Webinars

The Step Together webinar series is a professional learning resource accessible to everyone. It aims to provide an introduction to the concept of violent extremism in Australia, and who is most vulnerable to this negative influence.

The series explores:

  • why it’s important to act early
  • being aware of the signs
  • advice and tools for taking positive action, and working towards a more resilient and cohesive community.

Webinar: Working with Youth in CVE with Dr Kristy Campion

  • What makes our young people vulnerable to violent extremism, and what can we do about it?

    Working with Youth in CVE

    What makes our young people vulnerable to violent extremism, and what can we do about it?

    Watch Webinar on Youtube

    Transcript

    Campion, Kristy   0:00
    Every time I log onto teams, I'm once again alarmed by how much I have to figure out.


    Alright, so thank you all for coming and listening in today on some of the incredible work that I believe is being done by the ESP team, the ESU team and the ESP program with DCJ.


    So I feel it's an incredible privilege for me today to be talking to you about the incredibly complex problem that is the engagement of young people in violent extremism.


    I feel all too often we talk about this particular problem, or at least this problem is reported on, [um] with what I see to be a dangerous level of simplicity.


    The idea of the good kid gone bad, the idea of the young person who was just born evil, the criminal extremist mastermind who was just waiting for their opportunity to do something harmful.


    The idea that these young people have knowingly, willingly and deliberately turned their back on their village, turned their back on society and show this highly nuanced.


    An in-depth, ideologically informed purpose, the idea that they are. Fundamentally, irredeemable [uh].


    Destructive and willing to burn down the various society to which they were born.


    These are some of the ideas we see when we when we hear about people discuss the engagement of young people in violent extremism. And as the work of Heather and her team will show, and this particular study will show, I believe, is that that sort of dialogue is fundamentally unhelpful for understanding why a young person would turn to extremism.


    But more importantly, that it's fundamentally dangerous in our pursuit or in our quest to try and disengage young people from violent extremism is fundamentally unhelpful to think about them in such a way.


    Heather Jackson       2:35
    You’ve accidentally muted yourself, Kristy.


    Campion, Kristy       2:40
    Thanks for that, I will not press that button again.

     

    I'm thrilled to be able to present the findings of the report undertaken with my colleague Dr Emma Colvin but also undertaken in close proximity with Heather and her team [uh]  which was really about looking at the why.  

     

    Why the young people become involved in violent extremism, what are factors that are making them vulnerable, what are the factors of vulnerability that have contributed towards their overall susceptibility [um] and what does this mean for how we manage these young

    people.

     

    So [uh] when I'm talking to you today I'm aiming to [uh] leave 15 minutes for discussion and questions [uh] so basically I'll be presenting you with an overview of what we wanted to achieve, how we did it [um] and what we think we found that's particularly relevant [um] to contemporary Australia.

     

    So the main intent of this research was I think really simple but really important and that was that we had to better understand the ways in which young people became involved in violent extremism.

     

    [Uh] it wasn't simply a matter of [um] of casting blame, of making assumptions.

     

    We needed a really evidence-based and [uh]  informed way of understanding this problem [uh]  and stepping away from I think some of the assumptions that [um] that abound both in our society but also in others.

     

    This, you know the idea of this young person radicalising alone in their bedroom with you know, the happy family outside who had no idea.

     

    Like those sorts of assumptions we wanted to get to the bottom of it and figure out actually what is going on.

     

    [Um], so to do that we wanted to illuminate underrecognised factors that may have impacted their engagement.

     

    What was going on in their lives, who was actually getting them involved in extremism, was it a self-directed quest [um], what was really going on there that informed their recruitment and their alleged radicalisation and we hoped that in understanding this better, and in an evidence [uh]  based way, that we'd be able to provide recommendations for how we could [um] support these young people and the associated teams.

     

    [Um] and get them you know [uh]  reintegrating back with our society [um] in a way that's sustainable [um] fair and just.

     

     So to do that, we [um] obviously we did the very academic thing where we read as much as we could.

     

    So we conducted a review of the international domestic scholarship on the engagement of young people [um], and what we found very much in this preliminary stage was that the research overwhelmingly focused on the engagement of [um] young Muslims.

     

    And this is very much in the international literature but it was also in the domestic literature as well [uh] the big gap was [um] was certainly around [uh] engagement by young people associated with extreme right-wing ideologies.

    Or associated with as Heather indicated that mixed ideologies, where it wasn't really quite clear [um] you know [uh] the what their [um] immediate belief system was.

     

    So that was quite a substantial gap but the other gap was [um] was actually about the young people themselves so for example, where people were [uh] looking at why young people would support the likes of Boko Haram.

     

    [Uh] they were looking at it from the perspective of you they were focusing on the terrorist organisation to the extent that [uh] arguably what was going on in that young person's life was fundamentally being minimalised, trivialised or otherwise overlooked.

     

    [Uh], so this sort of [um] starting point for our research was actually quite important because we realised “oh hang on, there's this substantive issue here”, which is when we talk about young people we're talking about them but we're not actually “engaging” with what's going on with them.

     

    [Um], so that really [uh]  was important because it highlighted to myself and Emma a blind spot [um] in the academic field, which could have implications for how the community sees this problem but also how they're managed [um] [uh] across departments.

     

    So from that point we then reviewed files, [um] associated with young people [um] deidentified files associated with young people, [uh] who had involved, who had been involved or affiliated with violent extremism in any way.

     

    [Uh], and we also conducted quite extensive interviews [uh]  with members of the ESU so that was six plus hours of interviewing [uh]  which was incredibly useful for us in terms of the very real challenges faced by practitioners in this space.

     

    But also an extremely nuanced view of the challenges being faced by the young people that they were working with on a daily basis.

     

    So what we were really interested in and I'm sorry for how this slide looks, I know it's a lot, but what we were really interested in was [um] the young person's context, what was really going on.

     

    Were there mental health issues that perhaps hadn't been diagnosed or weren't perhaps being managed, was there some aspect there that could have indicated neurodiversity.

     

    If so, what and what did that mean, were their experiences of trauma, and this one was an interesting one for us because we knew from the literature that [um] adults who were engaged in white supremacy, in particularly in the United States had reported a higher level of childhood trauma than people associated with the extreme left.

     

    So that was interesting we wanted to know what was going on there [um] but also education what was going on [um] with school and socialisation.

     

    So what was going on in their social lives but what this did is that gave us this idea of the young person [um] and what they were going through, which enabled us to go a little bit deeper.

     

    [Um] sort of in a in a linear fashion so okay we know this young person has these [um] these challenges that they're facing, what else is going on and this is where the environmental factors came in.

     

     Such as, were they exposed to violence, did they have experiences of violence were they had they committed prior offences, what did other aspects of their life look like, did they have friends, did they have secure family relationships [um], had their house just burned down, had they just witnessed a death, [um] was someone in the family terminally ill?

     

    Like looking at the stresses [um] was really important for us to identify the cognitive opening that may have made them more [uh] vulnerable to recruitment or to being radicalised.

    And also the educational outlook was really a matter of us saying, well what did the future look like for these young people.

     

    Because that was really important in understanding well [um] you know the overall why [um] that we were really trying to understand there.

     

    When it came to recruitment this was a bit tricky of course because the it's not like we were walking into a fully fleshed data set [um] sometimes there was a high measure of [um] unknown variables, but…

     

    What we were really looking at was, what could have [um] impacted their being recruited into violent extremism.

     

    So what were their exposures if we could identify any [um], what were the relationships [uh] who had approached them, had they approached someone, was it online?

     

    And this is one of the things we see a lot of which is the idea that, you know all these young people are radicalising online.

     

    Okay well is that true, [um] or was there an offline dynamic as well [um], were they seeking out extremist organisations or were they being sought out, did they know that they were being recruited or did they not?

     

    And you know, in a context where we're seeing headlines [um] that are [um], for example indicating you know [uh] children as young of young as 10 are being [uh] recruited by Neo-Nazi organizations.

     

    Okay well, did that 10-year-old know, [uh] that they were being recruited?

     

    These were some of the questions that we had around recruitment, [um] and there weren't the answers that we thought there should be [uh] in the field of knowledge.

     

    Which is why this [um] research was so important.

     

    And finally we're looking at radicalisation, were they actually radicalised?

    Because of course you can participate in violent extremism without being radicalised and that's a well established fact.

     

    [Um] if they were being radicalised or if they were radicalised, how could we identify that?

     

    [Um], and so basically what we were looking at there was their engagement with narratives, [um] the possession of material [um], and that was contrasted with.

     

    What was happening in the environmental [um] and personal contexts, and of course we looked at networks.

     

    So are the are young people [uh] being radicalised you know by shadowy International Terror networks?

     

    Or was it someone around the corner, you know what was that interplay there between the domestic and the transnational [um] between the online and the offline.

     

    So we started this research with a lot of questions [um] and quite [uh] fortunately with the support of [uh] the team and particularly through the interviews, we were able to come to a couple of conclusions that I think work towards understanding the engagement of young people in violent extremism.

