‘I got in with a Plumstead gang at 13 and had to become homeless to get out’

The woman, whose artist name is MADALDN, became involved with the gang when she was around 13 years old.

She claims a man approached her when she was new to the area and asked for her number to become friends.

She then says that the next day, he showed up at her mum’s house and asked to come inside.

Her mum asked if she knew the man, and since she had met him the day before she said “yes”.

Soon after, she said that the man brought his friends to the victim’s home and they began to threaten her and her family’s safety.

MADALDN endured this for a few years before finally telling her mum, who was then allegedly attacked, forcing MADALDN to have to go and live with her grandma.

“They started doing some pretty horrific things and I was there for about a year and a half,” she said.

“In the end, I told my mum and she got attacked.

“So, to protect me, she sent me to live with my nan and I was homeless at 15.”

MADALDN spent several months sleeping rough in London, and as a result, fell in with a bigger gang who she claims “protected” her but exposed her to more danger.

She was able to turn her life around at the age of 18 through a program called Connections, which helped her partake in an access course that prepared her for university.

Despite having no GCSEs, MADALDN applied and was accepted into Greenwich University, where she earned a first in Philosophy, and then went on to get a master’s degree.

MADALDN writes and produces rap music, as well as being in a politically conscious punk rap group, and uses it as a therapeutic outlet to deal with a disorder called dissociative seizures, a form of PTSD that the victim suffers from due to the trauma she endured as a child.

She is concerned about young people today facing the same issues she did and wants to raise awareness to help others.

She has called for more community involvement to help protect vulnerable children and raise awareness of gang violence.

She said: “I think it’s about communities coming together and a lot of people always say ‘where was your mum? Why didn’t your mum know?’

“My mum was a mum of six kids, she’d just got over cancer, she was a single mum, she was very under supported.

“No one ever asks where was the dad or where was the neighbour or where was the teacher and it’s because mums are struggling on their own.

“I’ve faced it as a single mum not having any support from my local community that’s when your kids end up in these precarious situations because mums are just exhausted and a mum can’t be a community.

“I want to have an active role to help relinquish the problem, not that I can ever do that on my own, and to raise awareness around it.”

She now has two sons and has said that she will worry when the time comes for them to go to secondary school, but she says not as much as she would worry if they were girls.

Despite the trauma she has experienced, MADALDN remains a fighter, using her music to tell her story and to help others who may be facing similar issues.