatting.

"When we finally got into our house we were devastated by what they had done to it. Nothing was left intact and it absolutely stank. Everything

was thick with dirt. As a parting shot they spat down all the

walls.

"I think they'd gone for the greatest effect – they'd broken gas fires and the washer – just everything.

"We have had to take out a re-mortgage to pay for its renovation. So far it has probably cost us over 10,000 and that's including the bathroom, which they'd flooded, and the toilet you wouldn't even look into it.

"My husband turfed all the carpets out – they were absolutely black. We had to strip the bathroom out and got industrial cleaners in and have spent the last six weeks working non-stop on the place."

Son Joe, who is now at York College, said: "The house was a complete wreck. You nearly threw up it smelt that bad. My sister's room had a yellow carpet and you could see where the bed had been – the rest was just black.

"We heard about people using the front garden as a toilet and throwing up everywhere and people throwing stuff through windows."

The Hollidays are finally moving back home this weekend having lived apart for the last three months, Mrs Holliday and her daughter with her parents and her husband and son with his.

Mrs Holliday stressed that she was not trying to criticise the eastern European community, which has been the source of tension in Goole.

She said: "This is not an attempt to criticise the Eastern European community – I would have been just as outraged and upset if it had been a family from the UK that had done the same thing. But there's no way I would rent out again. We have spent so much on the house and it has been so emotional."