Drug addict who featured in Sky News investigation given second chance by rehabilitation charity
Last week, Sky News revealed that councils are spending half of what they did on addiction treatment services 10 years ago, and the number of drug-related deaths has doubled.
We told the story of Craig Murphy, an addict who had been trying to get into rehab for a decade. After our reporting, a rehabilitation charity offered Craig a place in Oxford. We joined him as he moved into his first safe accommodation in years.
Craig Murphy’s mouth is wide open. Inside is a swab scraping along his cheek. Craig, a crack and alcohol addict, is being tested ahead of admission to rehab.
The swab test will show up any opiates, amphetamine, benzo, cocaine, ketamine and other commonly abused drugs. There is also a urine test for alcohol.
Craig looks a little nervous. Or perhaps it’s the exhausting journey he has to make to get him to the ADAPT Charity in Oxford from his home in Burnley. Or maybe it is neither and this is what a man with a 20-year addiction looks like.
The urine test comes back negative. It confirms what Craig says: that he has been sober for nearly three weeks now.
But the drugs test returns positive. Craig has cannabis in his system.
“You had cannabis yesterday?” I ask. “But you knew that was going to come up in the test?”
Craig looks apologetic. “I made a stupid mistake by smoking some,” he says.
“It’s hard to say no. It was there and I took it. But I’m here now and I know I’m not going to be touching anything.”
He had better not if he wants to keep his place on rehab.
There’s a growing waiting list and the charity has a zero tolerance policy towards drugs and alcohol. From now on, Craig will be randomly tested once a week.
Craig has been searching for a place on a residential rehab for nearly 10 years. Council funding to addiction recovery services has suffered drastic cuts at the same time demand for places and deaths from addiction are going up.
He was offered a six-month placement with ADAPT in Oxford after his struggle was reported on Sky News last Friday.
‘I was dead for a couple of minutes’
Craig will be sharing a house with three other recovering addicts. He has already formed a bond with one of them, Dave New.
He was exposed to heroin as a 16-year-old in care. His mother, a single parent, died when he just 10-years-old. He describes an early childhood moving from home to home in run down coastal towns across southeast England.
The heroin was supplied by a dealer who lived in the same hostel. It was the start of a traumatic battling addiction with almost every drug.
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‘I was dead for a couple of minutes’
“Two weeks before I came up here, I overdosed and ‘died’,” Dave says.
“I ended up injecting heroin mixed with fentanyl and I overdosed. I was dead for a couple of minutes. When I woke up and looked in the mirror my face was blue. My lips were purple.
“I’ve been here 20 days today. I feel great and it’s all because we’re in safe housing, dry housing, where we’re drug tested regularly.”
Dave is 43 years old now. And this is the first time he has been clean for this long.
Drug free accommodation crucial for recovery
And it is why the charity places so much emphasis on providing safe, drug-free accommodation. It is crucial for any chance of recovery, the charity’s CEO Eddie Cobb tells me.
“Over 80% of our clients have experienced homelessness, being put in sheltered accommodation, where there are other addicts using,” she says. “So there’s just no chance, you know, when you’re around when you want to get clean, and you’re surrounded by other people that are using, it’s impossible for them to get clean.”
Craig is confident that he can stay sober this time. He has just been given the keys to his new home.
As we sit on the bed in room number 4, he takes out his phone and shows me photographs of the other hostels where he has lived.
The pictures show seeping sewage, mouldy bathrooms and boarded up toilets. Depressing pictures of neglect and disrepair. Just like the addiction recovery system so many addicts describe.
But Craig’s challenge was not the dilapidated buildings – it was the addicts still taking drugs and alcohol that made his life hell.
“It just feels like I’ve been given something I’ve never been given before,” he says. “And I’m going to take it. And I’m going to use it.”
Craig knows he’s been given a chance thousands of addicts never get. He also knows, it could be his last.
Three brothers have been jailed after underage girls in Leeds and Barrow-in-Furness were sexually abused and raped over a number of years.
The trio were convicted in October last year, with the abuse taking place between 1996 and 2010.
Shaha Amran Miah, 49, known as Jai; Shaha Alman Miah, 47, known as Ali; and Shah Joman Miah, 38, known as Sarj all pleaded not guilty.
Sarj has since admitted his crimes. However, the judge said it could be a cynical attempt for leniency and did not give him any credit.
Shaha Amran Miah, Shaha Joman Miah and Shaha Alman Miah. Pic: Cumbria Police
They were sentenced on Friday to the following:
Shaha Amran Miah – life with a minimum term of 20 years and 338 days.
