The boy’s mother took issue with the police force decision early on Tuesday morning to designate the attack a terrorist incident.
“She felt they should’ve waited to interview the boy, to talk to her or access his devices or computer, to listen to his behavioural stories,” Islamic community leader Dr Jamal Rifi, who is close with a member of the boy’s family, said.
Counterterrorism officers came to the family’s suburban home the next day, Rifi said, and the boy’s mother made her feelings known before handing his devices and computer to investigators.
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The family fled the home after being accompanied to the car by police and have not returned.
The boy, who was expelled from school, according to two people close to the family, had been seeing school counsellors since he started high school.
He had also seen two private female psychologists to no effect, and had recently begun seeing a male psychologist who had told his mother he might have anger management or behavioural problems.
The teenager, who had just turned 16, had in the few weeks before the stabbing begun praying at a mosque, where his father regularly performed his religious duties.
“The boy had only recently started coming – he never used to come to our place of worship,” said a man who also prays there and who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
“His dad is a nice man. He just comes, prays and leaves, prays and leaves. But the kid, he didn’t come before, maybe [he started] only a few weeks before [the attack]. He is not a member of the place, he is not always attending, he just came.
“Everyone is upset, saying what’s wrong, what happened. No one knows the kid; everyone knows the dad. When we talk, we say ‘the dad is so nice, what happened?’”
The teenager was on a good-behaviour bond at the time of the alleged attack after being charged with being armed with intent to commit an indictable offence, stalking/intimidation and damaging/destroying property over an incident at a railway station in November.
The armed with intent charge was dropped in January because the boy himself did not have a knife, but rather was in the company of someone who did, Rifi said.
The boy’s parents are facing a series of questions about what led their son to allegedly attack the religious leader.
A heavy police presence at the scene of the Wakeley stabbing on Tuesday morning.Credit: Wolter Peeters
“She doesn’t know where he got the knife, how he ended up at church, why he stabbed the bishop. She just doesn’t know,” Rifi said of the boy’s mother.
The events of this week have intensified a push to establish a youth centre in Lakemba in a bid to prevent vulnerable children from falling under the spell of radicalism.
Lebanese Muslim Association secretary Gamel Kheir said he had proposed such a facility with successive NSW governments.
“What we have told all the politicians is – these kids need somewhere to go,” he said. “A teenager doesn’t want to be in the mosque 24-7. They get bored really quickly. You need to offer an alternative.”
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Source Agencies
