Ceejay's Story Gang Life

CeeJay is 17 years old and lives in London.

Her early teenage years were troubled and she began mixing with the wrong sort.

When I first started off I was with a group of girls.

I started to hang around then with older boys who you could say were

gang-affiliated and that's what got me on to selling drugs and stuff.

CeeJay is one of a growing number of vulnerable young women

drawn into gang culture.

It didn't take long for her to get caught up

in a dangerous criminal lifestyle.

Once you see someone make money through that, I don't know,

drugs, and you see how easy it is, you think, "I can do that."

Drug-dealing may look like easy money, but it came at a high price.

CeeJay's life started spiralling out of control.

She lived in a constant state of fear.

The relatives who cared for her didn't realise how dangerous

her life had become, until it was almost too late.

He left a knife in my room.

We kind of relied on it at times because we needed it.

Because, like, you could get robbed at any moment.

Getting robbed, you don't know, you could get stabbed at the same time.

Something could happen. People go to all extremes.

We left the knife in my room. My grandma took it.

She called Uncle Tony and he said, "What do you need a knife for?"

I was like, "We need it." Obviously, we showed him the rock of cocaine.

Well, it was crack cocaine.

He just was like, "Whoa."

The episode brought matters to a head for CeeJay

and the relatives who cared for her,

but despite the problems she had caused them, they rallied round

and helped her find the strength to move away from her former associates

and begin the first stage of recovering a normal life.

I pushed my family to breaking point. I really did.

Everyone just gave up on me. I didn't really care.

I woke up one morning, I thought this is not the way forward.

Because the way you go, you end up in either prison or death.

I don't want to go to prison.

I don't want to die, but that's what happens in that life. It's a cycle.

Once you are stuck in it, you go round and round and round,

and that's not the way that I want to go.

Almost a year on, CeeJay has moved away from her drug-dealing past

and the gang-affiliated individuals that influenced her,

but it's been a hard and lonely road.

It's meant severing ties with people she's been friends with for years.

The experience has made CeeJay realise that she may need

some specialist help to ensure she can cope with the change

and remain on track.

-You all right?

-Nice to meet you.

Gwenton Slowly is a former notorious gang member.

He is the living embodiment of how to perform an about-turn

and change things up.

Gwenton now advises the Metropolitan Police Force's

most senior officers on their anti-gang strategy.

He also runs a project that rehabilitates young gang members,

finding them jobs and homes in return for them

staying on the right side of the law.

-So how long have you been on this road?

-For about three years now.

We were all sat down thinking about firearms.

That's how deeply we were in it.

We just thought if we are going to do this, we need to do it

properly, we need protection because what if we get robbed?

What are we going to do?

See, this is the mentality that I have,

but I just need to forget about it now, it's not good.

Despite how far CeeJay has travelled,

she is still only the beginning of her journey away from gang life.

You are actually in the transition stage.

It is very, very dangerous right now.

It's a long road, and the temptation's going to come.

What if I was to say to you, break your SIM card?

Oh, I don't know about that, my SIM card?

If you are going to walk away from the road,

you have to get rid of all your old friends.

I went through that same transition myself.

Cos that temptation is always there.

All it takes for someone to ring you one of them lonely days

and that's it, you are gone again.

When you start getting to that point when you feel like,

"You know what? I'm going to do a madness."

You have certain people like me who you can phone and whoever else

that is positive in your life, cos, trust me, it's going to come.

Right now, I don't know.

I don't know.

CeeJay is beginning to realise how hard it is to completely

break free from the past.

To help her move on, she visits a psychotherapist

in her search for answers.

Can you say a little bit, CeeJay, about home life with Mum and Dad?

I have never lived with my mum or dad.

So we can see maybe movement towards maybe some of the gang culture,

the search for family.

Maybe whatever that took, whether that meant crime...

-I made another family, really.

-Like an extended?

-Yeah.

I thought like I had brothers and sisters that weren't actually my blood-related,

but they would be there for me like brothers and sisters.

CeeJay struggles to come to terms with the seriousness

of her past life.

When we started selling it, like selling drugs,

that's when I kind of realised how deep I was in it.

-Are we talking about making it up to sell it?

-Yeah, yeah, like...

SHE LAUGHS

Oh, God!

This is bad.

I can see that it is slightly uncomfortable for you, CeeJay.

Maybe in a way, the laughter is a defence,

but now in hindsight looking back, it maybe something that is

an uncomfortable feeling around what was going on then.

Doing that, the people you're around,

you are never safe at any point.

-Yes.

-But really, we were actually like really scared most of the time.

I am going to tell the truth, sometimes you get scared, but...

Yeah.

..once you'd actually done it,

you don't boast about it at all, it is nothing to be proud of.

It's just horrible.

Even the job itself of being... working with

and selling drugs as well, the job itself is not nice.

Cos you just... You are just... It's no fest.

Her experience with Mei Chung has helped CeeJay to confront

the criminality of her drug-dealing past,

and to come to terms with the issues that made gang life

and its criminal exploits so attractive to her.

'I feel kind of stupid, actually, for putting myself through all that.'

You kind of scar yourself for a little bit.

Because the things that you witness and stuff,

the things that you do, you never forget.

In order to fully move on from a gang-affiliated past,

CeeJay meets with Isha.

Hiya, how are you? I'm good, how are you?

A former member of a south London girl gang,

whose high octane exploits almost got her killed.

I got into trouble when I was at school.

I got involved in a girl gang.

Drugs, you know, guns and that sort of life.

I've had a very, very close friend that died, that got shot. You know.

I had it look at myself and say, "Do I really want to be doing this?"

"Do I really like what I'm doing right now?"

What do you think about that sort of lifestyle now,

do you think it is worth it?

-It's not worth it at all.

-Why?

-The outcome is either death or prison.

I'm not looking to die young

and I'm not looking to waste my life in prison.

You want to look back at your life and say, "Yeah, it was worth living."

You don't want to look back at your life and say,

"No, I've flopped and where am I now?"

It's been really good meeting you

because along your journey I was probably there at one stage.

Obviously, I haven't gone as far,

but it's good to know you can come out of the other end OK.

-So, it's cool.

-You can come out the other end more than OK.

You can come out of the other end and be on top.

Everything that I have done on the road,

I put it in a positive way and I went far with it.

I have found out that I'm a good speaker, a good listener,

a good adviser, I'm a good businesswoman all round.

So the same things that you were striving for

when you were on the road, still strive for that,

but do it in a positive way.

'Meeting Isha today was like proper putting the cherry on the cake.'

I'm not the only one who has changed my life and is trying to get where I need to get.

So it's made me feel very confident about the future

and me changing. Yeah.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd