Two 16 year olds have been arrested in Ghana for being mules for druggies. I have every sympathy for the kids, but at 16 they are not naive little kids and it will be very difficult for our Government to plea for leniency on their behalf.
If someone pays for you to deceive your family, go to a country and pick up a couple of lap top bags and bring them back to blighty, you must smell a rat, surely or are 16 year olds that naive. The answer is that a sane 16 year old is not, but when figuratively" wined, dined and romanced", the old teenage hormones kick in and they will do anything.
Every parent has a responsibility to remind their children of the dangers of strangers and being romanced, even at the cost of angered response from the children.
If guilty, and there seems to be very little evidence to suggest that they were not, the authorities have to try and punish them as per the Ghanaian law, which could mean that these kids lose their childhood and return to Britain with their lives shattered, years from now. The only hope is that a deal is done and they serve out their sentence over here. The alternative is that they get special treatment and the whole fight against drug crime and mules is undermined, potentially affecting not the lives of two naive kids but hundreds and thousands of people.
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