Jodian remembers her son as a happy child, eager to learn, but she suspected something was wrong when Daejaun's behaviour changed in his early teens. She believes friends from secondary school introduced Daejaun to older boys who, in turn, groomed him into selling drugs. It can be all too easy for teenagers in inner city areas to get involved in this lifestyle, says Michael Jibowu, a former gang member from Woolwich.
The description of recruiting into a gang being described as 'grooming' crops up a lot in these stories lately. Is it because it absolves the perpetrator of responsibility, I wonder?
"Imagine being a young boy and you want to make money. The drug dealers are about, they have cars, they have chains, they have watches," he says. "It's very, very easy to get involved in selling drugs... Sometimes you can say literally nothing and they will approach you.
Then isn’t the appropriate response to continue saying nothing until they give up and go away?
"Daejaun always wanted to be wealthy, says Jodian. She remembers telling him he had to find ways of making money legitimately: "But then you find that the influence on the outside was greater than mine."
Then you managed to raise a child with no morals.
Daejaun had made a choice, she says, but adults were exploiting him for their own financial gain.
Of course, it couldn’t possibly be that you raised a defective child, could it? Perish the thought! It must have been outside influences that did it! These people never admit to their own responsibility in anything!
Not that there isn't a lot of blame for the supposed 'authorities' who have swallowed the 'ethnicity equals victimhood' tropes.
In 2023, Jodian raised her concerns with his school, Woolwich Polytechnic for Boys. It arranged counselling for Daejaun and asked Greenwich Council to provide help for the family. However, Jodian says she remains critical of the school for not sharing important information with her about who Daejaun was mixing with. Some of his friends had been barred from school grounds, but the school did not tell Jodian why. She says she later found out it was because of their links to drug distribution and weapons.
Shocker!
Woolwich Polytechnic's head of safeguarding, Jo Lumbis, says: "I wouldn't have been able to tell her about the drugs and the knives because that child is entitled to confidentiality. I can't give that information to parents."
I think you may need to rethink your title, Jo, if your concern is all for the privacy of future knife-wielding hoodlums...
Many experts believe the system for dealing with child criminal exploitation is not working properly at present, and children are slipping through the cracks.
Undoubtedly, but let's nor ignore the effect of poor parenting, or no parenting. It's a shame we don't hear from the boy's father in this article, after all.
