Today, the Northern Ireland Executive’s Programme on Paramilitarism and Organised Crime (EPPOC), launch their third and final case-study video designed to highlight the harms perpetrated by paramilitary groups.
The film, ‘Child Exploitation’, tells the story of a young woman who was groomed by paramilitaries when she was a child. She speaks of how she was lured in at the age of 14, coerced into carrying drugs, and later exploited into committing serious crimes.
The hard-hitting short film has been launched on the same day the Departments of Health, Justice, and Education, published a 2-year Action Plan to address Child Criminal Exploitation (CCE) in Northern Ireland.
The CCE Action Plan is a cross Departmental, multi-agency plan to improve the response of government to the criminal exploitation of young people and to embed this within the child protection system.
The case study video series, whilst fictional, is closely based on extensive research into the experiences of young people collected by Dr Colm from Queen’s University, Belfast, for research funded by the Executive Programme on Paramilitarism and Organised Crime. This research can be viewed at endingtheharm.com/about-us-old/news-research/.
