Teens had drug stash at home of ‘Fagin’

A DRUG dealer subjected to a two-hour torture ordeal was described as a modern-day “Fagin” after boys aged 15 and 17 were caught selling heroin from his home.

The boys, from the West Midlands, were caught when police swooped on the house in Neath – prompting a judge to question why tenant Paul Evans had teenage boys running their illegal activities from his property.

Swansea Crown Court heard that on June 5 this year police executed a search warrant at a house in Windsor Road in Neath town centre.

Frank Phillips, prosecuting, said officers found two teenage boys inside.

One of the boys, aged 15, had four wraps of heroin in his trousers while the other, a 17-year-old, had more than £2,000 in cash on him.

The youths – who cannot be named for legal reasons – told police they were missing people from Birmingham.

The prosecutor said the tenant of the house, 52-year-old Evans, had on his phone texts and Facebook messages about cannabis dealing including “numerous requests for drugs”.

Evans is the same man who just three weeks earlier had been viciously beaten and “tortured” by having boiling water poured over him in a robbery at his then home just eight doors away.

Evans, of Windsor Road, Neath, pleaded guilty to supplying cannabis while the juveniles – now aged 16 and 17 – admitted possession of heroin with intent to supply.

The court heard Evans had originally been charged with permitting his premises to be used for the supply of heroin but the Crown Prosecution Service had subsequently accepted his plea to the cannabis charge.

Mr Phillips said following the discovery of the teenagers the National Crime Agency had carried out an investigation to determine whether the pair were the victims of modern slavery and people trafficking but had concluded they were not.

Francis Jones, for the 17-year-old defendant, said his client grew up in the care system and had gone through “an astonishing number of placements”. He said the teenager was being “used by others to further their business of supplying drugs”.

Dean Pulling, for Evans, said his client had spent time in hospital prior to the police raid and was unfit to carry out any unpaid work in the community.

Judge Geraint Walters described Evans as “Fagin” – a reference to the character from Dickens’ Oliver Twist who leads a group of pickpocketing children – and questioned what he was doing “hanging around with young boys with thousands of pounds in their pockets”.

He told Evans he thought he had been “extremely lucky” to “negotiate” the charge he had pleaded to rather than the original offence and said he did not fully understand what the defendant’s role had been in providing a home for the teenagers.

Evans was sentenced to eight months in prison, suspended for two years, and ordered to complete a rehabilitation course. The teenagers were each given youth referral orders with intensive supervision and three-month long nightly curfews.