Gangs are recruiting teenage drug mules
by lavishing parents with gifts and cash. Academics, youth workers and former
gangsters say the traffickers manipulate vulnerable mothers into thinking they
are “good Samaritan” figures and role models before drawing their children into
crime. Matthew Norford, 37, a former member of a Manchester gang, the Rusholme
Crew Gangsters, described how he had befriended a lonely single mother to use
her son to sell cannabis, crack and heroin. “Mums get groomed, most of them
single parents with kids on the street,” said Norford, now a youth worker who
wants to highlight the practice to help families avoid being drawn in.
“If you’re poor and I’m helping you
weekly, you might know I’m doing something wrong with your son. I’ve got him selling drugs. But you also know if you stop
me, I’ll withdraw the money.” Norford said his first target had a
15-year-old son whom he tasked with selling quarter-ounce bags of cannabis.
He
gave the woman about £50 a week for groceries. Over four years, he says he
spent about £50,000 on buying her food, kitting her two sons out in designer
clothes and paying the household bills. “Her laminate floor was old, the
Sky subscription was cut off, she had fabric chairs that were ripped — I saw
all that and began to provide for her,” he said. In time, his gang used
the woman’s home to store their class-A drugs and firearms, including a pistol
and a shotgun. Another mother Norford says he targeted was imprisoned for
keeping ammunition in her home. Norford decided to leave the gang after
his older brother, also a member, was stabbed to death in 2011. He now runs
1Message, which offers vulnerable young people mentoring, and trains police,
teachers and parents in how to deal with “county lines” — rural drug networks
in which children are used as mules. He plans workshops to help vulnerable
parents, who often have substance abuse problems, avoid being groomed.
Professor
Coral Dando, a former police officer who is now an academic, has encountered
similar cases in Birmingham over the past 18 months. “[The drug dealers] will
be able to spot the minor ways parents are struggling to bring up their
children,” she said. “The family might not have a car, or the kids aren’t
dressed the same as the other children in their neighbourhoods. “They
spot them and they move towards grooming their parents and, in return, they’re
brought into the households,” she said. Dando, a professor of psychology
at Westminster University, also said parents were being deceived by “county
lines friendships”, in which older students who are gang members pretend to
mentor children who are struggling with schoolwork to gain access to them and
their parents. Nikki Holland, who is in charge of county lines crime at
the National Crime Agency, said: “These networks prey on young people and those
who are vulnerable to fuel their criminal enterprises, inflicting misery on
those who fall victim to their exploitation. (YOUR HELPLINE LINKS): https://www.drugfreeworld.org/ & www.drugs.ie & www.drugscope.org.uk & www.spunout.org & www.childline.org.uk/ & www.youngminds.org.uk/
“People exploited in this
way, which can include parents and guardians of vulnerable children, may be groomed,
coerced or forced into criminal activity and exposed to physical, mental and
sexual abuse. They often don’t see themselves as victims or know how to seek
help — it’s up to all of us to spot the signs.”
ENDS:
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