By Eric King
A young teenager who was murdered in a drugs turf war after being groomed by drug dealers was let down by the system had been arrested in a crack den months earlier but police did not contact child exploitation staff, a report has found.
Jaden Moodie was 14 when he was stabbed to death after being knocked off his moped in East London in January 2019.
A serious case review concluded that opportunities to protect young Jaden were missed by police and other agencies.
Three months before his death, Jaden was found with an older boy in a county lines flat in Bournemouth with 39 wraps of crack cocaine, two packets of cocaine, a mobile phone and £325 in cash.
Reports said he appeared to be “a vulnerable young person frightened by what he was being groomed and coerced into by others”.
He gave the impression that “he definitely wanted to find a way out of the mess he was getting into”, they said.
The report revealed that two Dorset Police officers drove him home to London but failed to involve specialist child exploitation workers.
In the 12 months to August 2019, Dorset Police found 36 children from London in Bournemouth in similar circumstances to Jaden.
Jaden’s school in Waltham Forest was not told about the arrest but excluded him for a separate incident.Jaden’s father Julian Moodie was convicted of drug dealing in 2009 and deported to Jamaica a year later, when Jaden was a young boy.
Trouble
The report said that he began getting into trouble after starting secondary school in Nottingham in 2015, the report said.
He ran away from home, was accused of bullying and Ms Bailey was threatened at knifepoint when someone came looking for Jaden.
Ayoub Majdouline was jailed in December for his murder.
Jaden’s family said they agreed with “many of the findings” of the report.
The family’s layer, Alice Hardy, said the report showed Jaden “was failed by the system”.
“Jaden was both homeless and out of school at the time of his death, both of which could have been prevented,” she said.
“The report shows there is no effective system in pace to respond and help children at risk from exploitation through county lines.
Jaden was living with his grandmother in Leyton, and his mother, Jada Bailey, had been sleeping on friends’ sofas while she waited to be rehoused.
She had told housing officers she was trying to keep her son out of trouble and was keen to find somewhere for them to live in Waltham Forest, the report said.
She was allocated a flat two weeks before Jaden was stabbed to death.
The review also found that Ms Bailey and Jaden’s housing needs “could have been handled in a timelier manner”, especially as his vulnerability to exploitation became clear