Stray Ferret Focus: How we protected the source of our County Lines interview

Some articles can be written quickly. Others take time – sometimes rather a lot of time.

Welcome to our monthly look at what goes on behind the scenes when we are working on articles at the Stray Ferret. We think the effort we put in distinguishes us from the pack and hopefully provides an additional reason, beyond our seven-days-a-week rolling news service, to subscribe.

One recent example of this was my interview with the mother of a boy caught up in a life of crime.

If you’re the parent – or the grandparent – of a child at secondary school in the Harrogate district, our interview with Yasmin Walker (not her real name) will have made for uncomfortable reading.

Yasmin’s son, Nathan (name also changed), had been a “gorgeous”, family-minded boy, but was groomed from the age of 12 by a gang of drug-dealers.

Very soon, he had dropped out of school and was roaming around the district – and beyond – as a 'runner' for a County Lines network, ferrying drugs and money around the region.

Knives, drug use, theft and violence became commonplaces for Nathan, whose new, older friends were well known to police dealing with Yorkshire’s criminal underworld.

Just six years after he first started getting into trouble, Nathan now lives away from the family home and shows no sign of reforming.

Effectively cut off from her son, Yasmin fears that he will be seriously injured, or that he will seriously injure someone else; that he is now grooming younger children as runners; that he will, inevitably, end up in prison.

Yasmin generously invited the Stray Ferret into her home to tell us her story and was very frank and articulate in describing the devastating effect her son’s behaviour has had on family life.

But that openness could not be fully reflected in our article – we had to anonymise both Yasmin and Nathan to protect their identities. 

We will never print their real names or publish any details that could reveal who they really are. Even the photo we used was a stock image of an unknown woman in silhouette.

We do this for two reasons. The first is legal: we would not want to prejudice any future investigation or trial. 

The second is more immediate: we want to protect Nathan and his mum from any criminal retribution, but we also want to protect Yasmin from Nathan’s fearsome temper. He didn't know about the interview, and although she still loves her son very much, she is scared of him.

Journalists often need to approach a subject with sensitivity, but sometimes we need to go even further, and withhold the full truth in order that deeper truths can be told – without violent repercussions.

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