This week, a video emerged of a young Scottish girl brandishing what appeared to be a machete in one hand and a hatchet or axe in the other, while screaming “get away from me, you paedo, you kiddy-basher” at the man who was filming her.
Naturally, the reaction was one of outrage and horror. There was something deeply incongruent and jarring about a tiny wee girl, who did not even look as though she had reached puberty, wielding such terrifying weapons.
When the video inevitably popped up in my feed, together with the caption that this poor child had been fending off a sex attacker and was now the one unfairly under arrest, my natural inclination was to repost and express similar horror.
Fortunately, years of social media dopamine have not yet entirely stripped me of curiosity and critical thinking, and so I decided to take a pass on feeding the algorithm and jumping on the righteous outrage train.
Why?
Firstly, there can be no doubt that the child in the video was deeply distressed, terrified, and dysregulated. As the parent of autistic children, I have witnessed similar meltdowns, though admittedly not with lethal weapons.
When a child is in such an agitated state, there can be no reasoning with them. While it would be all too easy to believe the accepted narrative that she was terrified as a result of having been the victim of previous gang rapes, totally freaked out by the attentions of this man, and bravely sticking up for her sister, it is just as plausible that the situation had tapped into a different trauma.
By way of contrast, one of my children was asked to leave their autistic support group because they had a similar violent meltdown, one that involved throwing objects around the room and then attempting to climb out of the first-floor window, because they were told they were not allowed to use their scooter.
That may have sounded unreasonable, but the background was that the group had been planning a trip that involved a walk to the bus stop. Said child has a genuine aversion to walking even the tiniest distances and instead wanted to use her scooter. The leaders of the group were concerned that she was scooting so fast that she was not staying with the group, and so they would not be able to keep her safe.
Her expectation was that she would be able to use the scooter, and when reality did not live up to it, chaos ensued.
There will inevitably be those who want to place that on my parenting, asking whether or not I have over-indulged a child to the extent that they cannot cope without getting their own way. To them I would suggest that they undertake some research into neurodiversity.
One of the things that perplexed us, prior to getting a clinical psychologist involved, was why our child was behaving like Veruca Salt on steroids, because it was not as if the frequent meltdowns ever achieved their stated objectives. If anything, they made us far less inclined to give in.
Anyway I digress. The point is that when I saw the image of that child brandishing such terrifying weapons her obvious emotional dysregulation struck an immediate chord. It was clear something was badly wrong, and sharing the video would have been deeply irresponsible, as she may later come to regret her actions. This child was not in a postion to to consent to the release of the video nor predict its virality and any potential future consequences.
The man behind the camera
The video was shot by a man with a foreign accent, later identified as a Bulgarian. The Daily Mail has written a bizarre piece portraying him as an upstanding married Christian, who is here legally and was on his way to the shops with his wife, when he was accosted by a gang of young female hoodlums. We were treated to photos of his young 19 year-old wife, their newborn baby and his family.
His TikTok tells a very different story: that of a flaky young man waving wads of cash, which does not sit well with his claim of being about to start work in a restaurant, and using decidedly un-Christian language about wanting “pimp hos" and "buy p**sys" in his car. He has also posted less-than-salubrious videos of himself wearing a balaclava while flipping the bird to his audience, and dressing in sharp suits, true gangsta style.
Far be it from me to disavow his faith, but let us just say that this is not the sort of traditional Catholic gentleman I would be thrilled for my daughters to bring home.
He appears shady and was clearly antagonising the girls in his video, wanting to ensure that he captured them on film, with taunts of “yeah, show me the knife, show me the knife.”
Releasing the video as proof of how evil these girls were, without any thought as to their wefare, has massively backfired. I would not be surprised if, as a result of going to the Daily Mail, he needs to go into hiding. Play silly games, win silly prizes.
Witnesses claim that he continued marching towards the girls even when they were backing off, and even needed a hood to be placed on him to prevent him from hurling spittle at the police when they turned up.
Not quite the upstanding paragon of Christian virtue, that the 'nothing to see here, it's just the far-right' brigade would have you believe.
The friend's account
One of the girls’ friends gave her account of what had happened in two videos on TikTok. She released the videos because she was fed up with being mistakenly named as the girl with the weapons.
Her account was lucid and convincing, especially considering that she was applying impressive, albeit distracting, make-up skills at the same time! I watched transfixed as she spent twenty minutes applying every single colour of the rainbow in various intricate patterns across her lovely face, only to blur it all together and look no different at at the end as she had at the beginning.
What she had to say, and again I am not naming her, seemed believable.
The man filming the video had been engaging in street harassment, calling the 12-year-old “sexy,” and these Scottish lassies from the hard streets of Dundee were rightly not having any of it.
Prefacing every statement with “I’m not going to lie” the girl admitted that their group proceeded to shout at the man and became confrontational. Again, completely understandable, even if it wasn't objectively the wisest approach.
