The cost-of-living crisis has seen criminal gangs in the UK groom young children into their ranks by buying them food, child safety experts have said.
In one case, a schoolchild who couldn’t afford lunch was bought fast food, while another was targeted with sweets and magazines, Parliament’s Education Committee was told on Tuesday.
MPs heard shocking oral evidence from a range of child protection and trafficking experts on the growing number of young people being groomed into county lines gangs.
They said the COVID-19 pandemic had led to a surge in online grooming for trafficking and exploitation purposes, and how some criminals used social media to post ads to recruit vulnerable children.
The cross-party committee is examining what government, schools, police, and other agencies can do to protect those at risk.
Speaking on Tuesday, Johnny Bolderson, a senior manager in county lines support and rescue at Catch22, said at least 27,000 young people had been identified as involved in county lines.
Almost 4,000 of those children are in London, Bolderson said.
However, the true figures are believed to be far higher.
Rebecca Griffiths, head of the national counter-trafficking service at Barnardo’s, said the children’s charity had 300 children in England and Wales referred to them under criminal exploitation fears in the last three months.
“The problem for us in terms of scale is so much more in depth,” she told MPs.
“Vulnerability is changing all the time in regards to children who have been criminally exploited and we’re seeing much younger children being exploited to what we would kind of experience or know about through media or for our own awareness raising that we’re doing as charities.
“And also we’re seeing a lot of children, the MO [modis operandi] of traffickers and exploiters changing in regards to targeting more affluent children or from more affluent families, and looking at those kind of aspects.
Groomed With a Sandwich
County lines is where illegal drugs are transported from one area to another, often across police and local authority boundaries, usually by children or vulnerable people who are coerced into it by gangs.The Home Office’s 2020 Drugs Review by Dame Carol Black found strong associations between young people being drawn into county lines and increases in child poverty, the number of children in care, and school exclusions.
Speaking about the impact the cost of living crisis has had on the vulnerability of children being targeted by gangs, Griffiths said: “We are seeing an emerging kind of trend where children are being targeted who are from families who are professional, so they might be able to shift work: police, nurses … traffickers will do anything to make sure that their business is going well.
“And in that in that way, they will look and see where the vulnerability is.
“So, we’re getting children where families are not around, because they’re working and they’re trying to make ends meet.
“And … that vulnerability around not having money, children kind of wanting to provide for the family, and that route in for traffickers is becoming more of an issue.”
The experts told MPs that more and more children are being held “in debt” by gangs, which coerce and force them into further work.
“It’s not just money,” Griffiths said. “This week we’ve had referral of an 8-year-old, and that 8-year-old has been enticed with magazines and sweets.
“And what happens in terms of debt bondage of any form, whether it be money or gifts, the child thinks, ‘oh, they’re giving me me stuff,’ and then at another point, it comes in where that debt has to be paid off.”
Talking about a recent incident where a child was bought fast food as a form of grooming, the Barnardo’s anti-trafficking chief said: “We had another child that we referred in this week, who was given a Subway [sandwich] as a lunch.
“They couldn’t afford their lunch and they were given the Subway and then they were told they had to repay the debt.
Vapes Used to Coerce
The committee was also told that vapes were being used by criminals to “reel” children in as well as energy drinks and virtual “gifts” used in online gaming and social media.This, coupled with a breakdown in the family home or unit, puts children further at risk, the committee was told.
Bolderson said: “If you’re a young person coming home and your mum and dad are arguing, or your mum [has] substance misuse [issues], you will turn to social media, you will turn to online gaming, you will turn to anyone else who will make you a part of something, an OCG, a criminal gang, who will be a family to them.”
He added: “They don’t even have to leave the house to be groomed […] they can almost have packages of mobile phones delivered to their house.
“They can have weapons put through the letterbox to hold and drop out the window another time, so they don’t even have to leave the house.
“So it’s understanding that a breakdown in the family is huge, I think because it makes them extremely vulnerable.”
Describing online gaming as “the foundation” to county lines exploitation, Bolderson also described how brazen criminals were also using social media advertising as a way to recruit vulnerable children.
He told MPs: “There’s an advert I’ve seen that was on Snapchat and Instagram, and the young person is an advert for young people to get involved in county lines.
“This advert looked like it was professionally done, it looked like a music video, it looked like something that you see on TV every day.
School Mobile Phone Ban
Asked if banning mobile phones in school would help the issue of children being targeted by criminals, MPs were told it would help.However, the gangs would more than likely use other means to target children, including waiting for them after school, the committee was told.
Issues around excluding children from schools were also touched upon, where experts said excluded children were more susceptible to being exploited or trafficked.
Griffiths also said she was aware of instances were gangsters were telling children how to be expelled from school.
“So it’s not just the exclusions that happened because of behaviour,” she said.
“But it is also being used as a way of kind of isolating children out of the education system so they’re not identified.”
Other chilling evidence heard how gangs themselves were contacting child protection groups and agencies to “fish” for information.
Bolderson said: “They will contact support services like ourselves to understand what’s in place to support the young person.
“We recently had a phone line that has been connected and they will find us to actually reach out to try and find out what support is in place.
“You’ve got to remember, it [crime gangs] is a business model.
“We’re talking about a lot of money that these gangs have got and if we’re actually going out there to actually try and challenge county lines, then you’re challenging a multi-million business.”
