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19
Oct 2024
How my 12-year-old was groomed by a County Lines gang – a Harrogate mother's story
The mother of a persistent young offender in Harrogate has told the Stray Ferret how her son’s life became dominated by drugs, theft and violence after he was groomed by a County Lines drugs gang when he was just 12 years old.
Yasmin Walker’s son, Nathan*, was a “gorgeous”, family-minded boy who had good friends, but that all changed within a single year. She said:
I’ve still got videos on my phone of him reading stories to his little sister and laughing and joking. He was a lovely lad.
He was very clever at school too – he just went and came home. He was fine, until one day I got a phone-call to say he was being disruptive at school.
That very quickly escalated. Very soon he just wouldn’t go to school. But he also wouldn’t stay in the house. That’s when the school got social care involved.
Then he started being picked up by the police, and I found out that he was mixing with the wrong people. That was a shock to me.
According to the Home Office, County Lines is “a form of criminal exploitation where urban gangs persuade, coerce or force children and young people to store drugs and money and/or transport them to suburban areas, market towns and coastal towns”.
It soon became apparent that this was what had been happening to Nathan. He was being groomed.
His introduction to it was through the brother of a friend. Yasmin said:
It only takes one person. Before he knew it, Nathan was in the middle of it.
With County Lines, there are the big people, and then people under them, and then the Nathans.
The Nathans are recruited because they can get off, because they’re minors – that's why they use them.
Grooming methods
The older contacts in the gang came from Manchester, Skipton, Selby, Ripon, Knaresborough and Wetherby, and the methods they used were insidious. Yasmin said:
They encourage the kids to lie: ‘If you tell your mum this, you’ll be able to do that’; ‘tell your mum you’re staying with that [approved] person, but come here instead’.
They gave him a ‘toolkit’ to get around everything. It changed his way of thinking. They groom their minds, which is easy to do when they’re going through that stage of life.
Expensive items would appear in Nathan’s bedroom: clothes, aftershave, trainers – all ‘gifts’. And then there was the debt. Yasmin said:
All of a sudden, Nathan is a runner. They get them to do the dirty jobs – the ones that carry the risk. They’re giving him cannabis, and because he didn’t pay for it, he owed them. And it very quickly develops – County Lines is scary. And then he was into stolen cars and dealing his own cannabis.
There were threats – he had no choice. The pull from outside was much stronger than the pull to stay in. If his phone rang, he was out the door in seconds.
Police officers on an operation in Harrogate against a County Lines gang
Nathan's first arrest
The first time Nathan was arrested – for a violent offence – was, said Yasmin, “horrific”. She said:
Three police officers came to the door to take him away. I didn’t know what the hell to do. I tried to hug him, and obviously he was trying not to be handcuffed, and then they took him off. And this was in front of me and my little girl, and the neighbours. It was horrific.
He was 13 then, and there have been so many times since, with the police looking for drugs, cash, weapons.
When you’ve got armed police outside the house, it’s embarrassing, although the neighbours all understand.
They’ve known us for years, and they’ve seen the change in him, but they’ve also seen a change in me.
Armed police on a raid
By the age of 14, Nathan had stopped going to school altogether. He did later gain some qualifications through a special education unit in Harrogate, but even so, his life became increasingly chaotic, fuelled by drugs, testosterone and a fearsome temper.
Money would go missing and groups of Nathan’s friends ‘associates’ would turn up at the door and troop upstairs. People Yasmin didn’t know, who made her feel uneasy. Appeals to Nathan to turn them away were ignored, and Yasmin knew never to push it too far. She said:
I know better than to come inside his personal space, or touch him. Most people are scared of him, and I am now too. It’s sad.
After a violent argument, Nathan was forced by social services to move out of the family home and into specialist accommodation.
Could he be grooming others?
Although Nathan is still in his teens, some of his “very best friends” are in their thirties, and that brings new fears for his mother. Yasmin said:
My worry now is that he’s mixing with the 30-35-year-olds and with the 13-14-year-olds. That was always my biggest fear. I promised myself I’d get him out of this by the time he was 16, and I failed. Now I’m worried that he’s actually doing the same thing those people did to him: grooming others.
I also know he’s not afraid of a knife – he carries them. I just fear he’s going to hurt someone really badly, or he is going to be hurt really badly.
But would that make him see sense, if he was hurt really badly? I don’t know.
Why did it happen?
Why Nathan has developed the way he has is open for debate. But Yasmin says his father – who left her before Nathan was born – was very similar in temperament, as was his father before him.
Yasmin said:
He’s got the genes, but I’m not tarring him with the same brush, because I do know my Nathan is there somewhere.
She once tried to contact his father for Nathan’s sake, but received no reply – which Nathan took as a second rejection.
And yet Yasmin blames herself. She said:
I feel I should have been stricter, but social care workers would often undermine me.
It’s very difficult, because when you’ve got social care involved, and you’ve got a very strong-willed boy who’s clearly troubled and high-risk, your parenting skills go out the window, because you’re walking on eggshells.
It’s just unbelievable how these things can happen. You really don’t think about exploitation. It’s just a word to most people. But when you’re living it, it’s really tough.
I’ve tried doing all the things the police tell you to do, but in Nathan’s case they just didn’t work. So it’s ongoing, and I don’t know how he can get out of it.
It’s sad to say, but I actually think the only way he’s going to learn or get away from all of this is if he gets arrested and goes to prison.
Stolen childhood
That may sound harsh, but Yasmin feels all the alternatives have been tried, and the impact on her and her daughter has been considerable.
Yasmin has a long-term health condition that prevents her from working, and her daughter is emotionally scarred and bolts the door every time she comes home.
Yasmin said:
These last six years have been hell. It’s exhausting every day – mentally, physically, emotionally. And it has a knock-on effect, because the family don’t understand it. They just think he’s a bad lad – the black sheep of the family.
But he’s not. He was groomed from a very young age. They stole his childhood.
*The names in this article have been changed to protect identities.
Child protection charity Action for Children provides more information and advice for parents about County Lines on its website here.
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