     

    So I'll start at the really high level of who were these young people [uh] that we were [um] trying to understand better.

     

    So the first thing to say, is that they were a majority male.

     

    [Um] so it was not possible for us to conduct a gendered analysis [um] of the data.

     

    In terms of age, they generally were [um] between 13 and 27 [um] so a median of 19 years old.

     

    Now what was [um] important I think to mention with this study, is our conceptualisation of young people [um] was from [uh] was from 12 to [um] to 24. Because that is generally speaking [um] according to [um] certain Australian guidelines the age of [um] of cognitive maturity.

     

    [Uh], so we took a very broad view of young person which is why [um] I'll only [uh] occasionally refer to them as children and that's if I [um] if I'm um talking specifically about a certain age bracket.

     

    In terms of where they lived, and this is the other thing we [um] we sort of find [um] particularly in some of the news reporting.

     

    There's this idea that there are hotpots of extremism [uh] around Australia and that certain places just have to be worse [uh] than others.

     

    And that [um] you know that sort of idea is contributed to by [um] by comments that would indicate all you know [um] the shadowy Neo-Nazi groups are you know gathering in [um] hotpots around Australia and saluting the flag and all that sort of thing.

     

    Well actually we found that, [um], that realistically that there was [uh] considerable presence in regional areas and there was considerable presence in metro areas.

     

    So it wasn't a matter of going yes well they're all from this one town you know, or they're all from [um] this one Community.

     

    Really it was [um], it was both regional and urban so I don't think we didn't find that geography [um] in such a way was an indicator of really anything.

     

    We did find the 41% identified as an ethnic minority [um] which is important for some of the context I'll be discussing [uh] next.

     

    And many of these people had come to the [um] the ESU through referrals from primarily from police organisations such as AFP but also from the likes of corrective Services New South Wales [um] and a couple of others but [um] I'll make another mention of them later I think.

     

    So [uh] generally speaking what did we find in terms of youth vulnerability?

     

    So I guess the main thing to highlight is that there's been a lot of discussion around neurodiversity and young people [um] and of course there are certain aspects of neurodiversity [um] that could very well be manipulated by adult recruiters and that was something we went into this project with a really firm awareness of.

     

    So what we found, was that [um] 17% had confirmed ASD diagnosis, but 29% there was suspected or [um] contradictory information around diagnosis relating to neurodiversity.

     

    What we found almost overwhelmingly though, was comorbidity of factors so it was never just neurodiversity.

     

    There was always [um] other situations [uh] and other challenges such as [uh] as Heather indicated, Oppositional Defiance Disorder (ODD), [um] ADHD as well, [um] all of those sorts of things were going on but there was also [um] considerable mental health challenges.

     

    And this was very common [um] so this was about 60% [uh] so when I say mental health challenges I mean [um] anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, [um] quite severe challenges in terms of mental well-being.

     

    What we also found was a considerable number had experienced adverse childhood experiences.

     

    So from memory this was around 70% of the young people and these weren't just minor adverse childhood experiences.

     

    These were quite severe, so I'm talking [um] exposure to [um], to war, to severe acts of family violence, [um] sustained deprivation, poverty, witnessing death, incarceration, family loss, terminal illness in the family, [um] abuse was very common [um], child protection orders.

     

    You know these were not just [um] trivial experiences these young people had had. [Um] they were severe [um], and when you compound that with mental health problems such as for example PTSD [um] or suspected neurodiversity, you've got someone who's extremely vulnerable.

     

    [Uh] and that was only compounded by their experiences of victimisation, and this was [um] sometimes [uh] experiences of victimisation in the playground.

     

    This was sometimes experiences in the home environment, [um] this was sometimes online.

     

    You know this was a really [um] important thing to consider, is that these young people were not the good kid gone bad.

     

    They were not [uh] you know, the children of affluence and privilege, they had struggled and that struggle was really obvious um in you know when we looked at the victimisation.

     

    And then of course it was made much more complex by [um] education and socialisation, so what we found in looking at that particular context is that they [um] had indications of [um] being quite [uh] socially isolated.

     

    You know again, these aren't the popular kid [um] surrounded by friends, this is people that really lacked secure attachment.

     

    [Um] they had few friends [um], they had issues at school so there was reports [um] from teachers and that sort of thing in indicating um inability to focus or inability to conform, or to follow instructions [um], but also over half had been subject to bullying [um] or had [uh] bullied themselves.

     

    So [um] been bullies themselves I should say.

     

    So what we generally found was that there were multiple intersecting vulnerabilities present in the context of the young person that overall enhanced their susceptibility to violent extremism.

    [Um] so this is important right because this sort of set the scene for us understanding.

     

    Okay well, why extremism?

     

    And why not a gang? Why not a cult? You know these were things we had to think of is why extremism.

     

    And this is what led to the next aspect which was [um] the environmental factors.

     

    The environmental factors led to the Recruitment and that led [uh] to the radicalisation.

     

    So with when it came to their environment [um], what we really found was that [um] the cohort and I think Heather indicated this earlier, could really be split between those associated with [um] extremist forms of Islam [uh], and those [um] affiliated with extreme right-wing [uh] views or beliefs.

     

    So we did find indications that they kind of knew what the ideology or the core beliefs of the ideology were.

     

    That was stronger in the data, in the extreme right [um] young people more so than the [uh] violent Salafi jihadist young people.

     

    But overwhelmingly, and so if we remember right that these young people [um] are experiencing all these challenges.

     

    [Um] overwhelmingly we found that there was violence in their lives.

     

    And this is important right because as Heather indicated earlier when we're talking about violent extremism, we're really emphasising the endorsement, the celebration or the engagement in violence.

     

    Violence is typically seem to be an abnormal thing for most of us to use as a typical measure of conflict resolution.

     

    And yet with these young people, what we found was that violence was every day.

     

    It was normal [uh], so that was at home and that was elsewhere as well.

     

    [Um] so there were [um] substantive indications [um] of experiences of the criminal justice system and prior offences.

     

    So this is stuff this is activity [um] that had been associated with them.

     

    And it's quite a high number of prior offences with both the [um] violent Salafi jihadist cases but also the extreme right wing one.

     

    So we knew that they were getting in trouble right [um], and that trouble was at home, in their personal lives but it was also at school.

     

    And we found a high level was struggling academically, now this impacted their outlook right, because particularly those sort of towards the end of their teen years [uh], and they're getting all that um information about how to progress into adulthood.

     

    And for many of these young people their outlook was bleak [uh], they weren't doing well at school, they weren't doing well at home, they weren't doing well in their personal lives [um], and so there was this [uh] I think this overall indication [uh] that their future was quite bleak.

     

    And this was only compounded by the insecurity and uncertainty that pervaded their lives.

     

    [Um] so when we talk about [um] life insecurity, you know, I mean to the likes of [um] [uh] limited secure attachments, [uh] high stress situations such as of course as I mentioned, terminal illness in the family such as house burning down, such as being victims of violence and abuse.

     

    [Um] there was a lot going on [um] in these young people's lives, and it was overwhelming in the data as well.

     

    So that they were being caught up or subject to events that were beyond their control.

     

    [Um] which led us to the next [um] consideration which was okay, well how were they recruited.

     

    So recruitment was kind of surprising, so what we found [uh] generally speaking with the [um] with violent Salafi jihadist young people, is that 50% were directly recruited right.

     

    [Um] so this idea of oh you know they [um] were um you know [uh] recruited online by some [um] anonymous person.

     

    Well no, they were directly recruited from people in their home environment, people from their social environment [um], so direct family, direct friends, travel.

     

    All of these things were really important exposure points for them [um], to become involved with these [um], with these beliefs and these organisations.

     

    With the extreme right, we're looking at closer to 44%[um] family and directly by organisations.

     

    So the role of the online [um] network, was not as persuasive as what we otherwise would have assumed.

     

    Some of them moreover were deliberately and intentionally groomed for the purpose of recruitment, and again, when we're talking about such vulnerable young people [um], it was very clear particularly in the interviews with practitioners [uh]  that they had been identified by groomers, by adult predators. that they could be manipulated, [um] and thus they were.

     

    And then with some of the others, it was socialisation, these ideas, these beliefs had been in their family their entire lives.

     

    Maybe Dad was a right-wing extremist, maybe [uh] their Uncle held really fundamentalist religious views.

     

    It was not an unusual thing for them [uh], so there was also this unintentional dynamic where they were being socialised [um], and they and they didn't know that they were.

     

    And this is something that came out of the interviews as well is that, if you were to sit down with these young people and say, “Well, why did you become an extremist?”

     

    “Or how did you radicalise?

     

    I wonder if they would be able to answer that [uh], because many of them seemed to [um] from the interviews with practitioners seemed to not be aware of what was going on.

     

    All right, and [uh] so if we then [uh] pivot again to radicalisation, [uh] what we found there was there was really variable [um] evidence, with respect to how radicalise they might have been considered to be.

     

    So some of them had really high engagement with material [um] as you can see, that's different depending on whether it was violence life of Salafi jihadist or extreme right wing.

