Children used as drug mules by 'modern day Fagins'

Children are being groomed to use Kinder Egg toys to hide heroin and crack cocaine inside their own bodies, a Stockport MP warned today.

Ann Coffey MP, said it showed a ‘terrible disregard for children’s lives by urban gangs’. Speaking during a backbench debate on gangs and youth violence, Ms Coffey called for the introduction of a new “Fagin Order” to stop adults grooming children to sell drugs.

Ann who is the chair of the All Party Group for Runaway and Missing Children and Adults, highlighted the phenomenon of ‘County Lines’, in which urban criminal gangs groom and coerce children and young people into selling Class A drugs many miles from home, often in quiet market and seaside towns.

Ms Coffey said children from Greater Manchester, groomed by criminal gangs, had been found selling drugs in places as far away as Devon.

Ann Coffey, who led a report into child sexual exploitation, following the Rochdale grooming scandal said: “Currently we have numerous civil orders available to the police to combat grooming for child sexual exploitation including Sexual Risk Orders, Sexual Harm Prevention Orders and Child Abduction Warning Notices.

“I would like to see the creation of similar orders to be used where children are being groomed by organised criminals and gangs to act as drug runners. They could be called Fagin orders."