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Teenage girls and young women are being groomed by criminal ‘county lines’ drug gangs with offers to pay for lip filler and Botox, an expert has warned.
Vulnerable youths are increasingly being targeted by criminal enterprises with offers in exchange for helping transfer not only drugs but also guns, campaigners say.
And young women are proving especially prized, since they are seen as less likely to be targeted by police as their male counterparts, it has been suggested.
Jade Hibbert, from the educational charity the St Giles Trust, has raised the alert about the rising dangers being faced by girls and young women.
Her concerns come as the government faces increasing pressure over grooming gangs exploiting young girls for rape and sexual abuse.
Elon Musk, owner of social media platform X and the world’s richest person, has been condemning Labour after it emerged ministers had blocked calls for a new national inquiry into grooming gangs following a request by Oldham Council.
The parallel threat of county lines gangs abusing young women has now been raised by the St Giles Trust among other children’s charities.
And the use of beauty treatments as a lure for girls and young women is causing heightening fears among charity workers.
Among county lines cases before the courts in recent years, drug dealer Peter Kelly’s fiancee Chloe Wishart (pictured), then 25, was spared jail in March 2022 at Bolton Crown Court
Also given a suspended sentence at Bolton Crown Court, in May 2023, was 22-year-old ‘gangster’s moll’ Georgia Burns , who was involved in a county lines drugs racket in which three 16-year old-schoolboys were used as ‘slaves’
Mother-of-one Georgia Leigh, 23, became an ‘intercity’ courier for a county lines drugs gang by posing as a rail commuter heading to work during the UK’s Covid-19 pandemic lockdown
Vulnerable young women and girls are increasingly being targeted by county lines drugs gangs, experts say – police are pictured raiding a home in Liverpool in December 2021
These bags of cash belonging to a county lines drug gang were seized by Derbyshire Police
County lines is the term used to describe drug dealing where mobile phones are used to supply drugs and often using children as runners.
The gangs, which are linked to increasing violence in provincial towns and shire counties, recruit youngsters to transport drugs from cities to the provinces.
The National Police Chiefs’ Council estimates there are between 5,500 and 6,500 county lines networks across the UK.
And dealers running the operations have often made a point of pinpointing vulnerable children and young people to act as distributors.
St Giles, which operates across the UK, told of girls being offered lip fillers and beauty products in exchange for transporting drugs – as well as young mothers being persuaded to carry narcotics and firearms inside prams to swerve detection.
Campaigners called the current county lines drug dealing climate a ‘safeguarding pandemic’ as they warned more youngsters were becoming susceptible.
Ms Hibbert, regional development manager at St Giles, cautioned how gang ringleaders were turning increasingly sophisticated in their recruitment tactics.
She told the Independent: ‘We have seen a massive shift across the Midlands of more and more female children being exploited – what they’re being manipulated with is Botox, fake eyelashes and fillers.
‘It used to be designer handbags or clothes but what we’re seeing is more perpetrators paying for treatments.’
The St Giles Trust has now opened a female-only service in Wolverhampton and works in every hospital A&E department across the West Midlands, offering mentors to each child referred to them for support.
Charities have warned of the so-called ‘boyfriend model’, by which dealers’ female partners are taken advantage of as a cover less likely to attract police attention.
This can involve their homes being ‘cuckooed’ – that is, taken over and used as drug dealing bases.
As many as 60,000 girls across England are vulnerable to violence in a gang context, according to a recent report by the Commission on Young Lives and Manchester Metropolitan University.
And an NPCC report last March said: ‘It is possible that gender biases, including unconscious bias, mean that they are less likely to be interacted with by the police and therefore at greater risk, as there may be less intervention.’
Johnny Bolderson, from the non-profit social mission organisation Catch22, said: ‘It’s not just women and girls gangs have been targeting.
‘We’ve seen a slight focus on targeting LGBT+ youngsters, we’ve had three recent referrals. It’s the same as stopping a woman and girl on the train – the confidence to stop and search them just isn’t there.
‘It’s just a natural progression. These gangs want to avoid detection so they go for a cohort that is less likely to be stopped.’
Among county lines cases which have come before the courts in recent years, drug dealer Peter Kelly’s fiancee Chloe Wishart, then 25, was spared jail in March 2022 at Bolton Crown Court.
She was sentenced to two years in prison, suspended for two years, after pleading guilty to being concerned in the supply of cocaine and money laundering.
The court heard Wishart had concealed rocks of crack cocaine about her person before travelling 350 miles with Kelly, 25, to deal the items to addicts on the street.
Also given a suspended sentence at Bolton Crown Court, in May 2023, was 22-year-old ‘gangster’s moll’ Georgia Burns, who was involved in a county lines drugs racket in which three 16-year old-schoolboys were used as ‘slaves’.
Georgia Burns, 22, repeatedly drove her drug-dealing boyfriend Jamie Upton, 25, 100 miles from Manchester to Hull, where one of the exploited youngsters was forced to live in a squalid flat.
Burns, from Failsworth, Greater Manchester, admitted being concerned in the supply of crack and heroin between March 2020 and March 2021 and was sentenced to two years jail suspended for two years and told to complete 200 hours unpaid work.
Meanwhile, mother-of-one Georgia Leigh, 23, became an ‘intercity’ courier for a county lines drugs gang by posing as a rail commuter heading to work during the UK Covid-19 pandemic lockdown.
Leigh, from Chadderton near Oldham, repeatedly made 142 mile round trips by train up to twice a day after mobsters she was working for struck a deal for heroin and cocaine to be smuggled from Manchester to York.
She was jailed for four years at Minshull Street Crown Court, Manchester, in October 2021 after admitting conspiracy to supply heroin and cocaine and conveying prohibited articles into a prison.
Police last year smashed one of Britain’s biggest county lines drugs gangs, based in the West Midlands, which made £1.2million a year.
A dozen male gangsters from Birmingham and Solihull were last month handed sentences totalling more than 100 years for running the organised crime group, which sold vast amounts of deadly heroin and crack cocaine.