     

    Some had quite low engagement [um] but there was quite clear confluence between [um] the family context, so what was happening in the family, what the family's beliefs were [uh] and what the young person was subsequently identifying with or believing.

     

    [Uh] and also that there was this [um] network that that extended beyond them [uh], so [um] overwhelmingly we did find that there was both online and offline networks in place.

     

    So it was never just, okay you know, they logged on to YouTube and suddenly they're right wing extremists, that was not the case at all.

     

    What [um], what it really showed was [um], unsurprisingly, young people are online, as we are right now right?

     

    Being online is not in it of itself a problem [um], but what we found is that they had both online and offline engagement.

     

    So sometimes it started offline and went online, sometimes it started online and went offline [um], but it's important to really emphasise that [um], that in their search for community, or in their search for belonging, in their search for secure relationships in their lives [um], that the internet itself was not the only thing that was going on.

     

    There was also this online aspect there [uh] offline aspect sorry

     

    [Um], so what we really found with respect to the overall question of why? Why are young people uh coming to support violent extremist organisations?

     

    What we found [uh] really relates to that context that I discussed earlier, [uh] they are living insecure lives, [uh] they don't have strong attachments, [um] they're not getting the support that they need [uh] within their particular context, with [um] within families, within friendship groups, and so extremist ideologies irregardless of whether [um] they are extreme right wing extreme, left wing [uh] or violent Salafi jihadist, were offering them something that they couldn't get anywhere else.

     

    It was offering them belonging, acceptance, validation.

     

    The really unfortunate thing about the trials of these young people is that extremist ideology was making them feel good about themselves.

     

    And I think that really highlights a problem that we experience or that we're experiencing right now particularly with young people in Australia which is this alienation [uh] from the broader society, [um] to the point that they’re having to search for belonging in extremist communities that in some ways just seek to manipulate them, to achieve goals.

    And of course, because these young people came from environments where violence was so normal, [um] violence that they had received from supposed caregivers, violence that they had perpetrated, [uh] you know, that they didn't look at [um], there wasn't the evidence there that suggests that violence was an abnormal thing in their lives.

     

    For many of them, violence seemed like the average Tuesday, and so when we're thinking about democratic values and we're thinking about, “oh why these young people [um] engaging in violent extremism?”

     

    Well, violence in these contexts is not the abnormal thing, [uh] they are victims of violence and they are perpetrators of violence.

     

    [Um], so the permissive attitude towards it [um], both in their home environment [um] or in their social environments or where it may be, was a really important consideration [uh] to have.

     

    And again very much debunks that idea that these are the children of privilege and affluence, they absolutely weren't.

     

    Returning to the online, offline dynamic - so we didn't identify a single pathway [uh] through recruitment, we didn't identify a single pathway towards extremism.

     

    There were so many different [uh] engagement pathways that we were able to identify [uh] but, I think when we're dealing with a younger cohort what we really have to be aware of, is the fact that the internet is part of the everyday.

     

    [Um] it doesn't help us [uh], to simply say, “Okay well, we just need to get them offline.”

     

    Because often, offline environments were quite important to their engagement in violent extremism.

     

    So we found, [um], there that that there were really free form engagement environments.

     

    There was a bit of online, there was a bit of offline, friends were involved, sometimes family were involved, sometimes shadowy people online were involved, and it was really important that we kept an open mind about what [um] a young person had been through.

     

    And also of course [um] highlighting, the role of both foreign networks that young people have had for whatever reason come to admire, but also the importance of family, which is that, some of them were exposed because of vectors within their family.

     

    Perhaps it was an uncle, perhaps it was [um] a you know, a parent [uh], but the idea that they were radicalising in their bedroom and their family had a totally different value set, it just wasn't really supported.

     

    So what we wanted to do was understand ways that we could help [um] disengage [uh] young people from violent extremism, and I'm aware that I'm at time, so what I'll just really briefly highlight with this slide [uh], is that our overall finding was that [uh]  we need to be really cautious in how we seek to understand the engagement of young people in violent extremism.

     

    We cannot treat a 10-year-old or an 11-year-old [um] with lifelong stigma for a mistake they made while so young.

     

    We really have to think about what comes after engagement with extremism, and if we're going to make that engagement with extremism a life sentence, then what we're really doing is making it fundamentally impossible for young people to properly disengage from violent extremism.

     

    Some of the issues that they face include things such as stigma, include things such as [um] broader society and indeed even academia not understanding why they got involved with violent extremism to begin with.

     

    [Um] so supporting a needs-based approach, supporting trauma informed approach and supporting [um], an approach that highlights the tolerance inherent to democratic values [um] but also supporting and showing them, that a fair and just community is one that accepts that they made mistakes [um], accepts that they've made their amends, accepts that they have engaged with programs to disengage and welcomes them back in.

     

    At the end of the day, exiling young people and [um] submitting them to a lifelong rejection from their community is not going to convince them [uh] that they are welcome to that community and that they're part of it.

     

    If anything, that's just going to reinforce behaviours that [uh] encourage searching for community and belonging [uh] in violent extremist milieus.

     

    So, I'm aware at time and I do apologise for going over, I I hate being [um] the typical academic that can't stick to a clock, so I'm happy to clarify these points [uh]  in the questions.

     

    Shaw, Rebecca 34:19

    Thanks Kristy.

     

    I think we're happy to open it up to the group, we do have a couple on the chat.

     

    Someone was asking over what time period was the sample collected for the clients, and how many files.

     

    I do believe we weren't [um] releasing that information but can you answer that partially for us Kristy.

     

    Campion, Kristy

    Yeah [uh], so the research period itself [um] sorry it feels like um a decade ago, it was in fact last year.

     

    So I think we undertook the project between [uh] July to September, I think it was.

     

    So yeah, it's quite recent [um] and of course some of the [um] outcomes of this are still in peer review as well so [um] still yet to be released.

     

    Shaw, Rebecca

    Okay and we've got one, was there a correlation between low SES and VE?

     
       

     

    Campion, Kristy

    So I'm not sure if I would call it a correlation [um], but what we did find is that with some of the young people and I apologise I can't remember the exact [um] percentage, they could be described as living quite close to the poverty line.

     

    [Uh] now, that's not all of them but it certainly was [um] a considerable number of them.

     

    Some of them as well sort of just building on the low SES aspect [um] had also[um], had experiences that could have [uh], resulted in their removal from the family home [uh], if an intervention had been conducted by another department and perhaps sooner.

     

    Um so yeah, but some of them, those who had [uh], been removed from the home at one point were often later returned to the home as well.

     

    [Um] again, before their engagement [uh], with this with this program, so considerable indications of [um] of [uh], I guess relative deprivation I suppose you could call it.

     

    Shaw, Rebecca

    Okay, and anecdotally, the echo chamber effect associated with social media.

     

    So the ability for a small proportion of people to create a community without [um] the moderating balancing effects of their views being in the minority in the general community is often cited, was there any support for this from your research?

     

    Yeah, that was a mouthful. [laughter]

     
       

     

    Campion, Kristy

    I appreciate it [uh] so great question, and definitely something that [um] that I'm happy to talk to.

     

    So generally speaking, [uh] with the echo chamber what we actually found wasn't so much [um] engagement with an extremist echo chamber necessarily, but actually immersion in an extremist ecosystem.

     

    [Um] so this is where it wasn't necessarily a fact of [um] their only engagement is online, they're going online and they're just being inundated with its extremist material [um] and they in turn [um] [uh] you know, reposting, retweeting, re-sharing whatever the case may be, we didn't find that.

     

    [Um] so what we did find was that[um], that there you know where there was engagement online [uh], there were again anecdotally instances of young people um being involved in spaces that weren't actually extreme, [um] or would be what I would consider to be extremism adjacent.

     

    [Uh] sometimes they did [uh] create and lead their own extremist community online as well, that was very rare [uh], but more often than not, what we identified was [uh] extremism in the family or in the social [uh] in the social group [uh], or [um] proximity shall we say to [um], to extremist cells within their immediate offline environment.

     

    [Um] and that in turn led to that online curiosity but also there were occasions where we did see, “okay this person [um] was online”, [um] this was a lot rarer, they were online, they were [um] engaging with this person online but then they met them offline, and they immediately took the relationship offline as well.

     

    [Um], so the idea of the echo chamber [uh] didn't really manifest within our research, it was much more complex than that.

     

    It was much more about the immersion in an ecosystem rather than simply they're online and they're hearing the same thing from everyone.

     

    Shaw, Rebecca

    Thanks Kristy.

     

    And Tamara, did you have a camera, [uh] Tamara did you have a question for Kristy?

     

    Tamara

    Yes I did, sorry it was a bit too complicated to write it in the chat.

     

    [Um] I just wanted to know just [um] thoughts around in a school based setting [um] when we hear we don't want to tell young people what to think, what to read, what to believe in, [um] but if we are hearing students voicing for example extreme right wing [um] views and beliefs [um] publicly willy-nilly out in the school playground [um] and when we discuss those beliefs with them in a way that suggests that in our school setting we need to respect all people that come.

