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Teenagers joined summer’s far-right riots due to distrust of police and thrill-seeking, children’s commissioner says

TEENAGERS who joined last summer’s far-right riots were driven mostly by thrill-seeking and a mistrust of police, the children’s commissioner has said.

Dame Rachel de Souza said interviews with 14 — around one-fifth — of children charged in relation to the unrest discredited the “prevailing narrative” that they were driven by online misinformation.

False reports circulating on social media in the days after Axel Rudakubana stabbed three girls to death during a Southport dance class last July was believed to have fuelled rioting across England.

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