Anyone who has ever had anything to do with groups of teenage girls can picture the scene. Things then began to escalate, drawing the attention of shoppers in the local supermarket.
This is where things get sketchier. Apparently the man’s sister appeared from around the corner and got into a physical confrontation with one of the girls, pulling her to the floor and together with her brother began kicking her in the head such that she later had to be taken to hospital with concussion.
Amid the shouting and general fracas, one of the girls pulled out these two-foot-long weapons, a machete and an axe, that she had hidden in her belt. The girls then seemingly walked away, only to be followed by the man, who whipped out his phone to record the viral 40-second clip.
What I found extremely telling was that the teen was very keen to condemn her friend’s weapons, to disassociate from her actions, and to make it clear that she had no idea she was carrying them. She also did not think it at all unreasonable that the police should get involved and arrest her friend.
She also said that she was going to put some distance between herself and her young friend, after talking things through with her mum. Sound parenting there, mum!
At no point did this girl complain that her friend’s arrest was in any way unfair or unjustified. And most ordinary Brits would agree. Carrying offensive weapons in public is a serious criminal matter. Even our American cousins lay down similar rules about carrying guns which must either be concealed, or properly holstered, you can't just stroll down the street with a gun in your hand.
Another thing that stood out was that the girl seemed very aware of police procedure. For example, she said that she spoke to the police on the scene as much as she could, but because she is underage, there is a limit to how much the police are allowed to interact with her without a trusted adult present.
That is not something I would have been aware of at that age, but then again, it might have been a fact she had only recently learned.
She was also very keen to remind everyone listening that she was just a 14 year-od child although I was struck by her maturity and confidence. She has the ability to go far in life.
Police Scotland
Police Scotland is asking people not to share misinformation and has said that, having reviewed CCTV, no crime has been committed.
Given the public’s lack of trust in the police, there is understandably disquiet, especially given this particular force’s reputation for being woke - think Pride parades and diversity initiatives.
It is not unreasonable to wonder whether some kind of cover-up or whitewashing is going on here, by a force nervous about simmering tensions due to immigration. It seems strange that if the girl needed to go to hospital due to a head injury sustained by this man and his sister, and if accounts of his needing a spit hood and also allegedly urinating in the police van are to be believed, that no further charges will be brought against him. Of course this is an active investigation, caution needs to be exercised, and perhaps the police have access to more information and witnesses than has been put in the public domain.
Culture and context
Kathleen Stock has written that Dundee is a rough area. Count Dankula made the same point with dark humour, adding with a chuckle that it is not unusual for kids there to be “tooled up.”
According to those in the know on Scottish Reddit, the headline about a young girl being arrested for possession of offensive weapons is pretty unremarkable in those parts. It is likely that she was being a “wee shite” or a “ned” (non-educated delinquent), waving around weapons to look hard and gain some attention.
The girls, their background, and Bulgarian/Roma grooming gangs
A number of allegations and statements about their background and previous behaviour have been made online. They are not hard to find, but amount to hearsay, so I am not going to repeat them, given that we are still talking about children who have all been openly named on the internet, in what is a massive safeguarding failure.
Internet sleuths have dug up recent news reports purporting to show that the girls have gone missing from home twice in the past month, and have suggested that because they were wearing the same clothes in their missing persons photos as they were in the video, they may have been through some terrible ordeal involving grooming.
Possibly. Or it could be that, not having much money, they do not own many clothes. Their clothes did not look particularly dirty. Or it could be that, like many teenagers, they tend to stick to one preferred outfit.
Noting the recent conviction of a Bulgarian/Roma grooming gang in the area, some have speculated that the man was somehow involved, and that the girl with the axe must have been a previous victim of child sexual abuse, giving how she was protectively defending her sister from what was believed to be an aggressive sexual predator.
That could be the case, but then again, I am reminded of the various autistic meltdowns I've witnessed over the years and the fact that there can be a multitude of other stressors which get a child so heightened, that they end up in an irrational, terrifying to witness outburst.
The Braveheart myth
All of this has fed into simmering cultural tensions about immigration and reopened the festering wounds of Britain’s grooming gangs, whereby girls were systematically raped and abused by Asian gangs while the authorities turned a blind eye. As case review after case review has revealed, very often these girls were from troubled and chaotic backgrounds, and their testimonies were disbelieved and it was deemed that they were consenting to prositution.
Images of this young girl brandishing her weapons, dressed up in Scottish tartan on the moorlands, were created and disseminated on social media as though she was some kind of brave heroine leading the fight back against marauding foreign invader attempting to defile her baby sister.
She was romanticised as a heroic icon of our time; the Queen of Scots, Boudicca, Braveheart - a seductive and culturally appealing meme, allowing everyone to see themselves reflected in her heroic courage.
I suspect the truth is rather more messy, nuanced and dare I say, mundane.
