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tv   Snaptrap  BBC News  February 24, 2024 2:30pm-3:01pm GMT

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israeli media is reporting that negotiators from israel, the us, egypt and qatar have agreed the "outline" of a deal for a temporary ceasefire and the return of hostages. it is expected to be presented to israel's war cabinet possibly as early as this evening. several western leaders are in kyiv to show solidarity on the second anniversary of russia's invasion of ukraine — president zelensky insists his country will win — but urgently needs more weapons. the eu commission president says the bloc was standing with ukraine. labour has called for the former conservative deputy chairman, lee anderson, to be expelled from the parliamentary party — for saying that islamists have got hold of london — and that the mayor sadiq khan had given the capital away "to his mates". more on all of those stories on the bbc news website or app. now on bbc news,
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snaptrap: is your child safe? social media has crept into our lives. it connects us to our friends and helps us make new ones — but it has a hidden, dark side. i didn't want to be the one that would land in trouble for something that i'd been forced to do. i could have ended up dead. gangs are taking advantage of social media to manipulate and control children. they were just scared kids. they'd been sold down the river on a promise of something that isn't real. as the police try to crack down on these gangs on the ground, we investigate how they target and entrap children online. i've gone undercover on snapchat as this 15—year—old girl. i can't believe they're already trying to sell me drugs.
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i had a pretty average childhood. but... ..i had very severe anxiety, low mood, depression. i fell out with people in my own year within the school. it was probably, like, the loneliest i'd everfelt in my life. i really didn't have anyone to turn to at that point. i couldn't even turn to my own family. i just felt very trapped. i definitely knew that there was one reason and one reason only why i was there. that is a girl's place in a gang, from a drug dealer's point of view — for sex. the darkest moments of anna's life —
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when she was just a teenager. anna ended up in that dark place after she was exploited and controlled by a drugs gang. she's one of many children who are groomed by those gangs on social media. i want to find out how that's allowed to happen online. the thing is, these gangs are sophisticated and dangerous. they don't want people like me knowing what they're up to. they create such a culture of fear that most people, like anna, are too scared to speak out — but she's agreed to tell me her story. for her, it started with a friend request on snapchat from a young man she'd met on a night out. i'd given him my social media. and then he'd be quite romantic, quite flirty and just showing a massive interest in me. how often were you getting
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these messages from him? we'd message 21w. so your phone would just be going nonstop? yeah, pretty much, yeah. the constant messaging and attention made anna think she was getting into a relationship, but he had other ideas. where anna saw a man not much older than herself taking an interest in her, he was actually working for an eastern european drugs gang and saw anna as young, vulnerable and ripe for exploitation. soon, he was asking her to help the gang. it was a bit scary at first, but i kind of realised that i didn't look like your typical drug dealer, so i could get away with it a bit easier. anna felt like she was doing a favourfor someone who cared about her. the constant messaging on snapchat made herfeel special, until she started to realise
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she was being used. i thought that this person was my boyfriend and... ..i would see messages from other girls or him messaging other girls. it was quite heartbreaking, really, because he was the only person i had, really, to turn to. do you think he'd kind of built this sense that you depended on him through social media? yeah, definitely. yeah. anna didn't realise it at the time, but what she's describing is grooming. that's how the gang entered her life — and they're about to change it forever. this wouldn't have happened if i wasn't connected to him on social media in the first place. if i had not given him my social media, then half the stuff would never have happened.
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ever since speaking to anna, i've been thinking a lot about this. every teenager has one, and i'm starting to understand that, for gangs, that's an easy way to exploit children. i've decided to build a fake profile for a 15—year—old girl who i'm calling mia. look, here she is. i'm not going to look specifically for drugs with this account. i'm just following things that a real teenager might be interested in, like music and funny videos. but within a few minutes, i'm amazed at what i see. i'm looking at this page with videos of cars and bikes, and up pops a link to another app. it's called telegram. i click on the link and it takes me to a page selling me all sorts of drugs, from ketamine to cocaine.
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i'm actually quite surprised. i really didn't think that i'd be exposed to this stuff so quickly. i'm going to an area of cardiff near the city centre. i've been told that a lot of drug dealing goes on here. i've got the same phone with the same fake account, and i want to have a look at that app that popped up earlier — telegram. telegram has this feature where you can look at the people in your area in real time — and, look, allaround me, there are people selling drugs. there's a guy on here selling mdma, ketamine, meth, even heroin — and he's only 400 metres away. they're not even trying to hide their accounts. this stuff is really easy to find — and if you're a child with a phone, i think you could stumble across it
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without even meaning to. i want to understand why these gangs put so much time and effort into reaching children online. why would they recruit kids to do their dirty work? i need to talk to someone who's been on the inside and seen how these gangs work. i've been given this guy's details from a contact who met him when they were in prison together. tom's agreed to meet me and tell me what it's like working for drugs gangs. he's going to show me around roath in cardiff. that's where he used to operate. he's asked us not to show his face in case the gangs he was involved with come after him. first house down here, there was a flat in there. there was one right next to the lane by here. where's the lane? there's the lane there. so, you had a flat trap house there, trap house there, and a trap house right in the end house by here.
