Every week children criss-cross the UK on buses and trains carrying drugs as part of the County Lines operation. BBC News spent months with an organization struggling to help children at risk, hearing young people’s stories of abuse and heartbreak from their families and learning what it takes to help them break free. Three people tell us their story of the district borders.
“I’ve seen a lot of things, seen boiling water poured over people,” says Nicole. She was recruited into a drug smuggling gang when she was just 11 years old.
Before joining the gang, she slept on a mattress on the floor and showered at school when the opportunity arose. “It finds you,” says Nicole, now 18, about the district boundaries. “You don’t find it.”
The gang promised her a new bed, new clothes, and help for her mother to pay the bills. She says she saw her new friends with “nice sneakers, nice dresses and makeup”. “I was just so jealous that I didn’t have that. And I was at the point where I would do anything to get that,” she says.
Nicole was transporting drugs across the country from Newcastle. “I was so naive,” she says. “I literally had an address, a date, a time and a train ticket.”
But the gang’s promises never came true. “We never got to the point where we have a bed. We never got to the point where we have new clothes.” Instead, she was initiated into a world of violence and child abuse.
On a devastating journey, Nicole traveled south, beyond London. She says she cried in the toilets at every station she stopped at.
“When I arrived on location, what was planned didn’t happen,” she says. “I had to do a lot of things I didn’t want to do [get] alive out of this situation. If I hadn’t done what I was asked to do – sexually, physically, mentally – I wouldn’t be here today.”
The violence she witnessed made her work for the gang. She was told what to do and warned: “If I didn’t do it, I would pay for it.” But to this day, she cannot understand why no adult intervened when she was alone, aged 11 and up without school, traveled around the country by train and bus.
“Not seen, not found, not asked why I wasn’t at school, not asked why I wasn’t at mom or dad’s. That still affects me the most to this day,” she says. “Why didn’t someone intervene sooner?”
After two years of violence, abuse, fear and broken promises, just when she was at her lowest point, Nicole was able to take a chance to escape.
A teacher had offered her to shower at school and pay for her meals outside of school. One day, at the age of 13, Nicole showed up after suffering a miscarriage.
“She noticed and took me to the hospital. I just had enough. I had reached that breaking point,” says Nicole. “I can trust this person. She needs to know that I’m not well.”
Now, five years after her escape, Nicole is studying in college to build a better life for herself. She hopes to have a home and a family, and she says she wants to be the kind of person who doesn’t look the other way when someone needs help. She wants to give hope to others who may still be trapped, scared and exploited.
“I couldn’t stress enough to people that it doesn’t matter how scared you are. You are valid. Your feelings are valid. They’ve never been that stuck,” she says.
“If you’re still alive and breathing, you’re never past the point of coming back. You can always end up on the better end. And I stand by that.”
Sarah – not her real name – hopes her teenage son will be one of the kids who breaks free from the drug gangs. He has disappeared more than 50 times this year. And she has no idea where he is now.
“He’s really out of control all the time, he just runs away for weeks,” she says. “Not knowing if he’s alive or dead or anything. Who is he with? Is he alright? Does he get anything to eat?
When her other children ask where he went, she has nothing to say to them. “It breaks the family apart.”
“He’s my little boy and I can’t protect him and he’s out there,” she says. “That’s one thing I always promised when I had kids, to protect them and love them as much as I could. And I can’t do that.”
If you are affected by any of the issues discussed in this article, You can find help and advice here
Sarah says it has been about a year since her son, now 16, has been involved with the Circle Lines.
She says some signs were obvious – they hung out in gangs wearing masks, all dressed in black. She says there was a change in the music he was listening to.
But Sarah says she’s also noticed a change in behavior. “They start to distance themselves and their attitude starts and they start fighting. And they lock themselves up. And then they obviously don’t connect with you at all,” she says.
He’s still young and vulnerable, and Sarah says he must follow the gang’s orders or there could be “repercussions on the family.”
“He’s a scared little boy,” she says. “I know him and he has changed so much. And sometimes he comes up and just hugs us for no reason and I know he’s scared. But he has to do what he has to do because of the elders.”
With help from employees at Edge North East, an organization that specializes in caring for children affected by severe violence, or county lines, she hopes there is a way out for her son. But right now, he’s still missing and Sarah is still waiting.
“I’m stuck in this trap house. I don’t know how to get home, could you take us home?” Andy and the Edge North East team often get calls like this.
One evening, he and a colleague set out on a 10-hour cross-country drive after receiving a similar call. “Without thinking, we just got in the car, drove down and got her,” he says.
Andy is not someone who would fit into a traditional nine-to-five job. Tall, broad and tattooed, he drives his Harley-Davidson through Newcastle. He says the work is about building trust with young people because “they don’t have anyone to trust”.
“Any young person who gets into that, you know, they’re going to be victims of violence at some point, you know,” he says, “beaten, stabbed, whatever. It’s absolutely awful to think about, to be honest.”
The organization works with young people who are at the highest risk of going missing, being cared for and being forced to travel across the country to deliver drugs.
“Years ago you just wouldn’t have thought about using a kid to sell drugs. But now they just don’t care, as long as they can line their own pockets with money, they don’t care who they use. ‘ says Andy. “It’s heartbreaking.”
Too often, he says, too many people negatively label the behavior of the children he works with without examining the reasons for their actions. “I just wish some people would just open their eyes and look at her as a kid. And things could be a little bit different,” he says.
“These are lost young people. There’s always something in these young people’s lives that drives them to do what they do. That’s what people need to look at and wonder what they’ve been through.”
Andy says that social media’s glamorization of gang culture sends the wrong message, but the connections Edge North East is forging with young people are making a real difference.
“Lives are changed,” he says. “No child is ever a write-off.”
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