Police Anti-terrorism “Lead” calls for children to be protected from terrorist parents on a par with paedophilia
1 March 2018
A speech by Mark Rowley (the outgoing Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police for Specialist Operations and National Lead for Counter Terrorism Policing) to Policy Exchange has been given the front page treatment with headlines like, “Extremists should lose access to their children.” The speech has been made available in full by the Policy Exchange on their website and on Youtube.
Additionally, The Times quotes Mark Rowley as saying, in response to questions from the press in advance of the speech,
We still see cases where parents convicted of terrorist-related offences, including radicalisers, retain care of their own children.
If you know parents are interested in sex with children, or if you know parents believe that people of their faith or their belief should hate everybody else and corrupt children for it, for me those are equally wicked environments to expose children to.
The speech is phrased more tentatively but included this passage,
The family courts and social services now routinely wrestle with child protection and safeguarding cases arising out of terrorism and extremism. However, we still see cases where parents convicted of terrorist-related offences, including radicalisers, retain care of their own children. I wonder if we need more parity between protecting children from paedophile and terrorist parents.
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