Thaindian News

London, May 9 (ANI): Child gangs have become a chilling reality of the British landscape, a new book has revealed.

According to the book written by Patrick Regan,children as young as six and seven are being recruited.

They are trained in the use of sharp objects to cause injury to their prey, and are told not to use knives but other seemingly harmless objects like sharpened plastic, shards of CDs etc. This is to avoid being arrested for possession of knives.

These lethal hoodlums include a gang of under-7s known as the “Babies”, News of the World reports.

“A gun is easier to get than a mobile phone,” Regan quoted a community worker in Birmingham as having told him.

Regan quotes the chairman of a police advisory body as saying, “We’d have had a lot more deaths on our streets if it wasn’t for the fact that the youngsters firing the guns are such poor shots.”

While shootings remain comparatively rare, police report a 500 percent increase in youngsters taking some form of weapon to school. Some children also wear bullet-proof vests under their school uniform for fear of retaliatory attacks.

The children are methodically taught to stab their target repeatedly in the backside so that he/she would be scarred for life and need a colostomy bag. They are also taught to aim at the arms to cause distress that is not fatal.

Bizarre gang initiation rituals include raping someone before being deemed fit to join.

There has also been a disturbing increase in the number of girls joining such gangs, sexual exploitation is part of the rigueur de jour for these girls. They also serve as honey traps and drug and weapon handlers.

“The boys would treat us as their bitches, phone whoever they felt like f***ing, order them over, and most girls would drop everything and do whatever was wanted,” a girl ex-gangster told the paper.

Regan reveals how a girl will be phoned by a gang member and asked for sex. If she agrees she will then be asked if their “brethren” can join in.

“This they refer to as a line-up, where one girl performs sexual acts on a group of men in turn,” he explains. “Their justification is that if the girl doesn’t respect herself why would they respect her?”

Official estimates which suggest there are 20,000 gang members across the UK hugely under-estimate the problem, says Regan.

The revelations made by the book are sure to have Britain’s new Home Secretary squirming in his seat. (ANI)