Girl, 16, ran away because Muslim parents weren’t strict enough

A BRIGHT teenager who did not want to live with her parents because she thought they were ‘not strict enough Muslims’ should have been rehoused by her local council, the High Court ruled yesterday.

The girl, then 16, had already run away from home twice, travelling to the Syrian border and to Egypt. She told Enfield Council she was homeless and wanted to live under ‘stricter codes of Islamic behaviour’. But social workers told the A-star student she should return to her parents.

Yesterday Mr Justice Hayden ruled that the North London council should have provided more support to help the girl live apart from her Pakistani family and to steer her away from extremism. Its decision to do nothing was ‘fundamentally flawed’.

He granted the girl, who is now 18 and who cannot be named, a declaration that she is entitled to council help until she is 21.

The girl first ran away in February 2014.

‘Her behaviour was increasingly unsafe’

Through Muslim girls she met online, she was encouraged by a Turkish man to fly to Turkey. She reached the Syrian border before changing her mind about travelling to Islamic State territory. Her father brought her home and took her passport.

But six months later she acquired a replacement and travelled to Egypt in the hope of studying Islam. On her return, she stayed with friends and relatives and went through a preliminary form of Islamic marriage to a man in his 30s from East London. Her behaviour became ‘increasingly unsafe’, Mr Justice Hayden said, with risk to her ‘physical, emotional and sexual security’.

In November, she was detained at Heathrow trying to travel to Bulgaria. She dropped out of her A-level studies and enrolled for a diploma in Islamic Studies.

Later that month, a judge ordered Enfield Council to provide accommodation and support pending the High Court case.