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what is a trap house? so, you've got a flat built for one person with, like, three or four people in it, with the sole purpose of selling drugs. forthe insider, it would bejust... like, you'd have your two, like, shotters, like, the people who are selling drugs, like, you know, you'd have the person who lives there. then you'd have your regular punters who would come in, buy drugs, use the drugs there. this area is just full of drugs. areas around the city centre are full of gangs, not from this city, operating, selling drugs — from cars, from flats. what tom's talking about here is a system called county lines, where gangs from bigger cities like london and birmingham start selling their drugs in smaller places like cardiff. that's how he entered this world.
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in return for free drugs, he helped the gangs establish themselves on his home turf. i've rented them a car, i've found them somewhere to stay. it's all going good. i'm driving them across the city, like dropping bits and bobs off to different people. it's all going cool. i don't have to pay for drugs. i don't have to pay for a thing, to be honest, like. they treat me like royalty. that's how it starts. that was like the honeymoon period. for a few years, this was tom's life, and it was a deal that worked for him. but then the stakes got higher, and the people he was being asked to drive around got younger. at the start, they were like 21, 20, and that got down to, like, 17, 16. you know, some of them are borderline 16, and you're thinking, you know, "there's no way you're the age you're telling me." if you were picking them up,
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weren't you part of the problem? i was in the problem, i wasn't... iwas... i was in fear of my life the whole time. speaking to tom, i can start to understand how these gangs use fear to control and manipulate people. that's what happened to anna, too. by now, the gang was plying her with drugs, but that came at a cost. we would just drive around and they'd be drug—dealing and we'd just be listening to loud music. they had a boot full of drugs. they would just say, "just put your hand in the bag "and take whatever you want out." anna believed she was being given the drugs for free, but that wasn't the case.
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they sort of gave me an ultimatum of "you now owe us a debt "for all these free drugs that you've used. "so, now you have two choices. "you can either help us drug—deal and earn the money back for us "or you can do sexual favours." anna was trapped by a debt she'd never be able to pay off. the gang now wanted more from her. even though she was just a child, they were asking her to get involved in riskier drug deals. so, she had a terrible choice to make. i chose the option that i thought was going to land me in the least trouble with the police and stuff. which option was that? the sexual favours. what's going through your head? just panic, really, because i didn't feel like i was in control of the situation at all, and i didn't really know what they were capable of.
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i'd just turned 14 and left year eight in school. i was on the cusp of, you know, doing some stuff i shouldn't have been doing. at a young age, kieron started to get pulled into the wrong crowd. and then my mum wanted to move back to be closer to her family, so my whole familyjust upped and left. in birmingham, it was all live, in—person. if you were going to be groomed into a gang, it would be... you would be approached, you would have to be approached. there was no other way they could contact you. when i moved to newport, the whole gang culture and county lines and drug dealing thing, it wasn't at the forefront. that was more than a decade ago, but now social media has given gangs easier access to children.
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well, they've got an endless supply of vulnerable young people that they can tap into. if you've got a certain amount of people that follow you on any social media site, you can literally post, "who wants to work? "who wants to earn some money?", and you'll have a lot of vulnerable people. before you know it, they're right into the criminal world straight away. now, kieron hears first—hand what children are experiencing through the crimestoppers helpline. they're just worried. a lot of young people are scared of this county lines thing because it is happening around them. it's happening right in front of us — and you've only got to go on social media and you'll see it. that isn'tjust boys this is happening to — it's also happening to young girls as well, at quite a frightening rate. it's young girls who will think they're in a relationship with someone that's genuine, send them explicit pictures — and before you know it, them same pictures, they can quickly be turned around and used against them to make them do things
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that they shouldn't and don't want to be doing — holding drugs for their boyfriend, or holding a weapon, something that can get them in a lot of trouble and possibly end them in prison, or worse off than prison. when tom was working for gangs, he came face—to—face with the impact of this grooming. they were just scared kids, you know? they've been sold down the river on the promise of something that isn't real. there was a girl in particular, er... she came down, she was playing the part of being in a gang, she was feisty, and... tiny little thing. big smile. but that smile, that smile just faded over time. that smile was gone. she always looked like she was going to start crying at any second, you know? and i get it, i understand it, like, you know, i get that. i get that fear. and what was she doing here? why was she here?
