'There’s lots of people to blame': Jaden Moodie's family tell of trauma

Everybody failed 14-year-old Jaden Moodie, his family say. If the teachers or the social workers or the Home Office officials had acted differently, they believe, he would still be alive today.

After Wednesday’s verdict in the Old Bailey trial of Ayoub Majdouline, a 19-year-old drug dealer who in 2018 had been classed as a victim of modern slavery over concerns he was being exploited, Jaden’s loved ones held hands in court and said: “Yes. For Jaden, we’ve done it.”

But while the conviction – of just one of the five members of the Mali Boys gang believed to have played a part in the killing – brought temporary relief, their grief will not be numbed.

“Sometimes my son appears in front of me and stares into my eyes,” Jaden’s father, Julian, told the Guardian. “He died brutally at such a young age. It was supposed to be him burying me, not the other way round.”

Julian was deported from the UK in 2009 and he was allowed to attend the end of the trial only after a court battle with the Home Office.

In January this year his son was riding a moped in east London when a stolen Mercedes knocked him to the road. Its passengers got out and killed him as he lay defenceless on the ground. Majdouline’s trial heard that Jaden was dealing drugs for the Beaumont Crew, a rival gang to the Mali Boys.

Jaden’s sister Leah says her early childhood memories are of a happy family life. She and Jaden were among five siblings; Julian worked long hours on a building site while his wife, Jada Bailey, worked for the Post Office. “My dad made me feel safe and protected and like a proper family,” Leah wrote years later.

After the 7/7 attacks in 2005, security was tightened up at the building site and Julian, who did not have a national insurance number, was no longer able to work. He turned to selling drugs to support the family and ultimately received a three-and-a-half-year sentence, which led to his deportation.

Jada became the sole breadwinner. But she suffered a devastating back injury while at work, which led to an extended period off sick with little money coming into the household. Times became very hard for the family.

A few years after her dad was deported to Jamaica, Leah, then 14, wrote an eloquent letter to the Home Office imploring officials to let him return to the UK because his children needed him so desperately. She wrote that the deportation “caused catastrophic heartbreak in my family. I couldn’t eat or sleep for weeks. I just wanted my dad back in my life.”

She also told officials about her mother’s back injury and how, as a result of the family’s financial struggles, sometimes there was no food in the house. And in a chillingly prophetic remark, her letter referred to the impact on Jaden of growing up without his father.

“My dad was a role model to us all, especially my little brother,” she wrote. “But now there’s no role model for my brother to look up to. He looks at other kids going to football matches and the park with their dads and looks at me and says: ‘That should be me and dad.’”

The letter went on: “My dad made a mistake but we all have. Jesus is the only one without sin.” She concluded by thanking the Home Office for reading her letter and said: “I hope you’ll be able to help.”

It could not. She received a chilly reply saying deportation orders remained in place until they were revoked and that officials could not discuss her father’s case with her because she was a “third party”.

“Our lives would have been completely different if the Home Office had let my dad stay here,” Leah says now. “I believe with my whole heart that if they’d allowed him to stay Jaden would still be alive today.”

Leah is now 19 and working two jobs to try to keep the family afloat. “Everything has been a blur since the day Jaden was murdered,” she says. “I’m not going to cry because I’ve got no tears left. Jaden has been appearing to me in nightmares. Having to sit through the murder trial has brought us right back to day one. Our family is dealing with trauma on top of trauma on top of trauma.”

After Julian’s enforced departure, the family worked hard to keep Jaden safe. But they say that while living in Nottingham he was badly bullied and experienced racist abuse at school. They say he was excluded when he defended himself against the attacks.

Fearing he could be exploited by unscrupulous adults who wanted to use him to sell drugs and pull him into gang culture once he was no longer at school, Jaden’s mum begged for help from education and social services officials. No one appeared to be listening. At one point, in desperation, Jada home-schooled her son for more than a year.

Despite the family’s efforts, Jaden’s problems grew. In March 2018, when he was 13, he was given a youth conditional caution after police seized an air pistol, a knife and some cannabis during an alteraction in Nottingham. In November last year he admitted appearing in a Snapchat video with an imitation firearm. Majdouline’s trial heard that Jaden was the youngest member of the Beaumont Crew.

To the family, the focus on these details is an insult to their suffering. Jaden’s aunt Tesfa Green says the family has been “dragged to hell and back” during the trial, and that the “fetishisation” of gang rivalries and focus on Jaden’s activities made them feel it was Jaden rather than Majdouline who was on trial.

“If you’re looking to demonise a family, what difference does it make whether we’re good or bad?” she asked. “A little boy is still dead. My family radiate love. We adored Jaden. I could give you a list longer than my arm of our attempts to safeguard Jaden.” She lists steps the family took to try to keep him safe: the home-schooling, a summer in Jamaica with his father so that he might be out of the reach of adults who would exploit him, and his mother’s pleas for help.

Meanwhile, Jaden’s loved ones were also living in fear. His mother and sister were both threatened by gang members. Although Jada complained to police and social services, the family say no action was taken to protect them or Jaden.

Part of the family’s frustration is that so much is known about the gangs in Waltham Forest, the London borough where Jaden was living at the time of his death, but they say not enough has been done to stop these gangs from flourishing. Waltham Forest council commissioned a study, From Postcodes To Profits, looking at gangs in the borough, particularly the Mali Boys. It said the gang was “a violent and feared group across the borough”.

Green said: “Children’s services and schools know which kids are at risk. The question is: what are they doing about it?”

A spokeswoman for Waltham Forest council said: “Our hearts go out to everyone who knew and loved Jaden.” She said exclusions such as Jaden’s were “never taken lightly” and came down to balancing “addressing individual behavioural issues alongside the needs of the wider running of the school”. Gang prevention funding had been increased by £800,000 over the next three years, she added.

At the trial it emerged that the killer had been part of a grim cycle of violence himself, having fallen into drug-dealing to “survive” after his father, Othamane Majdouline, was beaten to death with a hammer at his flat in King’s Cross, London. Othamane Majdouline’s killer had been visiting the flat to buy drugs.

Ayoub Majdouline told the court he had been abused at the home he shared with his mother and stepfather. After his father died he went into care, and he came to be classed as a victim of modern slavery.

After the guilty verdict, Jaden’s mother again described her despair at his death and said that in her view the problems he faced were all the result of being a loyal friend. “You send your child to school and you think they’re going to be safe,” she said. “There’s lots of people to blame. It’s the groomers, it’s the dealers. It’s all sorts.”

She added: “I just miss him so terribly. I just want him home.”

Related: 'Modern slave', 19, convicted of murder of Jaden Moodie, 14

Jaden’s family say they will never get used to life without him. Green said councils knew which children were at risk of significant harm and of recruitment to gangs. “Our kids are on their books,” she said. “Teachers also know which of their kids are vulnerable. But instead of supporting those children, they are funnelling them into the pipeline of criminalisation by excluding them from school.”

The family are calling for a public inquiry to try to break the cycle of these killings, and an immediate freeze on school exclusions as an important first step. They have also set up the Jaden Moodie Movement, working with grassroots organisations to support vulnerable children.

“We have become complacent and desensitised to the murder of children,” said Green. “No 14-year-old deserves to be mowed down and terrorised. We have paid the highest price possible and we’re committed to ensuring that no other family pays it too. That’s what Jaden would have wanted.”