TWO child slaves were found in a Milford Haven drug den having been trafficked to Wales from London, Swansea Crown Court heard last week (Mar 1).
When police searched a house on Elm Lane, Mount Estate, on September 26 2018, they found a boy aged 17 and a girl aged 15.
The court heard how the girl has a stash of cocaine and heroin hidden in an intimate part of her body.
Inquiries by the National Crime Agency soon found that the children were victims of modern slavery.
25-year-old drug dealer Junior Renford was also found, alongside 34 wraps of heroin, 21 wraps of crack cocaine, £360 in cash, and a sheathed machete.
This search was part of a wider effort to halt ‘county lines’ drug dealing.
Criminal organisations from areas such as Birmingham and Liverpool are sending young people without criminal records to sell class A drugs such as crack cocaine and heroin in more rural areas.
These are often vulnerable people that are used to avoid suspicion.
Renford, of Deer Park Terrace, Charlton, London, was on bail at the time of the Milford Haven arrest, for inflicting grievous bodily harm on another dealer in Yeovil.
Prosecutor Stephen Rees told Swansea Crown Court that in that incident Renford had punched a fellow dealer after he had refused to carry a deactivated handgun. The punch shattered the victim’s spectacles, with a shard of glass hitting his eye.
His sight was saved by doctors, but it has been compromised. Renford also has previous convictions for theft matters, affray, and drug trafficking. At Elm Lane, he had been obstructive towards the police, and ultimately had to be manhandled into the police van.
Barrister Dyfed Thomas explained that his client Renford had been sent to Pembrokeshire by those higher up in the drug gang’s hierarchy. In 2017, Renford was arrested for another drug dealing matter, and the gang’s mobile phone was seized. It is thought that he had then been sent to Milford Haven to pay off the debt of losing that phone.
Judge Peter Heywood said that having read a psychiatric report into Renford, and it was clear there was suggestibility and gullibility to the defendant. The court heard how the appropriate sentence for the section 20 wounding would have been 20 months prison, reduced to 15 months given his guilty plea.
The appropriate sentence for possession with intent to supply charges would have been 48 months concurrently, reduced to 43 for his guilty plea.
No charges were brought over the machete.
The sentences will run consecutively, meaning overall 58 months.
Renford will serve half of it in custody before serving the remainder on licence in the community.
