Greg: He was quite a snowboarder. He actually took a lesson and it clicked for him.

Sandra: Well, he was pretty delightful growing up, very delightful.

Hari Sreenivasan: Only child.

Sandra: Only child and you know, very, very open.

Greg: Very curious. Very loving and very accepting and always wanted to think the best of others.

HARI: GREG AND SANDRA LIVE IN NEW YORK, WHERE THEY RAISED THEIR SON. HE WAS A VERY BRIGHT CHILD WHO TOOK ON MANY INTERESTS.

Greg: He picked up music very quickly. He just like, picked up a trumpet and started playing it.

Sandra: When he was interested in something, he just threw himself in it.

Greg: Boy Scouts became an Eagle Scout.

Hari Sreenivasan: So when did you notice something changing?

Greg: I think in his junior year, in high school. He got braces on his teeth and he couldn’t play the trumpet so well. It was a big disappointment for him.

Sandra: One of the things that was difficult was finding this path that he went down, when he was still very young, at a very young and vulnerable time.

HARI : THEIR SON STRUGGLED TO ADAPT TO HIGH SCHOOL, AND BEGAN TO EXPLORE OUTSIDE INTERESTS… SUCH AS THE ISLAMIC FAITH.

Sandra: He’s always been very interested in religions and very spiritual. He was raised Catholic, and he was still serving Mass. We didn’t actually know that he was seeking anything different until he’s mentioned it to other people that we knew like somebody in Scouting said / he’s said he’s like exploring Islam. And I mean, we had no idea. That’s when we found out that he had converted.

Hari Sreenivasan: So he didn’t tell you–

Sandra: –he didn’t tell us.

Greg: No.

Sandra: He didn’t tell us.

HARI: BUT THAT WASN’T THE ONLY SECRET BEING KEPT. GREG AND SANDRA’S SON BEGAN TO FOLLOW A PATH OF RADICALIZATION.

Sandra: He met somebody that was interested in his conversion and ended up being the person who radicalized him. So he was spending time on the phone with this person. He was giving him books to read about Islam.

Hari Sreenivasan: How did you figure out that he was on a much more dangerous trajectory?

Sandra: We thought he was exploring a fundamentalist path of Islam, not extremism, and not radicalization, which is not Islam.You’re not thinking, are they going down a rabbit hole of extremist thinking? That just wasn’t one of the things that occurred to me.

Greg: We got a visit from the FBI in the summer of 2019

HARI: GREG AND SANDRA LEARNED THE SAME MAN THEIR SON HAD BECOME CLOSE TO AT THE MOSQUE HAD BEEN ARRESTED ON CHARGES OF ATTEMPTING TO PROVIDE MATERIAL SUPPORT TO A DESIGNATED FOREIGN TERRORISM ORGANIZATION. THEY ASKED THE FBI AGENTS WHAT THEY COULD DO TO HELP THEIR SON.

Greg: Although one of the agents expressed some sympathy for our situation, we would realize over time that they were not anybody that could help us.

Sandra: Our son was set to go to college in August. And we thought, well, let him get out of this whole scenario.

Sandra: But then when the pandemic hit, it was a perfect storm, caused him to be at home by himself. He was online constantly. We could see he would have the earbuds in but I could see he was listening to clerics. He was getting deeper and deeper into this. I think some of the appeal was the black and white of the practice, the extreme rigidity, the way you can have an answer for everything.

HARI: IN 2021, SANDRA AND GREG FOUND OUT THEIR TEENAGE SON HAD FLOWN TO ALABAMA WITHOUT THEIR KNOWLEDGE. THEY HIRED A PRIVATE DETECTIVE WHO FOUND OUT HE RETURNED WITH A WOMAN … THEY WOULD LATER DISCOVER THAT THEIR SON HAD MARRIED HER ONLINE.THE TWO WERE ARRESTED WHILE TRYING TO TRAVEL TO YEMEN BY BOAT. ACCORDING TO THE FBI, THEIR SON TOLD AN UNDERCOVER INFORMANT THAT HE AND HIS WIFE PLANNED TO FIGHT FOR THE ISLAMIC STATE AND PAID FOR THEIR TRAVEL.THEY WERE CHARGED WITH ATTEMPTING TO PROVIDING MATERIAL SUPPORT TO ISIS, A FOREIGN TERRORIST ORGANIZATION.

Sandra: He put one foot on the gangplank. And that showed the intent.That was what was required in order for them to arrest him.

HARI: SHORTLY BEFORE HE WAS ARRESTED, LOOKING FOR ANY SHRED OF HOPE, GREG AND SANDRA REACHED OUT TO “PARENTS FOR PEACE”, A NONPROFIT FOUNDED BY A GROUP OF PARENTS WHO HAVE BEEN IMPACTED BY EXTREMISM.