     

    And we want to value everybody's beliefs, but the students feel that they're being shut down, and they're being prevented from having an opinion – “How can as a school we provide [um] you know, some strategies or systems for students to feel that they're being heard, that there's someone that they can talk to and talk about their views in a safe way?”

     

    …”[um] that also helps them to understand how to interact with others and how to [um] respect that there will be differing opinions [um] and you know, when do we sort of get nervous or worried about how much [uh] these views are being sort of spoken about in in our settings, and in our [um] classrooms and playgrounds that maybe causing offence, or even generating some fear [um] that something worse could happen from this student?”

     

    Campion, Kristy

    Yeah, I appreciate that that's [uh] a really [uh] really difficult challenge that many people in the education system are currently facing and [uh], and I'm very aware as well of [um] the unpredictability of it – “When do we know if a young person is just [uh] saying things to get attention [um], in order to galvanise some sort of response, or when there is a genuine violent threat there?”

     

    That that is a really tricky thing [uh] to identify, and I'm not sure I've got [uh]  the best answer for you there.

     

    [Um] in regards to the first part of the question, how do we manage or how do we handle young people [um] and promote that sort of [uh] pluralism, or you know tolerance of other people's beliefs without them feeling [uh] attacked or shut down?

     

    [Uh] not to not to [um] pass the buck here, but I do think the best people to talk to about that is Step Together with Heather and her team [uh], because this is the sort of conversation they had have all day, every day.

     

    And [um], I think it can and does vary based on both the ideology and also the young person, but what I would suggest [uh], and this is just sort of off the back of our research, is when there is a young person that is showing those sorts of behaviours or saying that that sort of [um] [uh] that those sorts of things.

     

    It always is important to consider ‘why’, [um], so what is actually going on in that young person's life?

     

    Because one of [um] one of the cases we looked at, it was quite clear that young person [um] who was seemingly advocating Neo-Nazi ideology, had very little understanding of Neo-Nazi ideology.

     

    [Um], but what they were actually experiencing was that they were subject to such [um] such challenging, personal circumstances as the victim of abuse, that they were just terrified of being bullied at school.

     

    And so the adoption of the Neo Nazi persona, was in that instance [um] identified as a way that they were trying to protect themselves [um] so it's never [uh], as simple as what as what we hope it would be, [um] because in this particular case, this young person honestly I doubt they could have picked a neo Nazi out of a lineup [um], and yet they were walking around telling everyone they're a neo Nazi because they thought, “well, if I'm big and I'm scary and I'm tough, no one will mess with me and then maybe school is the one place where I’m not going to have to put up with [uh] being treated poorly.”

     

    [um] So that's just one example, but [uh] one of the things I would encourage is really [um] finding out what's going on with them at home, [uh] because these beliefs are often connected with that sort of context.

     

    [um], I I don't think [um] it's necessarily a case of them [uh] being [uh] born evil so to speak.

     

    [um], when to get nervous, [uh] that is really [um] challenging [um], a challenging question, [uh] you know, at what point do we intervene?

     

    And again, I think engaging with the Step Together program is I think, the first step in planning [um] the appropriate management strategy.

     

    I think confronting young people and saying, “well, you can't believe this or you can't do that” [um], is not going to be [um] met with a positive reception, and may actually harden their position as well.

     

    So working with um ESP and their team, and getting that better understanding about what's happening in that young person's life, uh those are the best ways to inform a management strategy for that young person.

     

    [um] But the really tricky thing is doing it in such a way as that they're not feeling like they've been labelled as the bad kid, [um] that they're hopeless and that they're irredeemable, [uh] because I think that sort of [um] stigmatisation will actually [um] will actually [uh] firm up their engagement with that extremist [uh] community.

     

    So sorry, there's no easy answer to that one.

     

    Shaw, Rebecca

    Thank you so much Kristy.

     

    We are sort of at time and I do notice there's a couple of [um] other really good questions here that, if you don't mind Kristy I might throw to you after the fact and get back to [um], the people [um] [um] as soon as possible if that's okay.

    [um] Because I would like to just put up a last slide with some contact details so that if you do have further questions you can.

     

    So Kristy if you want to just [um] stop sharing for a second, I'll just wrap up for

    everyone.

     

    Campion, Kristy

    Sorry I thought I already was no longer sharing.

     

    Shaw, Rebecca

    My bad, [um] okay.

     

    Oh I've gone to the beginning sorry guys.

     

    [um] Yeah so obviously that's a wrap for today.

     

     [um] Thank you once again to everyone for joining us.

     

    [um] If you would like to know more about our ESU programs, please do see our website listed here.

     

     [um] Community engagement and sharing knowledge and education obviously plays a really important role in preventing and countering violent extremism.

     

    We can present on violent extremism and our programs right across New South Wales, so if you do see an opportunity for us to present please do reach out to myself [um] also listed on this slide.

    [um] What we're seeing throughout all parts of New South Wales is vulnerable people and especially vulnerable youth and so we all do need to work together for the shared goal of community safety. 

What makes our young people vulnerable to violent extremism and what can we do about it? Young people are increasingly being targeted for recruitment by violent extremist organisations and individuals.

Join Dr Kristy Campion as she looks at how young people are exposed to violent extremism, and what makes them vulnerable.

Kristy is Senior Lecturer and Discipline Lead of Terrorism Studies at the Australian Graduate School of Policing and Security, Charles Sturt University. In 2024, she was named top researcher in her field.


Dr Kristy Campion
Dr Kristy Campion

Working with Autistic People in a CVE Context with Dr Vicki Gibbs

  • In this Webinar we introduce Clinical Psychologist Dr Vicki Gibbs. Vicki is Head of Research at Autism Spectrum Australia (Aspect).

    Autistic People in a CVE Context

    In this Webinar we introduce Clinical Psychologist Dr Vicki Gibbs. Vicki is Head of Research at Autism Spectrum Australia (Aspect).

    Watch Webinar on YouTube

    Transcript

    okay we might kick off um just in the interest of saving time for everyone uh we're qu we're quite rushed today Vicki has condensed her presentation into an hour for us it usually goes for a little bit longer um but yes good morning thanks everyone for joining on a Monday at 10:30 um as always uh we appreciate your time we begin our webinar by in the traditional custodians of the land on which we meet today and pay our respects to their Elders past and present we extend that respect to our original and Tor straight Islander people here

     

    today again Vicki has already um reduced her presentation so I'm just going to introduce our speakers quickly and um then get moving Heather Jackson we'll briefly provide you with some context today as to why we've been working with Vicki Heather is the director of the New South Wales engagement and support unit Heather has been involved in C since 2016 with a focus on client reintegration into the community and cve disengagement Heather leads three CV programs in New South Wales to provide support and structured case management to people vulnerable to or who have engaged in violent extremism Heather also provides advice and support for teams to implement intervention Pathways and deliver community and stakeholder engagement programs Our Guest today is clinical psychologist Dr Vicki Gibbs Vicki is head of research at autism spectrum Australia or aspect and has almost 20 years experience in the field of autism spanning diagnostic research education well-being employment and criminal justice I will moderate any questions that come through the chat today but because we are time poor um I think a lot of it will be covered off during the presentation and anything that isn't covered off uh Vicki has kindly offered to answer via email after the fact so I will send that information across to anyone who has outstanding questions I'll also put a slide up with my contact details at the end and so will Vicki so you can um follow up with either one of us um also noting again that we are recording so please keep your mics and um videos off um okay I'm going to share my screen and hand over to

     

    hither thanks be um thanks everyone for joining us I know Monday morning A lot of people are catching up on emails and trying to recover from the weekend so I really appreciate um the people who have been able to attend we have been noticing in cve um and even some more of the broader um criminal justice elements the increase in um understanding the vulnerabilities and early interventions of people with neuro Divergence and we're very grateful for Vicki um Coming uh to talk to us today she's been doing a lot of work in this um Arena and she is one of our um guest speakers at our cve master class that we've run for cve practitioners what we've really seen in cve and and anyone that's sort of been involved in CV or even broader is that we're seeing a lot of domestic and international recognition that neurod Divergent people are showing vulnerability to Violent extremism and what I mean by that is what we're seeing in terms of uh the clients that are getting referred to the engagement support program and other programs whether it be in the correctional system or even in in broader um interventions is that we are seeing especially over the last 12 to 18 months uh a quite a few people that have been referred to by law enforcement that have been either diagnosed or later get diagnosed with um on the as of neurode Divergence and what we're really seeing in law enforcement is that they're noticing that these particularly young people are quite vulnerable to different aspects of violent extremism and thankfully they're diverting them to intervention programs rather than moving on to criminal charges noting their vulnerability some of the key aspects in neuro Divergence and vulnerability and Vicky will talk more on it is that some people in neurod Divergence have quite a fixation a fascination and intensity in a specific subject matter and this can lead them to influences of violent extremism and some of the examples we've got there is some young people or some um neurod Divergent people can be very fixated on things like military Warfare they can be quite fixated on things like symbolism um and that sort of really leads them down especially on the online environment where a lot of neurode Divergent people feel more comfortable and they can be sort of really in their sort of search Pathways and their interest Pathways they can be really attra um they can get attracted to um certain areas online that have nefarious means for more violent extremism um ideology and more violent extremism rhetoric and it's really clear and it's really important to show to state that not all neurode Divergent people are vulnerable to terrorism and for those that joined us in the previous webinar with Christy Campion and the vulnerability of young people in cve it really showed that neurod Divergence by themselves was not the only risk not the only mitigating factor of vulnerability um what was more prevalent was in terms of trauma background trauma and child adolesence violence in the homes um adverse childhood experiences mental health so neurodiversity made up one of many components of vulnerability so what we don't want to do is label um neurode Divergent people possible vulnerable to terrorism but we need to call it out that there is that aspect of vulnerability there that um we need to be able to be sensitive to approach and be informed about and really understand how that person Works in terms of their brain in terms of being able to work with the young person or the adult and being able to be able to be sensitive and inform form Med in terms of our interventions and I think just as importantly how do we support the family and other support services around them to help them guide them away from those fixations from those Pathways to Violent extremism so without further Ado I'd really like to thank Vicki for joining us um ask as many questions as you like I know that we are time poor but um it's a really interesting context and I hope you enjoy the webinar and thank you for joining us