It is absolutely not the case that the only way for girls to be safe is to be tooled up. Our Socttis Queen was not carrying offensive weapons because she had no other choice, or because she was specifically fearful of foreign immigrants (Dundee's level of immigration is not proportionately higher than any other area of the UK), but because, sadly, that is the culture for young people on the mean streets of Dundee.
There is also the possibility, though it goes against the grain, that young people know how to weaponise their vulnerability and status. Those of us embroiled in the gender culture wars are all too familiar with lumbering great lads masquerading as vulnerable young children. Just yesterday, Kellie-Jay Keen published a video of adult transactivists protesting about J K Rowling outside Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, falsely accusing Kellie-Jay of touching them and shouting “they are children” as they pointed to a bunch of what appear to be fully grown six-foot men.
Similarly, children know the effect of accusations of paedophilia and calling people paedos, kiddy fiddlers, or kiddy bashers. Jaded teachers have many a tale to tell of how “I know my rights” has been the clarion call of disruptive children facing sanction.
People automatically believed that these girls were fending off a sexual assault from an illegal immigrant, instead of exercising their critical faculties, because it fed into their innate biases, which to be fair were not entirely illogical. This is the difficulty of “believe all women, or believe all girls" mentality; thanks to the human condition, nobody can be trusted simply on the basis of their identity.
The Uncomfortable Truth
It is extraordinary and extremely worrying that people are defending a child's actions as being entirely necessary and proportionate. When that defence comes from people who know nothing about the UK, aside from what they have read, this insistence is particularly grating.
I was discussing young Boudica with a dear American friend yesterday, who also had automatically and instinctively bought into the idea that you could not blame these little girls for feeling they needed to carry weapons.
There is a distinct difference between carrying, for the sake of argument, a can of hairspray in one’s bag that could be used in extremis, and carrying offensive weapons. There is also a case to be made that people ought to be allowed to defend themselves - cases like that of Tony Martin demonstrate that the legal balance needs to be tipped. But as a general rule, children, who by their very nature have low impulse control, cannot be relied upon to exercise sound judgement, especially in a fight-or-flight situation. They should not be given offensive weapons or put in a position where they have to decide whether to seriously maim or kill another. And that is before we even consider the danger they put themselves in.
We also need to ask a deeper question: why do young people believe that carrying weapons is necessary in the first place? What does it say about our culture that children are being socialised to see violence as the only reliable form of protection? If we truly want to equip them for a dangerous world, surely there are better ways. Disciplines such as martial arts, sport, and community programmes can foster resilience, confidence, and self-defence without normalising the idea that survival depends on wielding a machete or an axe.
If it is really too dangerous for children to go out alone without a weapon to protect themselves, then parents need to exercise judgment. My local Facebook page is full of regular calls for parents to keep an eye on their teens, as gangs of them regularly maraud, set the local Army ranges on fire, attack, kill wildlife with catapults by the canal, and commit random acts of vandalism in our village.
Much of this could be alleviated with better police funding and a return to community policing, rather than arresting people for social media posts. But the calls for parents to rein in their children and keep an eye on their whereabouts are not unreasonable.
Stating that if you cannot trust your children to be safe while out, without some kind of offensive weapon, or to keep control of them, is not akin to the introduction of Sharia law, chaperones, and burkas. It is simply common sense.
We need to ask why children are sucked into a culture where they feel they need to carry weapons. Is this simply about illegal immigrants or migrant cultures, or are there other factors in play? Are some areas no-go zones, and if so why?
The messy reality
I suspect the uncomfortable truth of the matter is that here we had some lairy teenage girls who got into a confrontation with a creepy young man. Perhaps he is a product of a misogynistic culture, or perhaps, like many men, he was shaped by social media and pornography, which teach that young women and girls are objects for gratification. In that moment, fuelled by her heightened emotions and inability to self-regulate, (for which she should bear no blame) one girl went too far and started brandishing her weapons.
She should no more be blamed than lionised. But situations call us to exercise judgment. There is obviously some chaotic parenting going on, and nothing is worse than claiming that people from very poor backgrounds or in straitened circumstances have no other choice than to be wandering the streets with weapons.
The idea that we should all celebrate a child clearly in need of intervention, engaging in dangerous and antisocial behaviour, indiscriminately waving machetes and axes as an icon for our times, and an example for our children is one that should trouble us all.
Conclusion
A child with machetes is not a heroine, any more than a man with a cross tatoo is automatically an upstanding trad Catholic. Yet sections of both the left and right are applauding chaos, excusing dysfunction, and leaving children to fend for themselves with blades in their hands.
The deeper issue is cultural. Decades of multicultural dogma have eroded shared values and undermined authority, leaving whole communities caught between chaos at home and disorder imported from abroad. If men are here illegally or causing trouble, they should be deported, swiftly and without apology. Children should not be left to face down the consequences of failed immigration policies with weapons in their belts.
The real question is where are all the adults? Until we recover the courage to enforce the law, uphold our culture, and pass on a clear code of responsibility, we will keep mistaking children in crisis for icons of resistance.