Myrieme Nadri-Churchill: The question that they ask themselves is, what did I miss? Did I did something wrong? And often what they all say: I don’t recognize the son or the daughter that we raised.

HARI: MYRIEME CHURCHILL IS THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR FOR PARENTS FOR PEACE.

Myrieme Churchill: Parents for Peace is a nonprofit that was started by Melvin Bledsoe after his son Carlos got radicalized, and his groomers sent him to Yemen. And he came back to the United States ready to commit a terror attack.

HARI: IN 2016, “PARENTS FOR PEACE” LAUNCHED A FREE “INTERVENTION CONFIDENTIAL HELPLINE” TO HELP PEOPLE WITH A FAMILY MEMBER WHO WAS BEING RADICALIZED.

Myrieme Churchill: A successful radicalization happened when family members are isolated by fear and shame, and a lack of help and resources. The people that are being radicalized are isolated by their groomers that are making sure that they are being disconnected from their families and communities. So it was clear for us that we had to bridge that gap.

HARI: OVER THE PHONE, THE TEAM HAS AN INTAKE PROTOCOL TO ASSESS THE SITUATION AND THE TYPES OF INTERVENTIONS THAT ARE NEEDED.

Myrieme Churchill: We have a combination of white supremacists, Islamists, Qanon, we have ecoterrorism. We have far Left. We have every combination that you can imagine of extremism. Sometimes people get into white supremacy, and then they move into Islamist and they can move into Antifa. They change one ideology to another. It’s extremely surprising.

HARI: PARENTS FOR PEACE IS CURRENTLY WORKING WITH MORE THAN 40 FAMILIES AND HAS CONDUCTED MORE THAN 400 SESSIONS IN THE FIRST HALF OF 2023. BUT DEMAND IS HIGH AND THERE ARE ADDITIONAL FAMILIES ON THE WAITING LIST.

Myrieme: There is nothing more scary than having helpline calls that we cannot take, and having a waiting list, knowing that there is parents dealing with someone with hate.

Hari Sreenivasan: Is there a profile with all these families that you’ve worked with over the years, or certain kind of warning signs and behaviors–

Myrieme Churchill: Yes, a young person who is vulnerable, that has, you know, a lot of grievances. What we realize is extremism or hate, really act almost like an addiction.

Hari Sreenivasan: So that sounds like it’s a bit like telling someone who’s being radicalized, just stop, just stop doing the drugs, just stop looking at the sites, as if that’s going to work.

Myrieme Churchill: It’s like, you know, you would say to a smoker, heavy smoker, quit, you’re gonna get cancer, we would have done very well, if that was successful.

Sandra: The phenomenon of extremism and extremist thinking put that in your wheelhouse as something to look for, when you’re wondering what’s going on with your kid.

HARI: WHILE IN PRISON AWAITING SENTENCING, GREG AND SANDRA’S SON HAD WEEKLY CALLS WITH INTERVENTIONISTS FROM PARENTS FOR PEACE.

Greg: The interventionist from Parents for Peace that he worked with for a year and a half really, they really sobered him up. They really engaged in a lot of conversations about his religious thinking. He’s come around to an amazing degree.

HARI: AT AGE 21, THEIR SON PLEADED GUILTY TO ONE COUNT OF ATTEMPTING TO PROVIDE MATERIAL SUPPORT TO A FOREIGN TERRORIST ORGANIZATION…IN JANUARY 2023, HE WAS SENTENCED TO 11 YEARS IN A FEDERAL PRISON. THEIR SON DECLINED TO BE INTERVIEWED – AND DID NOT WANT HIS NAME AND PHOTO TO BE SHARED– FOR THIS STORY.GREG AND SANDRA ARE ONLY USING THEIR FIRST NAMES TO PROTECT THEIR FAMILY’S PRIVACY.

Hari Sreenivasan: What is your relationship like with your son today?

Greg: It’s really strong. He’ll call me in the morning around the same time, he’s got himself on a schedule. He’ll call Sandra in the afternoon.

Sandra: When he was local, we would see him every three weeks, you can see him for an hour, no contact.

Hari Sreenivasan: What is that like for a mom to not be able to?

Sandra: Very difficult (voice breaking) I miss him. And my hope for him is that he isn’t ground down by the system. And it takes an enormous amount of strength to come out of the prison system, a better person than you were when you went in.

Hari Sreenivasan: So what do you hope for him now?

Greg: What I hope is that he decides to get a degree while he’s in there /and start thinking about how, in time, how he could help others.

Sandra: Hopefully, the awareness will allow for some other means of addressing the issue. Something along the lines of prevention, rather than the only outcome for our son was incarceration.