     

    thank you um yeah so we'll just get right into it so this is a focus on autism just on to the next slide thank you yeah so I'll just give you a very brief overview of autism just to kind of look at it from what we know currently kind of a modern understanding of autism because I think there are still some quite outdated Notions around autism floating around um then focus on what do we know about autism and radicalization from the research and also um what do we know about working specifically with autistic people in the cve context which as you'll discover as we go along isn't too much uh so then we'll fall back on to where we know a lot about um and that's to do just with General strategies for enhancing communication and managing distress because that's going to be useful in any context so yes just briefly an overview of autism next slide so of course it's a developmental condition and it affects how people communicate learn behave and interact with the world around them um current best estimates are somewhere in the range of at least one in 40 it's a moving Feast it's going up um and it has gone up consistently for the last 10 to 15 years like when I was in started at aspect it was one in 170 and it was 19 years ago um so and of course there's a lot of discussion about is it really going up or are we just more um aware and diagnosing people that we wouldn't have in the past um people do tend to lean towards the latter we are more aware we've got better diagnostic um screening tools we're diagnosing more people of color and adults and females all of whom potentially were missing out before but I don't think we can say it's case closed in terms of is there something else that's actually creating more autistic people so we're not too sure about that certainly awareness is accounting for a lot of it but I don't know if that's all of it um more boys than girls are diagnosed with autism again this racio is going down so 15 years ago it was like 10:1 now 3:1 um with a caveat there that I'm saying more boys than girls are diagnosed whether that actually means there are more autistic boys there are autistic girls the jury is out on that too is it that we're just not recognizing girls are or is there some female protective um effect where girls are less likely to be autistic than boys um but we're certainly getting better at recognizing autism in young girls because it does present subtly differently as to what causes autism um it's still being investigated we know that genetics is playing a huge role and we know that very clearly from Twin and family studies so you know for example if one identical twin has autism the chance that their ident identical twin is also autistic is like 80% which is certainly way higher than um in the general population but it's not 100% so we know there's something else going on some other triggering some environmental and we're not too sure what that is there are a number of things that have got more evidence than others so things like older paternal age um things like uh maternal uh problems during pregnancy there are a few links to that as well but again um no firm ideas around definitely what causes Environ what the environmental factors are uh next slide and autism as a spectrum condition um we've really come to understand autism in that sense of being on a Continuum so back in 2013 that was reflected in the DSM the diagnostic statistic iCal manual where we went from categories of autism so you know you will be very familiar with the term Aspergers you may be familiar with the term pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified um and then autistic Disorder so we used to have categories and we learned that that doesn't really um reflect what the reality is um the reality is that autism is on a spectrum you can't really draw these lines and put people into these different boxes of autism so in 20 2013 we went to autism spectrum disorder to to be the umbrella term and then people are somewhere kind of on that Continuum um and also people are affected in different ways across all of the characteristics of autism and then to add complexity some autistic people have really significant language um and learning difficulties and others don't have any of those and then we know that common uh there are common co-occurring conditions which can change I guess the profile of that autistic person so if you have an autistic person who has major anxiety um and severe depression that's obviously a different profile than somebody who's autistic and doesn't have any mental health problems um and then falling down from all of that how we support an autistic person it can be very different from one to the other so you need to understand their autism and how they're affected by that whether they have co-occurring language learning difficulties because obviously you have to cater for that if you're trying to communicate with them and whether they've got mental health issues that are feeding into what's going on for them as well so all of those things need to be considered and if someone's doing a diagnostic assessment they really should be painting that picture of that person because knowing that a person is Autistic or not really isn't telling you too much for all of the above reasons so we'll just go to the next slide so having said that there's all these variations in in autism and how autism can present of course there has to be a unifying um part of autism in that in order to receive a diagnosis of autism you have to have these two um difficulties differences if you like so these are the core diagnostic criteria for autism and that's differences in social communication and social interaction and differences in terms of what we call restricted and repetitive Behavior so in order to receive a formal diagnosis someone has to have evidence of of both of these areas um we don't quite know why they go together um because they're quite separate um I guess buckets of issues but we know that they do go together and when someone has both of these kind of buckets of issues going on that's that's autism um we'll just go to the next slide and that enlarges a little bit on on what we mean by social communication and social interaction differences again um how this presents in autistic person can vary but the sorts of things we see is that they may for example um prefer to spend more time on their own than typically developing people sometimes that's because the environment is difficult for them but other times it's because it's a preference um to non-autistic people the way they behave can appear odd they can appear potentially over friendly or potentially disinterested socially and people perceive them to be socially inappropriate or rude because of the way they kind of conduct themselves because of those reasons find it very hard to form friendships um often Mis misunderstood by non-autistic people and they certainly often have marked difficulties either using non-verbal communication to communicate and by that I mean eye contact facial expression gesture tone of voice all of those really important ways that people get their message across um again we don't quite know why but for a lot of autistic people none of of those things come very naturally so they can have quite a want of a better word kind of wooden um communication style where they're not conveying a lot of AFF effect and some autistic people are a particularly women are not too bad with their use of nonverbals but often struggle to read other people so they're not really picking up on cues that other people give by their tone of voice um by their facial expression so that reading and using nonverbal communication is a really um key element of autism that we look for when we're diagnosing autism and next Slide the restricted and repetitive behaviors that I mentioned this um is quite a disperate group of different things and they all fall under this umbrella and an autistic person wouldn't necessarily have to show all of them but they have to show at least some um and the sorts of things we look for is a strong preference for sameness and routines um can be a bit rigid black and white in their thinking um engage in repetitive movements and that might be repetitive body movements hand flapping is a classic one in small children but an older people sometimes um pacing um or repetitive play and sensory differences are very common amongst autistic people being over sensitive so finding noise lights um certain smells very aversive or on the flip side seeking out a lot of sensory stimulation and of course as mentioned earlier some autistic people have really intense highly focused interests or passions that they will devote a lot of time to develop a lot of expertise in that's not necessarily a problem can actually lead to amazing things and careers um but it's a characteristic of autistic people that they can get highly focused on certain things and as we'll talk about later sometimes that can um create some issues in that sphere that you're working in so next slide as I mentioned before communication varies greatly among autistic people all the way from non-verbal um or using very few words and I'm talking even in adulthood um up to being highly fluent communicators I would has it a guess that most of the people you would come across would be people with at least average language ability um and having said that even people who have who are highly fluent and on the surface have got um you know good expressive receptive language they have got some unusual language features and one that stands out is they often take things quite literally so Expressions that we might use like you know it's raining cats of dogs or I saw red um those sorts of things can be very confusing to an autistic people the person who takes language kind of face value things like humor jokes you know sarcasm these expressions and idioms that we use can be very confusing for Artis itic people um and so for some autistic people understanding abstract Concepts especially things around emotions and um thoughts and um other people's perspectives can be quite difficult as well even when they have got good language next slide because of this variation in autism and how it presents you may see and if you get reports with people that you're dealing with in their diagnosis they may be given a level um um level one up to three and really just reflecting the I guess the level of support that the diagnostician has decided at the time that that person needs so level one being the lower levels of support and level three being very high levels of support um I would again has it a guess that most of the people you would be coming across would be in this level one group who prior to 2013 would have gotten that Asbergers diagnosis uh next slide and important that we don't overlook the many strengths that can come along with autism um we know that autistic people can have incredible attention to detail um very good visual perception skills um some autistic people incredibly creative and artistic some people have great mathematical technical abilities as we said before interests or expertise in really Niche areas because they spend a lot of time learning about it and focusing on it um they also have character strengths autistic people by and large are pretty honest and loyal what you see is what you get type people they don't often have much capacity for things like manipulation or deception um and for many they have quite a strong sense of justice of right and wrong and lots of autistic people have got fantastic memories especially um for facts and that ties into their interests in these areas where they actually can become quite expert at certain things next slide and just I thought it' be nice rather than just me kind of giving the cold hard facts this is a bunch of young people from the UK talking about how they describe um autism so just have a bit of a listen to them Vicki just let me know if you can't hear the sound on this it should by all means work

