Local Writer On How Terrorism Begins In The Home

Joan Smith's research links domestic violence with acts of terrorism

Chiswick writer Joan Smith has discovered a previously overlooked connection between the terrorists who have perpetrated some of the worst acts of violence in recent years, and their behaviour in their domestic lives.

She found that all of them have a history of domestic violence, and/or suffered a relationship trauma such as a partner breaking out of the relationship, often only a short time before they became radicalised and carried out attacks.

Her findings come after an exhaustive profile of the men who have carried out some of the worst terrorist attacks in recent years, from the Manchester Arena to the Bataclan theatre in Paris, from Sandy Hook to the Boston Marathon

Published earlier this year, her book 'Homegrown', chosen as 'Book of the Month' by the Observer, has been getting attention from the public and and the academic world but it is the security services, the politicians and the police who most need to read it she says.

Joan, who is a respected journalist and feminist activist, told chiswickw4.com how she first became inspired to research the book.

"I started noticing this first in relation to mass shootings in the US and its been evident for a long time that for men who go on shoot people, research shows over 50 pc have a history of domestic violence or include a female member amongst their victims.

"So for example, in the Sandy Hook shooting, he shot six teachers and 20 children but he shot his mother five times first, then went to the school where she had been a teaching assistant. I began to notice the same thing here in Europe, for example in the the Nice truck attack, he had a horrendous record of being a domestic abuser. And although he was a Muslim, he had only started attending the mosque 3 months before the attack. And his wife had recently broken up with him"

Closer to home, Joan says that in the 2017 terror attacks in Manchester and London, all the six perpetrators had connections with violence, and had either grown up with domestic abuse or abusers themselves, and half of them had suffered a relationship breakdown prior to the attacks.

"It seems to me that when the family gets them out after they have been abusers, they reinvent themselves as a terrorist. I raised this connection first with a senior Scotland Yard officer in 2017 and he hadn't ever noticed it, and he went back and checked on the National Register of Convicted Terrorists database and asked - nobody had ever asked- so I started doing the research."

The book involved intensive research of newspaper and media outlets coverage online, of focusing on the most significant attacks and mass shootings in the past 10-12 years.

"For example Darren Osborne who attacked the Finsbury Park mosque in 2017, people said that he had shown no interest in politics until six weeks before the attack. I knew he had a criminal record, the judge referred to 102 convictions and neighbours said he had shouted at his partner and at kids in the streets. It took me ages but I found he had intimate partner violence, as had some of the terrorists involved in the Charlie Hebdo attack in France."

Joan believes that the research could help anti terrorism authorities to narrow down suspects. "At the end of 2018 MI5 revealed a figure of 20,000 people they were investigating for radicalisation, and also right wing propaganda. These people had shown evidence of being attracted to those ideologies but were not regarded as being a threat, and on top of that there were about 3,000 they suspected might have operational ideas.

"My argument is, that knowing so many of these men have a history of abusing wives and children, that if you are looking at a suspect for terrorism who also has a history of domestic abuse, particularly if a relationship has broken down, that they are the groups you need to concentrate on.

"I am trying to get people to look at terrorism in a different way. Traditionally, the experts see it as a problem of ideology, of normal individuals going online and then they meet somebody and get interested and become terrorists. I am saying they are violent, angry individuals and they are more susceptible to that propaganda because it validates their existing violent tendencies in a horrible way.

If we are concerned about terrorism, she argues, then the best way to keep safe is to pay more attention to domestic violence.

At its most extreme, domestic abuse “is a kind of slow-motion terrorism, subjecting entire families to unimaginable levels of fear and anxiety”, she observes. “These are men who have practiced behind closed doors.”

Several university departments such as St Andrews in Scotland and Queens University Belfast, where they have centres for the study of terrorism, have been in touch with Joan since her book was published. Despite considerable research into political violence, it seems that nobody has ever done any work pertaining to the sex or gender of terrorists. Queen's University Belfast found very high levels of domestic violence in the backgrounds of men involved in the 'Troubles'.

Joan said that those who work with Women's Aid have understood this violence for years, misogyny and hatred of women lays the ground for those being habituated to violence which may spill out on the public stage.

"The vast majority of domestic abusers will not go on to be terrorists but maybe MI5 have to look again, if they find a suspect who suffers a traumatic event such as a relationship breakdown, maybe they have to to onto the top of the suspect list. This is a narcissistic wound which means when they are enraged, they are very dangerous."

Homegrown is available to purchase on Amazon.

November 11, 2019