Teenagers who have been stabbed or shot are turning to backstreet clinics, or their families, for medical treatment because they are too scared to go to hospital, according to mothers trying to tackle Britain’s epidemic of knife and gun crime.
Elaine Donnellon, one of three mothers who is co-founding an anti-violence charity in the north London boroughs of Camden and Islington, said: “We have been told about backstreet clinics where kids go to get patched up.
“We already know parents are doing this for their children: we also know some of the kids who have been stabbed have been stitched up by their mums.
“We understand that this is because they do not want to be on the radar of the authorities. If they go to hospital, the police will be alerted and they could be labelled and stigmatised, even if they are innocent.”
Donnellon, along with Sandrine Kasango and Renee Horsford, are among a growing numbers of mothers across the capital desperately trying to protect their children from knife and gun crime.
The trio, who are working with the authorities to set up the charity CamdenAgainstViolence, have already organised a silent march in the borough, where the weekend market is a hotspot for drug dealing.
The mothers say that it has become “a [youth] trend to carry a knife and youngsters compete to have the most ornamental handle. They have machetes, swords, but most of them are just scared. Every young person we have spoken to knows someone who has been stabbed. There’s even an Instagram scoreboard of stabbings.”
The mothers’ warning comes as the figures for fatalities from stabbings in London last week rose to 36 this year.
Youngsters who survive can be left paralysed, on life support or in a wheelchair. One trauma surgeon at the Royal London Hospital in east London said that children with knife and gunshot wounds — some as young as 13 — are bring treated daily.
This weekend charities confirmed that social and youth workers are seeing injured young people who had avoided getting NHS medical treatment.
Dr Rebecca Long, joint medical director of StreetDoctors, a charity that teaches teenagers first aid techniques to use on the street, said: “Young people are saying to social workers that they do not always go to hospital if they are stabbed. It is alarming.”
Police and doctors warned that youngsters risk disability and even death from infected or internal injuries if they did not get proper and prompt medical attention.
“It’s madness not to go to hospital,” said Superintendent Nick Davies, borough commander of Camden and Islington police. “I would say to mothers: if your child is stabbed, get them to hospital. Don’t even think about not taking them.”
But mothers say that young black teenagers fear that if they go to casualty departments they will be added to the Metropolitan police’s gangs database.
Established in the wake of the 2011 London riots, the “gangs matrix” holds information on about 3,800 “persons of interest”.
Horsford said: “I have a son who is a black boy. He’s an A-grade student, never in any trouble, but he could be put on the matrix if he got stabbed. As a mum, I would rush him to hospital but I can put myself in other mums’ shoes and feel the panic. Imagine if you already have social services on your back. Young people are being criminalised from the age of 10.”
Davies confirmed that police officers were stationed in hospital casualty departments and do “track back” stabbing victims, but he defended the gangs matrix. “There has to be a method of identifying people who are violent or in danger,” he said.
He added that the matrix helps youngsters at risk by giving them access to extra support, education and job opportunities. He said it operates a traffic light system — “red means you are at real risk of being stabbed”. It also reveals the hotspot areas where young people are most at risk of knife crime.
There are about 14 gangs with up to 50 members in each in the areas that Davies polices in north London. Most members are aged between 15 and 25, but some are as young as 10.
The gangs are postcode-based, with names such as “the Cally Boys” — a reference to Caledonian Road — and they run drug-dealing operations like businesses, attacking rivals in other gangs. He said that youngsters were also being influenced by the glamorised violence in Hollywood films.
Duncan Bew, clinical director of major trauma and acute surgery at King’s College Hospital, said there had been a 75% increase in injuries from knife crime in the past 18 months. Some youngsters were now wearing stab vests on the streets to protect themselves against the outbreak of violence.
Bew said he had treated teenagers who told him they had not sought NHS treatment for previous stab wounds, but added that he had seen no evidence the phenomenon was on the rise. “We need to reassure people that if they come to hospital they will not be labelled.”
There is a growing acceptance in the capital that mothers could be crucial to stopping teenagers carrying weapons. The Camden mothers’ initiative started in February when Horsford posted “Enough is enough” on Facebook after waking up to the news that a gang had hacked Sadiq Aadam, 20, to death with a samurai sword in Camden.
The attack took place just hours after Abdikarim Hassan, 17, was fatally stabbed less than half a mile away. He was killed near a memorial to another Camden teenager, Lewis Blackman, 19, who had been knifed to death two days earlier.
This weekend a mini football tournament will be held to mark the birthday of Kwasi Anim-Boadu, 20, who was stabbed to death in April. His family have launched a fundraising drive to pay for his funeral.
The north London mothers are calling for a weapons amnesty, with bins set up across the boroughs to allow children to give up their knives anonymously.
In the meantime, Davies said that if youngsters wanted to give knives to their mothers to hand to police, he would accept them “no questions asked”.