     

    okay not so much no sound yeah I mean I wonder if you can copy paste the link down there in YouTube into your browser and maybe it'll work straight rather than yep I'll do that for everyone yeah that could work sorry

     

    everyone maybe not I thought it might have just been because it was embedded in the in the SL in the is that not working no it's kind of buffering a bit yeah look I'm sorry guys we did do some testing on this earlier I'm just going to um we will um what I'll do is um Vicky I'll put these two uh the two films in the um the chat yeah yep

     

    um yeah it could be an internet because it's buffering it's not just it might be too big there were really really big files in the thing I'm sorry everyone let me just bring my PowerPoint back

     

    up

     

    okay I've lost my mouse

     

    sorry SL

     

    show from current slide oh didn't like the current slide one sorry

     

    everyone oh go from here Vicki um I think you need to share your screen oh I was oh

     

    yep lovely Okay Go Okay lovely so autism and radicalization what do we know from the research uh next

     

    slide so I guess there is an ongoing debate if you like about um you know are autistic people more likely to be radicalized especially in an online environment and become involved in um you know terrorist related activities and I think a lot of that has been drawn from you know media cases so you know if an autistic person is caught up in these sorts of events typically the fact that they have autism is mentioned you know and so people do begin to question and there certainly have been some high-profile cases where autistic people have um become involved and there's just some um newspaper headings when I just did a quick um search that came up if we go to the next

     

    slide these three are pretty high-profile cases in different countries across the world so that um Nikki Riley guy was an 18yearold from the UK um been diagnosed with Asbergers and he' really struggled socially all his life and then developed a fixation on terrorism and martyrdom that was his special interest he converted to Islam he got really obsessed with the 911 attacks um ended up befriending radicalized individuals online and these were probably the first and best friends he's had in a long time um so you can see how kind of appealing that would be to him and he ended up planning a suicide bombing at a restaurant um he made bombs he strapped them to his chest he went into the bathroom this restaurant and he activated the bomb but um probably thankfully for people in the restaurant he had trouble opening the bathroom sto door and then the bomb exploded before he walked out so he was really badly injured nobody else was um and then he was he ended up going to prison of course and he took his own life in prison a few years later so that was a very kind of high-profile case in the UK this young man pton prent was a very different um case in the us he was diagnosed with autism but he had a pretty significant intellectual disability as well like he was in a special school um and he ended up again spending excessive Time online got fixated with terrorism and was um talking to extremist groups online and then he ended up arrested in 2015 for sending bomb making instructions to someone he thought was Isis but actually was an undercover um FBI agent and he ended up going to jail for a year but for him um he was found not guilty eventually there were a number of appeals on the basis of his um level of functioning like mental defect um is how they refer to it over there but um that was quite a sad case um and then the probably the most famous case certainly in Canada is this guy Alec manassian and you may have heard of him he's the one who drove a um a van into pedestrians in Toronto outside their Parliament building and killed 10 people and he in his case his lawyers tried to use his autism as a defense to find him not criminally responsible um but that wasn't successful that was dismissed and he was found um guilty and he's serving a very long prison sentence um so there some of the cases that have come out in the Press if we go to the next slide where we look at the research so has anybody actually done some research to answer that question about is there a relationship between Autism and radicalization and the short answer to that is no there hasn't been kind of sufficient research to draw any conclusions we can't draw a length there been a handful of studies and that Drew it at Al in 2023 reviewed them and you know said on the basis of what's been done you really can't draw any conclusions there certainly is some evidence if you just look at um the terrorist population so looking at terrorists then you can see that having a co-occurring mental health um diagnosis and that includes autism um there can be higher rates of that among terrorists and also um if you look at autistic people who are caught up in terrorism they're more likely to be a lone actor which is probably not too surprising so those kinds of conclusions can be drawn but whether you know you say that an autistic population by and large is more likely to engage in Terrorist Behavior we can't um draw any conclusions based on the research having said that we're hearing from multiple um law enforcement agencies us UK you know all of you would know in your day-to-day work that a lot of the particularly very young people you're coming across um so these 12 to 18 year olds have got some diagnosis of autism or other forms of neurod Divergence and internationally this kind of um has been noted if you like so hence why we may be having discussions like this so going on to next slide whether or not um autistic people have um you know are more likely certainly autistic people can become involved and so people have been looking at well what is it about autism that you might consider you know kind of a risk factor and equally what is is it about autism that could be a protective Factor because when you're working with people and trying to kind of divert them away knowing what a risk and protective fact factors are really important um and so some of the factors around autism that have been put forward as potential risk factors are things like that tendency to become fixated on interests it can be problematic if those interests tend towards topics that are related to violence or extremism also that tendency to prefer structure routine predictability rules you know if those sorts of things break down in an autistic person's life that can heighten things like anxiety and stress and maybe heighten their need for order and predictability and then if they come across theories or ideologies or causes that have very fixed rules and are fixed in nature and and maybe make claims about restoring order that could be quite attractive to an autistic person of course those social communication differences can lead to social isolation and then the online World becomes a bit of a safe haven for autistic people and then they're on the online world and they come across individuals or groups who um have a sense that they might be able to exploit this other person who potentially comes across as socially naive and then they use their kind of desire for social connection to inspire them to commit acts of terrorism um and you know when you you're an autistic person who's potentially had difficulty forming friends and relationships all their their lives if you've got an online community suddenly encouraging your interest and validating you and validating your skills and expertise that can become really socially and emotionally reinforcing and you know that person might experience for the first time a real sense of belonging and purpose um as well as feeling like Mastery from the skills that they have so the online space can be incredibly um rewarding for that person um and then the issue is those social communication differences can mean that that autistic person doesn't really pick up um other people's agenders so you know sometimes other people might be say oh this person's trying to manipulate me I feel like this person's you know pushing me or coercing me and autistic people may miss that and they also don't often see the bigger picture and they don't think ahead to the consequences of what they're being encouraged to do and you know also that literal tendency they might take it extremist messages and propaganda really literally so all of those things can be seen as potential risk factors um and then once an autistic person is engaged in these kind of Pursuits and interests it's really hard potentially for them to ship their focus away and then finally the sensory processing differences so if you've got a person who's very hyper sensitive the you know real world can be overwhelming a lot of the time um and they can have a lot of negative experiences and then that kind of can fuel their grievances their anger and push people towards terrorist involvement and also on the other hand the terrorist propaganda can be very appealing to autistic people who are sensory seeking so the imagery the diagrams the uniforms can have a real sensory appeal um we'll go to next slide uh because on the flip side there might be protective factors around autism as well so you know that same preference for structure routine and rules if you're working in an intervention context you can potentially use that um to you know shift them into following more pro-social rules you know by you know educating them about the things that they may not be picking up on like the consequences of their actions and things like that um and those character strengths I mentioned before you know having a strong sense of morality honesty Fair fairness that can play into um being positive and also the independent thinking nature of autistic people can mean that they might be less likely than others to you know follow kind of fads or succumb to group think um so some of these things can work in autistic people's favor as well in a um risky environment if you like so we'll go on to the next slide so we need to move away to from thinking just about the autistic person and their autism and what whether you know a risk and protective Factor around that individual because it really goes beyond individual factors and you would know that just from your um work hold

     

    on have you lost

     

    me no you're still there Vicki oh good okay oh okay I can't I can't see you for some strange reason oh I'm back again oh something justed up on my lovely yeah so you know thinking about the broader social factors and I'm just casting my mind back to one of the slides that was shown right at the very beginning where it listed the vulnerability and it had near diversity and then I think it had mental health adverse childhood experience and victimization what we know is that autistic people experience higher rates of all of those things so autistic people are much more likely to have mental health problems they're much more likely to experience victimization and we do know this from research and much more likely to have adverse child experiences like child abuse so you know a lot of it is to do with the experiences that they have the disadvantage the stigma the Discrimination that plays into the reason why autistic people can be vulnerable in this scenario so you know those broader social factors play into it as well it's not just their autism so we need to be thinking about about them in their context um and their previous experiences because all of that um plays into the picture as well next

     

    slide yeah so I guess that's a diagram trying to sum all of that up so whether or not autism is um associated with an increased risk of radicalization it's not that autism is kind of causal in any way to risk it's more like autism is a contextual factor and it's contextual to both risk and protective factors so like in other words autism can shape the experiences the functioning level the behavior of a person that might in some instances exacerbate whether they're vulnerable or not as Expos as opposed to saying autism causes the vulnerability if that makes sense and and on the other hand autistic characteristics can also contextualize res resilience as well um and autistic characteristics we need to think of them not just in terms of well how do they play into whether or not a person is radicalized but how do we need to consider those same autistic characteristics when we're working with them in a cve um context so we'll just go on to the next slide which is working with autistic people in the CV context so going back again and thinking about what is research telling us about this next

