How a drug gang devastated our helpless family

Joe, 15, was an A-grade pupil. Now he’s being groomed, brutalised and terrified by a county lines gang. One family member tells their powerful, traumatic story

I have known Joe as a part of our extended family since he was born 15 years ago. Quieter than his outgoing big sister, he has been the soft, soulful, sometimes unknowable presence in her exuberant shadow. Lately, though, I am kept awake at night by the fear that any day soon I will receive the news that he is dead.

In the past 15 months this previously diligent A-grade student has been slowly but inexorably sucked into a drugs gang in our city. First groomed by an organised criminal network, in a way fine-tuned to play on his naivety and typical adolescent sense of being at odds with the world; then given addictive drugs to tie him in; and now beaten, brutalised and terrified into travelling long distances to sell drugs in a system known by the curiously benign name of “county lines”.

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from The Guardian http://bit.ly/2vfgkDe