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her mum owed a few grand, out. . .wherever they were from, and to pay that debt, "there you go, take her." how do you feel about the fact that you were part of that system? horrible. dirty. sorry. guilty. ashamed. that teenage girl had been sold a lie. that's the grim reality of how this grooming works. i'm back on the same fake account that i set up for a 15—year—old girl who we're calling mia. it's been running for about two weeks now. soon after i set her up, snapchat starts suggesting people that i might want to become friends with. some of those people
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appear to be drug dealers. one of those suggested friends seems to claim he's part of a gang transporting drugs from london to swansea. remember, this app thinks i'm a 15—year—old girl, and yet it's encouraging me to befriend potential criminals. it's one thing to be offered drugs, but i know gangs are using these apps to groom children. the problem is they're on the lookout for fake accounts like mine. they've tried to check me out. they want to see a picture of me. obviously, i can't do that without blowing my cover. that's as far as i can go. if i had sent them a picture and they trusted me, the next stage might have been a gang trying to recruit me. the police have shown me some evidence of what that can look like. 0ne post says... "hmu" - that's "hit me up" - "if you're trying to get trapgiddy."
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that means "work in a trap house". spots there, "racks" — ie, money — "to be made". and this one just uses an emoji of a house, to show the trap house, and a picture of bread to tell you that there's money to be made. these are real posts by gangs trying to reach children. it can happen really quickly. i've spoke to young people who it's happened to and they tell me, "i don't know how it happened. "one minute, i wasjust engaging with a page on a certain, "on a website, and then i was being asked to dojobs, "and then they were telling me i owed them money, and i couldn't "get out of this trap." so, as sad as it is, young people have died. i've known young people who have been caught up in that lifestyle that have passed away. it's all exploitation — and you're taking all the risk. that's why the police are trying to crack down on these drugs gangs. in swansea, covert officers
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are on their way to shut down a county line... ready, keith. ..in a joint operation by the met and south wales police. police! inside, a man suspected of running the line, which supplies crack and heroin. time now is 08:52. you're under arrest... for what? ..on suspicion of - supplying class a drugs. class a drugs? 0k? they find thousands of pounds concealed in his kitchen units and a mobile phone. is that your phone? yeah, that's mine. they also raid a suspected accomplice�*s house and retrieve what looks like drugs that have been flushed down the toilet. it's a decent amount of heroin, by the looks of it. _ yeah? yeah. we believe that he is controlling the sale of drugs from that mobile
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phone and using other people within the city to distribute those drugs. the suspect in this case was an adult, but often the police find children when they carry out these raids. that may be children who are holding drugs on behalf of adult drug dealers. so those children may feel that they're part of a county line, or they've been forced into it, or they may not understand that they've been groomed to an extent. but we will look for those factors and those indicators, and we will treat exploited children as victims. and we will not treat them as criminals where there is evidence that they are being exploited. i can tell from talking to the police that they're trying to change their approach to children caught up in county lines, but i know that anna never had the opportunity to be treated as a victim. as time went on, the gangs abuse
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intensified, and one night, she was duped into going to a house where members of the gang were waiting for her. they held me against my will and i was sexually assaulted... ..by more than one person, and they wouldn't allow me to go home. and these are grown men? yeah. so they were members of the gang. did you know them? i didn't know any of them, and none of them spoke english. ijust remember leaving and just feeling really disgusted in myself, just thinking that it was my fault that i ended up in that situation. throughout this period, did you ever think about going to the police? no. that was never an option for me. why is that? i didn't trust them. you know, you hear about these stories where girls turn to the police and they end up in a worse situation than what they were in the first place, and...
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..also, with the thought of me drug dealing, basically, i didn't want to be the one that would land in trouble for something that i was being forced to do. anna told me she didn't want to talk to the police, even when she thought her life was in danger. i've heard this time and time again, children fearing reprisals if they end up giving evidence against gang members. i think our response has got a lot more sophisticated, so we would look to build an investigation where we're able to present that evidence to the court without the need of having to put a child who is unwilling to give evidence or unable to support that investigation. i wonder if this could have helped anna. it might have put her abusers behind bars and helped her move on. even if you aren't in court yourself, there will still be details that'll be discussed that would be identifiable, that it is you and that
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it's come from you... ..and, inevitably, that drug dealer leaves prison, if he does get prosecuted. all the rest of the gang on the outside hear about it. what happens in this world if you do snitch? you can have a target on your head for the rest of your life. anna found her own way to escape the gangs clutches, but she could never be sure that she was completely safe. i slowly started avoiding them as much as i could, and then it wasn't until sort of a few months of that, maybe, where ijust got the courage to just block and delete. so you kind of went underground on social media? yeah, yeah. i had to. how long did it take to stop looking over your shoulder all the time? i don't think it ever does stop. anna got out of being exploited by the gang in the same way she got in — social media.
