The girls being groomed and raped in vape shops: Our horrifying investigation into new crisis gripping Britain... as one victim's mother reveals sick way store owners are getting teenagers hooked before abusing them

By INDERDEEP BAINS, CHIEF NEWS CORRESPONDENT Published: 01:26, 4 April 2026 | Updated: 01:26, 4 April 2026 It has become a familiar spectacle outside the gates of schools and colleges across the country – wisps of sickly sweet vapour in the air above gaggles of youngsters puffing on brightly-coloured vapes. As the flavours have grown more exotic and the packaging ever more playful, the devices have become trendy must-have accessories among today’s youth. Their rapid proliferation has created a new generation of nicotine addicts and is fuelling a burgeoning and very profitable industry. Thousands of vape shops have sprung up across towns and cities, often within sight of schools, their displays stacked with eye-catching designs and bubble-gum flavours. With them has come a cascade of warnings about the damage to developing lungs, illicit and underage sales and rogue operators using them as fronts for organised crime. But behind the neon glow and fruity branding, a more immediate danger lurks – one that remains largely hidden from view. Vapes are increasingly used by predators to entice and groom children into criminal or sexual activity. The shops themselves are said to be a new frontline in the fight against child exploitation, with police and safeguarding professionals expressing deep concern. Girls Out Loud, a charity which works with vulnerable girls in the North West, has seen a notable rise in children being groomed or coerced by vape shop operators who entice them through their doors by offering free samples. ‘Vapes are the key method at the moment,’ said founder Jane Kenyon. ‘If I’m working with a girl who is being groomed... nine times out of ten it’s via a vape.’ The charity Girls Out Loud, which works with vulnerable girls in the North West, has seen a notable rise in children being groomed or coerced by vape shop operators Iqbal Singh raped a schoolgirl after grooming her with free vapes at his shop in south London Singh took his victim to the back room of his vape shop (pictured), gave her alcohol and assaulted her The modus operandi is something one mother, who we will call Sarah, from a leafy Surrey suburb became tragically all too familiar with. Her daughter Emily became a victim when she was just 14 and a promising schoolgirl from a loving home. She has been living with the consequences ever since. When Sarah started discovering an occasional vape in her school bag or hidden in a drawer, she had no idea it was a sign of a looming nightmare for her daughter. Though worried, Sarah dismissed it as the kind of boundary-testing behaviour of wayward teenage years. ‘To start with, the vape “was somebody else’s”. She would say, “it’s not mine”,’ she recalled. ‘Then Emily said that she went into a vape shop with an older girl and that they were given free samples. My gut instinct was that something was not right, but when I tried to talk to her, she would brush it off, as teenagers often do.’ In reality, countless vapes were being gifted to Emily by shop owner Iqbal Singh, an Afghan national who called himself Tony. She had been taken to the shop near her school by an older friend, and was soon drawn to its bright displays. She later likened it to a wide-eyed child entering a ‘big sweet shop’ for the first time. Singh, then 40 and a father of three, presented himself as trustworthy, and quickly cultivated a friendship with the schoolgirl. Looking back, her mother thinks Emily had become hooked on the vapes which led to her going back for more. ‘We were finding them so regularly, I would say she was probably addicted but she always denied it,’ said Sarah. Singh encouraged Emily and her friends to spend time in a room at the back of his Phone Repairs and Vape Store in Cheam, Surrey, where he plied them with alcohol and cannabis-spiked vapes. He placed the vapes on a high shelf in the room, and would insist on lifting Emily up to reach them, sexually assaulting her as he did so on several occasions. The systematic grooming went on for six months before culminating in a prolonged and brutal rape. Emily had come to view Singh as an adult she trusted, turning to him for help after getting drunk at a friend’s 16th party, fearful her parents would ground her if she went home. Singh took her to the back room, gave her more alcohol before assaulting her as she drifted in and out of consciousness. Emily told no one. Instead, blaming herself, she became withdrawn and angry, dressed in baggy clothing to hide her body and cut her hair short. ‘Over that following year we didn’t know anything about it,’ said her mother. ‘I suppose we naively thought her behaviour was down to her teenage years, blaming her hormones or GCSE stress. I tried to talk to her, there was a real disconnect.’ A year would pass before the truth emerged, when Emily began suffering terrifying flashbacks of that back room with Singh that left her inconsolable and prompted her to confide in her parents. Driven by fears for classmates still using Singh’s shop, Emily also built up the courage to go to the police. After a complicated and drawn-out investigation, her attacker was convicted in September of multiple sexual offences – exactly five years after the attack. In court, he tried to paint Emily as a fantasist, a child from a broken home struggling with her parents’ divorce – all of it lies dismissed by the jury. He was jailed for 22 years last month, affording her the vindication she had longed for. But at the trial it emerged Emily was not his only victim. Singh had raped her just months after being charged with sexually assaulting a 16-year-old girl in another vape shop that he previously owned in Bromley, south London. This came as a brutal shock to Emily and her family – and compounded their fears that there could be many other victims he had abused. ‘He is so arrogant and shows such little remorse, so much so he had the gall to attack Emily even while on bail for assaulting another young girl,’ said Sarah. ‘He won’t have stopped there. There’s obviously a pattern here…the similarities between the two cases are frightening. He is clearly predatory. He groomed Emily giving her free vapes, claiming they were samples he wanted to test.’ She pointed out the premises he ran were located on busy, popular routes near schools, giving him access to hundreds of children: ‘There are absolutely other girls out there... that thought makes me extremely uncomfortable.’ Metropolitan Police detective sergeant Toyene Lait, who led the investigation into Singh, shares her concern and has appealed for any victims to come forward. She believes other grooming offenders are operating in vape shops across the country, warning: ‘This could be the tip of the iceberg.’ Emily, now at university having pieced her life back together, is desperate to ensure more teenagers do not suffer her fate. Her mother chose to speak out to warn other parents of the dangers. ‘It can happen to anyone. I would urge every parent, if you’re finding vapes and noticing sudden changes in your child, trust your gut instinct,’ said Sarah. ‘It could just be normal teen experimenting, but it could be something else.’ Along with detective sergeant Lait, mother and daughter want stricter regulations in the industry, with those working in vape shops facing criminal background checks to weed out predators. It’s a demand backed by the St Giles Trust, which fights against child exploitation and is raising awareness of the link between grooming and vapes. ‘Kids in the past would smoke and groomers would offer them cigarettes... now it is vapes,’ said the charity’s Junior Smart. ‘We are not saying this is happening in every single shop but we have to think about where the kids are going. Business owners need to take active responsibility.’ Mr Smart, founder of the charity’s SOS project which works with at-risk children, said there are two main factors that make vapes a particularly alluring choice for predators. ‘One, they can easily go under the radar; and two, they are highly addictive,’ he said. Some have called for stricter regulations in the industry, with those working in vape shops facing criminal background checks to weed out predators Metropolitan Police detective sergeant Toyene Lait, who led the investigation into Singh, has appealed for any victims to come forward ‘Cigarettes are quite smelly, so caregivers or teachers will often pick up on them. Vapes don’t give off a lasting odour – they’re fruity, discreet, don’t set off smoke alarms and slip into pockets.’ Children would at least eventually run out of cigarettes, he said, adding: ‘But a child can be puffing on a vape with no break at all. Some hold as many as 3,000, 5,000 puffs. I’ve seen young girls whose lips have turned blue from constantly puffing on these things. ‘It starts an addiction that is really hard to stop. And when you’re so dependent on something, you’re by virtue dependent on the person giving it to you.’ Mr Smart warned that ‘we haven’t even started to uncover the extent of the problem’, and said a three-pronged approach was needed: enforcement against illegal sales, compliance checks to identify unscrupulous staff and an awareness campaign in schools and colleges about grooming. His sentiments are mirrored by Ms Kenyon at Girls Out Loud, who said the epidemic is affecting youngsters from all backgrounds, ‘whether from a nice middle-class family, at private school or in a deprived area with no money’. She said groomers prey on girls going into mini marts and vape shops offering them free drinks or sweets before moving on to vapes. ‘They know those are addictive and they know they’ll keep coming back for them,’ she said. ‘You only need to drive past most secondary schools and the whole of the school is surrounded by kids vaping – it’s not difficult to see. ‘The older kids will get them, sell them in school, children might get addicted to them and then they’ll start getting them at the shops.’ Working with hundreds of vulnerable girls via her Manchester-based charity, Ms Kenyon believes vapes should not be sold in shops near schools. ‘I want them out of mini marts, out of corner shops. I want them out of that accessibility. Children are literally falling out of school and into these shops. ‘To be in business in small towns just selling vapes, that gives you an indication of how many we’re selling, how addictive they are and how big that sector has become in a short time.’ Trading standards teams have been left clambering to crack down on underage and illicit sales as the shops rapidly pop up in prime locations. In one disturbing case known to Girls Out Loud, a 14-year-old girl was sexually abused for weeks after being enticed with free vapes over social media by a man in his late 20s who was posing as a teenager. A trading standards team in Dudley, West Midlands, say they regularly find evidence during raids which point to grooming. Its principal officer Kuldeep Mann fears the problem is an ‘epidemic’. ‘We’ve been in situations where [staff] empty their pockets and they’ve got reams of condoms,’ he told Channel 4 News. ‘I once came across a book in Kurdish and it was translated... they were learning English words for “you’re pretty” or “I love your hair” and “you’re young and beautiful”.’ He said his team focuses on finding ways to shut down the shops where they fear a threat of grooming. Last year the unit took action against a premises after receiving intelligence the men involved were driving 12-year-olds visiting the shop to different locations. The National Police Chiefs’ Council said the emerging threat was firmly on the radar of forces and work was underway to disrupt offenders. One multi-agency approach at one force is focusing on identifying vape shops near schools that may present dangers. Dedicated officers will then be deployed into the schools and colleges identified to carry out prevention and safeguarding work. It has been more than a decade since vapes first arrived with the promise of helping smokers quit the habit that has long-been a drain on the NHS. But they have come at a cost few anticipated – one which may prove to be far greater and far more dangerous. No comments have so far been submitted. Why not be the first to send us your thoughts, or debate this issue live on our message boards. By posting your comment you agree to our house rules. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual We will automatically post your comment and a link to the news story to your Facebook timeline at the same time it is posted on MailOnline. 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