What is ‘cuckooing’? The devastating crime hiding in plain sight

Have you heard of ‘cuckooing’?

Despite the innocuous name, it is an insidious phenomenon that sees criminals preying on the most vulnerable people in our society.

Typical targets include those addicted to drugs, the elderly, people who are financially vulnerable and those with learning disabilities – but anyone can become a victim.

And yet, cuckooing remains relatively obscure.

What is ‘cuckooing’?

Cuckooing is the act of taking over a person’s home – either by coercion, manipulation or outright force.

It leaves the victim powerless, sometimes treated as slaves or even forced to flee the place they should feel safest.

Criminals then turn these properties into a base of operations for drug trafficking, arms dealing or even sex work.

In other cases, the perpetrators can be friends relatives of the victims taking over the property for ransom. 

Disturbingly, victims are sometimes prosecuted alongside the offenders, while those responsible may walk free or face charges that fail to reflect the true impact of their actions.

Because it happens behind closed doors – like most forms of abuse – it is difficult to accurately record the scale of it.

But a rough idea of its pervasiveness can be gleaned from a nationwide crackdown on county lines networks last year which saw nearly 1,300 cuckooed addresses visited in a single week.

‘It’s still surprising that people don’t know about cuckooing,’ Jo Grimshaw, head of anti-social behaviour at Surrey Police, tells Metro.

‘I think it’s been around forever, the exploitation of somebody in their home, and I think it is hard because it is behind closed doors.

Jo goes on: ‘I don’t think it’s got any worse – I think what we’ve worked out is we now know what we’re looking at.

‘Everyone is vulnerable. If you’ve got a house, or a flat, or a caravan you can be exploited.

‘We have seen people in multi-million-pound houses being exploited and cuckooed. We also see people in one-bedroom bedsit flats being exploited.’

‘They just use you and abuse you’

‘I was on heroin and crack at the time. I was using that all the time,’ cuckooing victim Mark says.

‘They just saw the opportunity there and they asked me to stay at the flat. I agreed to it because all I wanted was the drugs. They kept me in debt with them just so they could stay there.

‘And they made sure that I knew the consequences if things didn’t go their way.

‘I didn’t really feel like I could say, “look, you have to go now”, and it’s just a perpetual cycle.

‘You just can’t do anything about it. You don’t feel like you’ve got an option, so you just take more and more drugs.’

Another victim, Aimee, said: ‘I just started having a mental breakdown.

I started crying all the time, and they just brought friends, and they would be drinking and getting people to wrap up drugs and started selling drugs and things like that from my home, which I never allowed and never wanted.

‘But I just could never do anything about it and it got worse after that. They started being abusive to me. I couldn’t see my children or anything, because they just use you and abuse you.’

Early intervention in Surrey

Surrey Police was one of the first forces to recognise how widespread cuckooing is.

‘I don’t think it’s got any worse – I think what we’ve worked out is we now know what we’re looking at,’ Jo says.

‘Everyone is vulnerable. If you’ve got a house, or a flat, or a caravan you can be exploited.

‘We have seen people in multi-million-pound houses being exploited and cuckooed. We also see people in one-bedroom bedsit flats being exploited.’

In 2018, they formed a team of anti-social behaviour officers dedicated to combating cuckooing in the county.

They partnered with local charity Catalyst Support, so that the police could focus on the offenders, and Catalyst Support could reach out to the victims of cuckooing.

‘I think there is stigma around the people that end up being victims, and they probably think “well I use drugs, or I have got a criminal history, so people aren’t going to believe me if I say anything”,’ Karen, a specialist outreach team leader at the charity tells Metro.

‘We work with the victims, and we’ve seen how much devastation this can cause to people’s lives. We have had 18-year-olds, and our oldest client has been a 93-year-old great-grandmother.

‘People probably think it’s just county lines. It can be local drug dealers and users, and it can also be family members.

‘Sometimes if it’s a family member, it’s a lot harder to do anything about it for the fear of, “actually I’m sending my family member down the criminal justice route” or “I’m making my family member homeless.”

‘So, it can be quite difficult. If cuckooing isn’t in itself a crime, then they are not always seen as a victim.’

Karen says: ‘We feel it’s really important to see people in their homes, to get a true picture of what is going on, because it could be if you ring a friend and say how are you and they say “I’m absolutely fine” but then you went around there and see that maybe they haven’t got out of bed for a couple of days, the washing-up’s stacked up, you get that true picture of what’s going on and we feel that’s what’s important with these clients

They might say that nothing’s happening and then you see that actually there’s a duvet down the side of the sofa and then you can question well, to me that looks like someone else might be staying here and things like that

We try to see people as soon as possible because it’s really important to get that support in place. We need to build up people’s resilience to stop it happening again.’

Cuckooing offence is ‘not the end – it is the beginning’

Justice and Care, a charity fighting against modern slavery, has been campaigning since 2021 for cuckooing to be criminalised.

Tatiana Gren-Jardan, their head of policy, tells Metro: ‘The campaign started three years ago when I received a call from some police officers, and we were discussing issues around modern slavery investigations.

‘They raised the issue that CPS won’t prosecute for cuckooing under the Modern Slavery Act and that it didn’t fit the definition.

‘We were quite surprised because what is it if not exploitation when somebody else’s property is taken over their life is taken over. They live in fear. They are threatened.

‘Yes, they may not be forced to do something and be exploited in that way but still their life is completely on hold.’

Earlier this year, the government announced it will be explicitly outlawed under the Crime and Policing Bill.

Under current CPS guidance, when dealing with a case of suspected cuckooing, prosecutors can look to offences such as assault, harassment and modern slavery offences – but these may not cover all examples.

‘By no means is it the end,’ Tatiana says. ‘It is the beginning, but again a significant milestone for us.’

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