Shaha Alman Miah – 10 years in prison and four years on licence.
Shah Joman Miah – life with a minimum term of 21 years and 232 days.
Preston Crown Court heard Sarj and Jai regularly sexually abused two children at a Leeds mosque over many years, beginning when the victims were seven.
The three also preyed on vulnerable and underage girls at a flat above their family’s takeaway in Barrow, Cumbria, between 2008 and 2010.
They gave them cigarettes, alcohol, food and even hair extensions in what barrister Tim Evans KC called a “classic grooming technique”.
He said the brothers worked as a team and “created an environment in Barrow in which each of them could abuse young girls”.
Judge Unsworth KC said they had shattered the lives of their victims and hid in plain sight in the Cumbria town.
Multiple schoolgirls in their uniforms were regularly seen at the takeaway, the judge said, with Jai acting ruthlessly to stop them going to the police.
The court heard Sarj would take one of the girls to a hotel for sex about twice a month and became increasingly controlling – to the point she remains on medication and is terrified of seeing him in the street.
Read more from Sky News:
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A witness told Sky News the men abused their victims in a dingy room above the takeaway that “looked like a crackhouse” and had mattresses on the floor and sheets covering the windows.
“They knew exactly how young they were,” she said. “They didn’t only have one girlfriend each… they had multiple.”
Shaha Amran Miah was found guilty of 16 sexual offences against three girls, including rape, as well as two charges of intimidation and one of kidnap.
Shaha Alman Miah was found guilty of three counts of sexual activity with a child.
Shah Joman Miah was convicted of sexually abusing three children. There were nine counts of rape of a child among his 40 offences.
Apple will no longer offer customers in the UK its most advanced, end-to-end security encryption feature for cloud data – following a security row with the government.
The Advanced Data Protection (ADP) tool is an optional feature which means only account holders can see things like photos or documents that they have stored online. Apple itself does not have access to the data.
However, the UK government reportedly requested the right to see the data earlier this month.
In response, Apple has removed the tool from use in the UK.
The company is switching it off as an option for those not already using it, and will introduce a process to move existing users away from it.
Security officials argue that encryption hinders criminal investigations, while tech firms defend it as essential to user privacy.
The loss of end-to-end encryption for iCloud backup means Apple would be able in some instances to read user data such as iMessages that would otherwise be protected and pass it on to authorities if legally compelled.
However, if a user has end-to-end encryption, Apple cannot read the data under any circumstances.
An Apple store in New York. Pic: iStock
What has Apple said?
“We are gravely disappointed that the protections provided by ADP will not be available to our customers in the UK given the continuing rise of data breaches and other threats to customer privacy,” Apple said in a statement.
“Enhancing the security of cloud storage with end-to-end encryption is more urgent than ever before.
“Apple remains committed to offering our users the highest level of security for their personal data and are hopeful that we will be able to do so in the future in the United Kingdom.”
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How AI is being used to manipulate German voters
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Apple customers who already had the data protection tool turned on “will eventually need to disable this security feature”, said the company.
It is already unavailable for customers who weren’t using the feature, who now see a message reading: “Apple can no longer offer Advanced Data Protection (ADP) in the United Kingdom to new users.”
What has the UK government said?
The government said it will not confirm or deny whether it requested a Technical Capability Notice (TCN), which is what would give it the right to see the encrypted data.
“We do not comment on operational matters, including for example confirming or denying the existence of any such notices,” a Home Office spokesperson told Sky News.
According to a Home Office source, however, even if a TCN was issued, it wouldn’t give the government blanket access to people’s data.
Separate authorisations or warrants would still be required.
What’s the reaction from the tech industry?
Many in the tech industry are shocked by Apple’s move, with Graeme Stewart from cybersecurity company Check Point saying it “is effectively smashing open Pandora’s box and hoping the chaos stays neatly inside”.
“At its heart, encryption isn’t just for criminals; it’s a shield for millions of law-abiding citizens, businesses, and critical infrastructure,” he said.
“Now we are prying open that door to our digital Fort Knox, there’s no telling what else might slip through.”
Apple was also described as “calling the government’s bluff” by Robert Peake who is the technology partner at Keystone Law, for refusing to create a backdoor into its protected data.
“The Government will face increasing pressure to back down on this, as it seriously undermines its recent attempts to portray the UK as a pro-innovation place to operate,” he said.
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