A carer working with vulnerable young adults who began a relationship with a toyboy gang member, was jailed today for trafficking missing teenagers and using them for county lines drugs dealing.
Itman Ismail, now 28, was employed as a deputy manager with a care group in London which supported vulnerable young adults between 2017 and 2020.
She preferred working with boys and she was assigned as a key worker to Omorie Nixon, now 20, who was recruited into the gang culture and rose through the ranks.
Exeter Crown Court heard that they later began an intimate relationship. The pair admitted four counts of human trafficking between December 2019 and last March.
Itman Ismail, (left) now 28, was assigned as a key worker to Omorie Nixon (right), now 20, who was recruited into the gang culture and rose through the ranks
Nixon was also convicted of conspiracy to supply class A drugs – heroin and crack cocaine. Ismail was jailed for four years, while Nixon was detained for seven years and nine months in a Young Offenders Institution.
Judge David Evans said: ‘You two formed a relationship and you each entered into a criminal activity with open eyes and full understanding of its scope.
‘Ismail you were well aware having been the key worker to Nixon that he had been the subject of assistance from the very charity for which you worked.
‘There was no naivety from either of you in this case. You both knew full well the harm caused by drug use and drug dealing in a whole community. It was a mutual thing – a true criminal partnership.’
He said Ismail, who had no previous convictions, went from her charity work to the ‘cold hearted criminal exploitation’ of vulnerable and marginalised youngsters ‘seduced by the glamour of it’.
Prosecutor Joss Ticehurst said: ‘The two defendants were involved in a county lines drug supply operation that used young people to transport drugs from London to Devon and supply to drug users in the Devon area.’
Mr Ticehurst said Ismail was key worker to Nixon before they began ‘an intimate relationship’.
The 11-month Devon and Cornwall police investigation is the first county lines linked human trafficking case which has led to a conviction in the force area.
The court heard vulnerable youths – three of the four were missing from home – and aged 15 and 16 were used the drugs inside their bodies.
Police said a forensic toxicologist said if the packages had split, the boys could have died from drug toxicity.
Ismail and Nixon began an intimate relationship, and are pictured together at a car hire firm
Ismail arrived from Somalia with no English at all and her first intimate relationship was with Nixon, said defence lawyer Daniel Murray.
The court heard the 2:1 graduate has lost her career and good name as the architect of her own downfall. He said she was ‘naive in affairs of the heart’ and she admitted ‘turning a blind eye’ to the drugs trade.
Ismail and Nixon first came to notice when police stopped their car carrying them and two youths on the A38 near Plymouth, Devon, around midnight in January 2020.
The next day the same car was stopped in Torquay, Devon, and the pair were found with youths aged 15 and 16 in the back – and drugs were found concealed in the teen’s bodies.
Police said the pair used at least seven hire cars and their phones revealed searches for ‘drug towns’ and ‘Torquay drug problem’.
In two months until March 2019 more than £25,000 was paid into her accounts.
Omorie Nixon was convicted of conspiracy to supply class A drugs – heroin and crack cocaine
Her phone showed e mail evidence suggesting she was applying for care home management jobs in Devon and Cornwall while on trips trafficking the youth victims to the region, said investigator Detective Constable Ben Paul.
Defence barrister Nick Lewin said Nixon’s background was shocking and he grew up on a North London estate where murder and misery were part of life and surrounded him from an early age with ‘only one way forward’.
The force’s Chief Constable Shaun Sawyer – the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking – said: ‘The exploitation and trafficking of children and young people for drug related purposes and other criminal enterprises can often fall under the auspices of modern slavery.
‘This sounds shocking to all of us in the UK and can occur to children born here as well as those trafficked into the UK and exploited here.
‘While the term ‘county lines’ has fallen into everyday use, it is important that we do not use this term to airbrush out the abhorrence of criminal exploitation of children and young people, which is often what the term means.’