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talking to her, it feels like that's the key to stopping this from happening to others, and it's companies like snapchat that have that power. snapchat told me there's no place on its platform for the exploitation of any member of its community, or the illegal buying and selling of drugs. it says it's working to protect younger children from people they don't know, and it has a team collaborating with police and experts to understand drug—related trends. both snapchat and telegram say their moderators proactively monitor content to keep people safe, as well as allowing users to report harmful material. whether they intend to or not, social media companies have created a space where gangs can exploit and control people — people like anna and tom — and once they're in,
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it's hard to get out. years of working for gangs took its toll on tom, but he did eventually escape. my life is turned around so much, like, you don't even know. i'm doing things in my community, for my community, and i never, ever thought i'd be doing that. and i love that. in the end, it was a knock on the door that changed things for tom. when i seen police, it was just relief. when my house was raided, i thought i was getting shot, or murdered. many a time, i thought i was going to die. when the police come in my door, i just knew that was my way out. tom's finally had the chance to rebuild his life after prison. for anna, that process has been hard, especially
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because she knows the gang that abused her is still out there. nothing's been done about them. it's just such a horrible feeling to know that there are other people who are going through that, and worse. despite everything that happened to her, anna's managed to move on. life's much, much better now. my mental health has improved so much. i'm sober now, and i can use my own experience to help others, which is all i ever really want. i'm just grateful that i'm out of that life and i've dealt with the trauma and what has happened to me, and i need to move on now with my life, i think.
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hello there. it was a cold and frosty start up and down the country this morning. there were some mist and fog patches around, too, but through the day we'll see plenty of dry and sunny weather, particularly towards eastern areas, more cloud further south and west and there'll be a few showers as well. these, again, wintry nature certainly over the high ground. these, again, wintry in nature certainly over the high ground. now, most of the showers fade away this evening. skies clear, light winds, it's going to turn cold and frosty pretty much right across the uk. we'll see some dense mist and fog patches developing, particularly across northern england, the midlands and eastern england, where they will be stubborn to clear through the morning period. now, part two of the weekend, we've got to contend with this area of low pressure, which we skirting towards the southwest, the uk
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of low pressure, which will be skirting towards the southwest, the uk and then spreading towards france as you move through the day. so it's southern britain which will see wet and windy weather for a time because of this low pressure system. and we'll be on the colder side of the low. as you can see, the blue colours there indicated on the air mass chart. so another cold frosty start, stubborn mist and fog patches which could take their time to clear across the midlands in towards eastern england. a few wintry showers across northern scotland. 0therwise plenty of sunshine across the northern quarter of the country, but it turns wet and windy. south wales, southwest england, particularly the channel islands, that rain moving along the south coast through the day. bit of uncertainty to the northern extent of the rain. it looks like it'll be, i think the m4 corridor southwards, which has seen most of the impacts from that. stays wet, windy across southern britain as we head through sunday night. again, gales, perhaps an exposure towards the far south west. a few wintry showers across northern scotland into northeast england, otherwise mostly dry with clear skies.
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another cold night to come here, a little less cold in the south because of the cloud, the wind and the rain. into monday, that area of low pressure continues to push in towards france. a ridge of high pressure builds into northern and western areas, the best of the dry and dry to where they will tend to be across northern areas, just one or two showers across the far northeast, but it stays windy across the south, particularly the southeast corner as that low pressure pulls away and takes the rain with it. so blustery and raw feel across the southeast where the winds will be lighter. those temperatures in single figures for most factor in that wind in the south and east will feel more like one or two degrees there. and then as we move deeper through the new weak atlantic, low through the new week, atlantic low pressure systems return. they'll bring wetter and windier weather, but also milder south westerlies. it will turn less cold both by day and by night. live from london, this is bbc news. israel says negotiators have returned from talks in paris
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with an outline of a ceasefire deal which will be put to the war cabinet today. 0n the second anniversary of russia's invasion of ukraine, president zelensky insists his country will win, but urgently needs more weapons. and calls for a conservative mp to be kicked out of his party after branding london's mayor as racist and "islamophobic". the mayor himself hits back. these comments from a senior conservative are as racist and anti—muslim. hello, i'm nicky schiller. we begin with developments in the middle east. israeli media says an israeli delegation has returned from talks in paris with the �*outline of an agreement�* on a ceasefire with hamas and the release of the remaining hostages in gaza.

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