A short animated film tells the story of a Dublin child trafficked for criminal exploitation

When Inner City Organisations Network (ICON) held a meeting with residents to discuss health and housing, people started talking about children being forced into crime.

“People were talking about kids being led astray,” says Belinda Nugent, the project leader of the community development programme at ICON. “Kids getting used.”

Forced criminality has been happening in the north inner-city for years but, lately, it is more open, says Nugent.

Community workers are frustrated by what they are witnessing, with children as young as 10 being trafficked by criminal gangs.

“We just can’t look at any more kids in the community being groomed and recruited,” says Nugent. “If we don’t do anything we are as bad as the rest, just watching it.”

ICON sought help from an organisation with expertise in child tracking called MECPATHS, which highlighted that forced criminality is a form of human trafficking, she says.

The organisation set out to make a film, to try to raise awareness and push a campaign for comprehensive action, which calls for appropriate legislation and a joined up inter-agency response.

The short animation set in Dublin, The Runners – a Trafficking Timeline, is narrated by the childhood friend of a young person named Reece, who struggles at school and then later gets exploited by a criminal gang.

Despite the best efforts of Reece’s parents, the situation escalates and culminates with the family facing threats and intimidation over money the gang claims Reece owes.

Sadhbh Lawlor, one of the two filmmakers who wrote the script, said they researched the film with surveys and interviews.

“The information is accurate and true and it’s trying to create the lived experience,” says Lawlor. “Once you’re confronted with it you can either ignore it or you can act.”

A trafficking timeline

Nugent says children as young as 10 are being groomed in full view of the local community.

“If you stood at ICON and just seen the amount of it that’s going on,” she says. “It’s shocking.”

The perpetrators start out buying the children clothes or takeaways, she says. The child doesn’t understand that they are being groomed but thinks that the gang is like a family, says Nugent.

In the film Reece is robbed by his own gang, who then try to force his family to cover the debt.

Perpetrators are openly controlling children and telling them that they own them, says Nugent. “It’s not being hidden.”

Lawlor says they carried out in-depth research for the film. Community workers surveyed young people and parents, and forwarded the recordings to the filmmakers.

After that the filmmakers met and interviewed parents who had been through the situation and surveyed people working in the community and educational sector, she says.

They spoke to young people aged 17 to 19, who had a huge amount of empathy for younger children in their community, who they can see falling into the trap, says Lawlor.  “That is where the timeline idea came from, you have to go back to go forward,” she says.

Forced criminality is rooted in child poverty, says Nugent. But it’s not always the case that the parents are absent or in addiction. Some parents are trying everything to help and protect their child.

The film shows Reece’s mother making countless phone calls to Gardaí, social workers and other services to try to get help for her child.

Lawlor says following the interviews with parents they wanted to acknowledge their experience, including the overwhelming workload it caused the mother. “We can see the work you are trying to do to fight for your child,” she says.

Lawlor hopes the film will raise awareness. “That is what the cultural influence can be,” she says. “It’s that tool for reflection.”

“When families come to us, it’s usually gone to the stage where they are in debt bondage now and forced criminality is happening,” says Nugent.

Nugent says that if a debt isn’t paid on time it is transferred and increases massively. She knows a family where the debt started out at €4,000 but soon escalated to €40,000, after changing hands several times.

In that case, the family paid €25,000 but the criminals still almost killed the young man. “He made it out alive, but just barely,” says Nugent.

A call to action

A petition attached to the film, aimed to raise awareness among general election candidates, calling on them to watch the film and to acknowledge the prevalence of child trafficking in Ireland.

Child trafficking is defined as the “recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt” of a child for the purpose of exploitation, and is a form of modern-day slavery, it says.

A bill passed this year aims to combat grooming of children for the purposes of crime.

But Nugent says many more supports are needed for families to be able to take on perpetrators who live in their own community. Criminals can easily break into people’s houses and threaten them in their own home, she says.

“There are people whose cars have been burned, whose houses have been burned,” says Nugent.

People tell her: “I can’t get him charged, he’s from a big family, that whole family will target my kids, our life won’t be worth living,” she says.

She is aware of a person who was in that position and tried to move to the west of Ireland but was refused homeless accommodation in the new county and was refused to transfer his social welfare payment.

“We’re hoping that collectively we can figure out what we need to do,” she says. “But first we need the state to recognise it for what it is.”