Mom of Isis fighter says "our children aren't monsters"

The BBC talked with one young British woman who
was recently contacted by ISIS recruiters. She
preferred not to use her name, but she did talk
about what first got her interested in groups others
might view as radical.
It was the news about three teenage girls, gifted
students in east London who slipped away in
February to join ISIS.
"Why are they going?" she asked herself. "I
guess that sparked a sort of curiosity."
She started tweeting stories about the three girls.
She thinks that ISIS recruiters found her Snapchat
account in her Twitter bio.
"It wasn't really as cliché as people think it
was. It wasn't a sort of 'Hey, come join us!'"
she notes. "It was more of a, "Hey sister, how
are you doin'?' ... It's like a conversation with a
friend. It's like a normal thing."
When the recruitment became more intense, she
worried most about what joining a radical group
would mean for her commitment to soccer.
"If I have three kids and a husband, am I really
going to be able to continue living my
passion?" she asked herself. "The thing about
this [soccer] team is everyone's a family,
everyone's together. You have somewhere
where you are accepted, where everyone does
love you. Once you have a place to go like this
this, you won't even be brought to think about
that kind of thing."
She now works with The Unity of Faiths Foundation,
a group that fights radicalization through soccer.
In Canada, Christianne Boudreau co-founded another
kind of group that works to counter extremism. It's
called Mothers for Life, and it's a network for
parents like her who have lost their sons and
daughters to radical groups.
Boudreau's son Damian died fighting with ISIS in
Syria last year. She's moving to France, and expects
to find a stronger network of parents there looking
to counter jihad.
"There are a lot more parents that have come
open to one another, working together,
supporting each other," she says. "Whereas in
North America, very much there's still a stigma,
everybody's holding back. They're afraid to
speak out, they're afraid to reach out for help."
Boudreau says far too often parents miss the signs
of radicalization, in part because popular portrayals
of extremists lack nuance.
"They unfortunately look at our children as
monsters, and they're not. They're normal,
everyday kids that get caught up in something,
make mistakes and don't realize the choices
they're making," she says. "They're not all evil
like what we see in the media. They're kids
having emotional struggles."
When parents suspect their children are drifting
toward radicalization, they should turn to others in
their community for help, according to Boudreau.
"Parents shouldn't try to do this on their own,"
she says. "They're too emotionally connected to
their children. And they can end up pushing
their youth further away."