     

    slide not much so there's been very little research around um working with autistic people in the cve context um I'm sure all of you are familiar with the work of um Dr faras and the Faris framework um she's definitely done most of the work around thinking around autism in that context I've just put the um QR code there anybody's not familiar because it's definitely worth going and reading some of the um work that Dr Ferris has done but looking at well you know so she's made some suggestions about how to work with autis peris context but looking at kind of research about well um how successful is that you know what are the outcomes if you follow autistic people who are being you know engaged with CV like what works what doesn't work the research around that we just don't have it to say what's an evidence-based approach um but certainly we've begun to identify what are the challenges and the opportunities in this space um and so in that document there if you go and have a look you will see an outline of the aspects of autism that are possible risk and protective factors we've talked about some of them already but what's quite nice in the in the document that um theyve put forward there is looking at well if if this particular aspect of autism is an issue for this person um and you need to kind of Judge that for each autistic person what can you do to address that particular issue with the aim to you know relieve distress whatever is going on because that could be contributing to why they're vulnerable um to help them manage their own kind of vulnerability and risk and help them identify when they need to seek support so if we're just go to the next slide there's an example of what you would find in um the document by Al tar and colleagues so if let's say for argument's sake you've got someone who they've got a strong interest in violence and you identify that this is definitely a risk factor for this person what does that um mean for support and intervention and some of the things that might mean is look I'm need to kind of work with this person to nurture and facilitate healthy interests because with an autistic person who's got a tendency to get fixated you really can't remove that and leave a vacuum so the idea would be to try and either um shift that person take that interest and kind of morph it a little bit into something less violent or introduce some new interests because if that person has that tendency they really do need to have that um that in their lives they're a person who's very driven by passions and fact seeking and they spend a lot of time doing that that so it's unrealistic to think you can stop them if you like it has to be like a replacement um opportunity also looking at um legal Pursuits of safe offshoots of terrorism that's what I meant kind of Shifting them and helping them develop strategies to monitor regulate their interest and manage their Stress and Anxiety that might be some of the implications there um example there if you identify that this person's social and communication difficulties are meaning that they isolated for example and that's increasing risk you might think how can I find um identify accommodation so that there isn't barers to this person being in school or this person being in employment or this person connecting with other people um there might be aspects of interacting that you need to be explicit and teach them and and um you know help them with social skills training for want to be better term um and maybe education around Internet safety awareness maybe they're vulnerable online because they're isolated they spend a lot of time online but they don't have any kind of skills around teasing out what's a safe you know kind of site to be on and what are sites that are inciting them and end up getting them into trouble um so we'll just move on to the next side I can see questions popping up but I think I probably missed it at the beginning when I was messing around trying to get back on but yeah we'll have a look at them right at the end um there was is one team that did publish um a paper where they have been been working with a lot of autistic people in their team in Montreal and they um did a study and published some a paper on it so I'll just go through their findings in a little bit but a little bit about the team so they've been working since 2016 and they the I guess the novelty of the this team is these mainly these three aspects first of all that they have a multi entry point system so they take referrals from anywhere they take them from school they can be self-referred family members so it's not just kind of via law enforcement so anyone um can be who where there are concerns about radicalization can be um referred on to this team and then the team is a very multi-disciplinary team so they have psychiatrists social workers psychologists and people who have expertise in risk assessment all working together and then they have excellent links back out to the community so they have a mentoring program service they have um you know independent skills Services they refer people out they have social kind of opportunities that they can refer people out to the community so this team's kind of a holistic wraparound service and if we go to the next slide they did a study where they looked at their clientele and asked some questions like how many of our referred um clients are autistic and they found that 27% of the 86 clients that they'd work with over the time frame were autistic um without intellectual disability so yeah that's a pretty high rate if we're saying that one in 40 auti people in the general population or autistic we've got nearly you know a third between a quarter and a third of their client-based are autistic they looked at their autistic and non-autistic clients to see if there were any difficult differences they could identify on demographics not so much so you know no difference in terms of the education level um the you know their social economic status that sort of thing gender so they're all male um and but they did find some differences autistic clients were more likely to have multiple co-occurring conditions and to be socially isolated everything we've set up to now that's probably not surprising they were more likely to hold gender related ideologies so for example 59% um in Cells versus only 12% in the non-autistic um clientele they were more likely to present with that mix unclear uncertain and we've certainly been hearing that from our Australian um law enforcement Partners too that they don't have like the traditional strong you know um focus on Islam or um uh extreme right they tend to have a bit of everything and violence in and of itself can be um where they're coming from and that's what they found with this group and like we said before 75% of them said that was socially isolated just under half and then next slide they also talked to their practitioners and said um what has been working for you when you're working with these the autistic clients in particular and some of the facilitators that are identified were having very structured clinical meetings with a clear agenda they said that works best when they're working with these clients to have a slightly more directive approach so not the reflective approach you know the how are you're feeling and what that might being like and you know with an auti and this is not surprising when we know how we work with people with mental health problems some of these very same things have come out as the facilitators in that context so having a more slightly directive approach uh making explicit everything that is implicit and that's really important we need to kind of try and look at things from an autistic lens and many things that we think are common sense if you like and are things that an autistic person needs to be told very very directly and that's something that I think these practitioners have learned as they've been working with this clientele especially when it comes to social aspects um they they're just things that are not do not come naturally to autistic people social rules social Moray you know the social implication of what they might say or do you kind of got to say what by the way and tell them um using visual aids to assist mentalization and help them see cause and effect and visual aids might be as simple as just drawing something out as you're talking about it using photos using images um setting goals and expectations that focus on practical and functional issues so I think by that they mean looking at their life what's going on their lives and getting them into work or getting them back into education or getting them into a you know social opportunity rather than spending time talking about the ideology for example and and in to help build rapport developing a connection around those special interests so that can be helpful in getting the person kind of talking to you um and having that Rapport building because we all know if you've got to have that Rapport in a therapeutic setting next slide now given that I've just said that we don't know too much about working with autistic people in a cve context we can draw on our general strategies for just enhancing communication and managing distress um when we're working with autistic people um so we know for example when you're interviewing because there's been some specific work done around police interviews and um you know what works and what doesn't work in getting people being able to tell you their story and we know that standard interviewing approach which in a police context is you know tell me what happened when you got home a free narrative and Then followed by probing questions that's how police usually operate but we know that is not effective for autistic people um in those instances they they report less information they have trouble recalling who where when it's too unstructured so in general in that kind of um research field they've found that autistic people do much better if you want to find information from them to be do it in a much more cued recall and use a lot more structure so if we just go to the next slide so few examples about that rather that you know really open-ended question tell me what happened when you arrived home yesterday um you know again make explicit what's implicit if I'm there to tell you about something terrible that happened yesterday afternoon I know if you stay tell me what happened when you arrived home yesterday that's what you want to hear about so I'll just jump straight into that say oh well that person was there but an autistic person will start from the minute they got home potentially I had a bowl of cereal and then I watched a show on TV because you've just said what happened when you arrived home yesterday so to be a bit more explicit and to break it down we'll just jump to the better example which is in that final oh sorry back to that slide before you know break down your questioning um tell me what time you got home who was home when you got there what did you see when you went inside and you know prompt them to the time that you're interested in then what happened next and what happened next so avoiding that kind of free narrative and breaking it down and giving them a bit of a structure in their recall is going to make it a lot easier for them and you'll get more factual information so next slide um really simple tips um following a logical chronological order in question don't be going back and forth try and start at the beginning and work your way through using short simple unambiguous questions um again is going to be very helpful and a very simple thing allowing extra time to respond a lot of autistic people even bright autistic people with good language if you ask them a question question it can take them some time to process what you've said and formulate a response and what often happens is you people ask a question and when the person doesn't answer immediately they think they don't understand the question so they'll ask it again in a different way and then maybe frame it again a different way in a few seconds later and the autistic person is still trying to work their way through the first so just give them um you know a while it's a bit of an awkward Gap but just leave a little bit of time and potentially at the end of 10 or 15 second say was would you like me to ask that question in a different way if you don't get a response then but don't kind of jump in immediately so just allow that little bit of extra time for them to process and formulate their response next slide um simple things like sign posting so you know instead of kind of just jumping from topic to topic letting them know you're moving on to a different topic okay we finished talking about X now we're going to talk about y um asking very precise questions so again instead of tell me what you saw this morning when you could hear all about who knows what um put them in a a space and time you told me you were at the park this morning that's what you want to know about not what they had for breakfast and when got on the bus something happened in the park you told me you at the park this morning tell me what happened when you were there so that's a much more precise question and then we always suggest leavings open so if you ask someone was it a ad it's probably

     

    like oh just yeah thank you if you ask someone was it a child or an adult and they're an autistic person and they really want to please you and they feel you really want an answer they potentially will just say an adult because that was the last thing you said you haven't given them an option to say I don't know so was it a child or an adult or are you not sure like give them an open option because otherwise they feel like they have to give you an answer and they potentially will just give you something think what you want to know

