Emma Dix, whose 18-year-old son Joe was stabbed seven times in 2022 in Norwich after being lured into a county lines gang at age 13, has said child exploitation 'destroys' families. Joe, who had a normal upbringing with a traditional family background, was approached in a park after school and became trapped in the gang lifestyle.
Joe's descent into exploitation
Emma described how Joe would often go missing, once for 10 days, and at age 15 was charged after being arrested in a property with £12,000 worth of drugs money. 'The years and years of Joe being exploited just destroys you as a family,' she told The Mirror. 'As a child, it stole his childhood away from him. The pressure on him, he used to get so cross. There were almost two sides of Joe. When he was at home, he was this family-loving young man. He was funny and he used to take the mick out of us all and stuff like that. And then, when he was out, he was just this completely different person. And obviously, we never sort of got him back, and we had loads of help from social services, and the police, and the school were really good, but he just got too deeply involved in that sort of lifestyle in the end.'
The night of the murder
On a normal Friday evening while Joe was 'having his tea,' he received a phone call telling him to 'come and help because the flat is being robbed.' Emma recounted: 'Joe basically off and went, and when he got there, there were three people from a rival gang in Norwich that basically were all armed with knives, attacked Joe quite savagely, and then they walked off and left him there.' Hans Beeharry, Benjamin Gil and Cameron Palmer were convicted of killing Joe at Norwich Crown Court in October 2023.
Charity and crackdown
Emma and her husband Phil have since set up an anti-knife crime charity in Joe’s name, which opened Norfolk’s first knife-surrender bin on the fourth anniversary of their son’s death in January. Meanwhile, British Transport Police (BTP) officers conducted a major county lines operation on Tuesday, with more than 40 uniformed and undercover police officers, drug dogs and safeguarding experts descending on Stratford train station in east London. Almost 3,000 drug dealing lines have been shut down and nearly 1,500 knives seized in the last year under a relentless drive to break the criminal network.
Call for support after 18
Emma welcomed the Government’s county lines crackdown but called for more support for children after they turn 18. 'Child criminal exploitation is a form of child abuse, so it's when the adults are using the child for their own personal gain to do illegal things,' she said. 'The difficulty is, though, what happens when they turn 18? They're not one day a victim and the next day a perpetrator.' She noted that Joe went from having three meetings a week with social workers to 'nothing' when he turned 18. 'In my eyes, Joe lasted a month into 18, that was it. I’m not saying it was because he didn’t have any of that support, but that couldn’t have helped,' she added.