     

    next um supporting communication recall with visual supports we touched on a little bit earlier um so visual supports can be you know schedules like if you are having a session you might say look we're going to spend the first 10 minutes talking about what we talked about last time and seeing how you've been this week we're going to spend the middle time doing X and at the end we'll have some time for you to ask me questions or I'm going to talk to your support person or your mom like having a written agenda is one way if you're trying to talk them through you know cause and effect you could use mind maps photos cards um using technology can also be helpful some autistic people who are very fluent speakers if they're feeling stressed they lose the ability to speak for want of a better term they just kind of Go mute from the anxiety but they are they may prefer to still communicate with you but they'll type it out so you know just being a bit flexible about things like that as well uh next slide um just these are some examples of what not to do so touched on it before do not use um nonliteral language or idioms so it sounds like you saw red they'll just be like what um don't use multi-part questions so saying was anyone at the house when you arrived and was the door unlocked is a two-part question so that needs to be broken down into two parts don't rely on your intonation to indicate that a statement is actually a question so if I was say to you you're alone because I ended that with a kind of up thing with my intonation you know that I was saying were you alone but an autistic person doesn't hear that because we talked before about how they don't read nonverbals and a nonverbal is intonation so if if you want to know if they're alone say were you alone don't use your intonation to kind of indicate a question um don't use Tag questions so a tag question is something like you went to the park didn't you because then you're kind of it's they feel obliged to give you an answer if you like um don't use present tense when you're asking about the past so that can be helpful and people do so now you're at the shop and you're talking to your friend so you're kind of trying to put them back in the scenario by using present tense and putting them back there but that again can be confusing to an autistic person and don't use double negatives like you wouldn't disagree that it would have been dark outside could get them going in circle so it's getting back to that first point I made before of the three using simple language simple straightforward language rather than kind of these sorts of things next slide um just now thinking about Stress and Anxiety so questioning any person but an autistic person particularly about a traumatic event can result in them becoming extremely anxious sensory aspects of environments that you're potentially not aware of can also heightened anxiety and distress and if you've got an autistic person who becomes anxious and distressed then any um communication that you are hoping to have and any kind of recall or information you're trying to get is probably going to you know the likelihood of that happening is going to decrease and you could end up with something like a shutdown or a meltdown which is not conducive to to what you're trying to achieve so next slide

     

    um so what I mean by meltdown and shut down these are they're not Tantrums so they occur when an autistic person is extremely stressed brightened or sensory uncomfortable um they're not a planned goal oriented action like they're not like a totle of tantrum I want to get a biscus I'll screen and jump up and down till I get these are things where the person has literally lost control um best thing they need time and space to recover um limit speaking so it's not the time to say is there anything I can do can I help you what's the problem they're they've pretty much lost it by that point and the best thing is to as long as they're not hurting themselves or hurting anybody else is to just move away um and they both are caused by the same thing but they look very very different a meltdown is can be something like pitting fleeing biting crying screaming you're not going to miss one of those they're easy to spot a shutdown it's caused by the same sort of thing but it's when an autistic person reacts in the opposite ways more like a freeze response they just shut down almost like they're catatonic they cannot speak anymore they will go quiet withdraw um and sometimes you might not even notice happen because they've gone quiet but they've checked out at that point either one of these you want to avoid it happening in the first place um but if it does happen there's really nothing you can do except to move away and let them calm down and generally they will if they're given that time and space uh next slide again this is a video but probably not going to work it's just young people talking about meltdowns and shutdowns um Vicki it should work I think this share sound button muted itself before um do you want to give it a go or have we got no time anyway I'm not sure uh I can't slides I've got but yeah give it a

     

    will for me a meltdown is when I've hit a limit it feels as if circuit and your bra um you stop thinking

     

    about about anything the person why start showing a bit of odd behavior maybe I started punching myself in the arm and two weeks later I still had the bruces but it doesn't necessarily mean it's the end of the world it's just it's just in in that moment either through emotional stuff or sensory stuff it's when my brain can't take any more in and the only way you can find relief from what's Happening is to react kind of outwardly it is rarely one thing it can be a buildup of things kind of throughout the day or throughout the week even sometimes people who are really well-meaning will be know are you okay what can we do to help what's happened I'm not going to be able to answer you so you're you're just giving me more input don't try and do that sometimes we need moral support and to be listened to if they don't judge the person that would be the first step and maybe if they show a bit of sympathy that really helps if someone says you know that tiny noise is bothering me don't go oh it's just a tiny noise because for them it is not a tiny noise ask people what they need when they're calm rather than when they're having a meltdown and they can't answer you and it's too

     

    late um VI uh Vicky before you jump back in I might just say because we are almost at time if anyone needs to um leave uh please reach out and I can send you the recording of um the presentation and um I'll let Vicki

     

    finish excellent we'll just move on to the next slide um yeah as that young lady said better for this to not happen in the first place so what can you do to try and avoid that just be aware of sensory elements that might upset that person you can observe the person and see how they react if they come in and put their hands over their ears obviously there's a noise ask their person that's with them is there anything that bothers this person is there anything we can do to make more comfortable the kind of common things they don't require that's not a big deal sometimes just having the lights died or off um reducing sound or going to a quieter room let them stem so stem I mean some people have fidget toys or you know they might need to Pace a little bit you know let them do it they're not hurting anybody and that helps to regulate them some people like to wear glasses inside like sunglasses because of the fluorescent lights big deal let them wear their sunglasses same a lot of people wear caps to try and avoid light so just little things like that can make a big difference allowing regular breaks um aren't telling them they can break when they need to sometimes having something like that feelings thermometer if they don't have good words they just got a point and say look I'm kind of getting worked up oh okay you might need a break um and just letting you know a lot of autistic people have a lot of trouble um they're alexithymic which means they have difficulty identifying their own emotions and bodily States like tired and pain as well as how they feel so getting them to talk about um emotions is difficult and can be actually quite um aggravating because it's just something that they find very difficult to talk about um next slide yeah just talking about letting them have a break giving them a visual aid or a cue I need a break a card they just got it hand you so they don't have to say anything um letting them have that's a sensory toy that blue one if they have fidget toys can make a big difference for some Artis people next slide main takeaways great because we're 11:30 so insufficient research evidence to say they're at increased risk of terrorism terrorism engagement however agencies here in overseas are reporting these high proportions in their case loads among terrorists autistic people are over represented in Lone actor terrorism compared to group terrorism um autistic tra traits need to be considered when identifying potential risk and protective factors but you need to go beyond just autistic traits to look at the broader social context of the person and autistic traits are equally important when you're to consider when you're working in the cve context and trying to accommodate their social communication and sensory differences are all really important that's it now yeah it's 11:30 so what what was the arrangement that we would send questions and I'll try and answer them by email uh yes look I'm going to put my um this is obviously Vicky's details here everyone um and I'll give you my um details here as well um if you didn't have it from the um meeting invite as I said I am very happy to send anyone the full recording and what I'm going to do is I'll moderate through the questions now send everybody um a um send everybody the video that didn't work the first one um and I'll will send your questions over to Vicki and get back to you so I guess just to just to wrap up um I know a lot of people are probably going to have to start hopping off so thanks for joining us if you'd like to know more about our ESU programs please see our website step together. New South wales. goo. um Community engagement and sharing knowledge and education um obviously plays an important role in preventing and countering Vine extremism um so yeah please reach out if you see any opportunity uh for us to educate um your communities further what we are seeing throughout all parts of New South Wales is vulnerable people especially Youth and we do need to work together for the shared goal of community safety so thank you so much to Vicki um as always it was extremely um insightful and interesting as well as engaging thank you all for joining and we will reach out with our next webinar um in future thank you everyone bye

Understanding the potential vulnerabilities that some individuals with autism may face is crucial for developing effective prevention and early intervention strategies.

In this webinar, we introduce Clinical Psychologist Dr Vicki Gibbs. Vicki is Head of Research at Autism Spectrum Australia (Aspect) and has almost 20 years’ experience in the field of autism, spanning diagnostic, research, education, well-being, employment, and criminal justice.

After this session you can expect to understand:

  • the autism spectrum
  • cause and indicators as well as notable strengths and difficulties
  • where to go for formal diagnosis or to seek additional support and
  • consider any potential relationship between radicalisation and autism.


Vicki Gibbs
Vicki Gibbs
Was this content useful?
We will use your rating to help improve the site.
Please don't include personal or financial information here
Please don't include personal or financial information here

We acknowledge Aboriginal people as the First Nations Peoples of NSW and pay our respects to Elders past, present, and future. 

Informed by lessons of the past, Department of Communities and Justice is improving how we work with Aboriginal people and communities. We listen and learn from the knowledge, strength and resilience of Stolen Generations Survivors, Aboriginal Elders and Aboriginal communities.

You can access our apology to the Stolen Generations.

Quick Exit

What's this? To leave this site quickly, click the 'Quick Exit' button. You will be taken to www.google.com.au

Tips to browse safely online
Top Return to top of page Top