‘Who’s screenshotting our messages?’: how a WhatsApp saga spiralled into two parents’ wrongful arrest | Schools
Before it catapulted a small suburban London school community into the center of global news, the fourth-form WhatsApp group at Cowley Hill school in Borehamwood was unremarkable; It was a place of snide comments, reminders about non-uniform day, and frantic messages about being late for school.
“It was my mother’s gossip, you know?” said one member, Sarah. “It was a little watery, but it wasn’t a bad thing.”
Sarah, who wants to use a pseudonym, is nervous about talking about the group and isn’t exactly surprised. A conversation and argument that began in an informal parent chat has resulted in the arrest of two parents in a Hertfordshire town and sparked fierce debate about police overreach, the right to free expression and the relationship between schools and parents. The saga was covered worldwide, debated in parliament and Elon Musk’s attention was drawn to XHe seems to have seen this as the basis for a “political revolution.”
In his own—entirely improbable—way, he raised a question that may sound familiar to many whose phones have fallen into the hands of a school group chat: What’s the difference between a worried parent, an officious individual, and someone who must face the full force of the law? Inevitably, it also included a doorbell camera.
At the micro level, the impact was seismic. “A lot of parents don’t talk to each other anymore,” Sarah said. “It’s like you’re back on the playground. You feel like you can’t voice your opinion without people disagreeing with you.”
Cowley Hill – 4th year
from WhatsApp
parent 1 It must be something else, otherwise they sent it to everyone in general to tell them to shut up and move on 🙄
Rosalind Maybe there are other things too. I have no idea. But I know they can’t control what anyone says. Anywhere.
parent 1 Everyone is talking about it on the playground too! This is ridiculous
Rosalind Haha! I’m pretty sure too [name] I didn’t write that letter. He doesn’t know anything.
parent 1 I was thinking about this
Rosalind I love the road [she] They have little spies who will follow what is said in WhatsApp and Facebook groups 🤣 They seriously need to take lives hahaha.
This week parents at Cowley Hill primary school found themselves in a surrealist fishbowl once again after the couple at the center of the row, Maxie Allen and Rosalind Levine, revealed they had been paid £20,000 by Hertfordshire police, who admitted they had been wrongfully arrested and detained in January. The force said there were no issues with misconduct by its officers but the legal test for an arrest was not met.
On a freezing cold morning outside the large elementary school, anxious parents were understandably reluctant to speak. A woman stopped briefly to say the school was great for her autistic child. Another said the story was impossible to ignore because it was spread all over social media. “The one thing I would say is there are two sides to every story,” he said. “There was a lot of sadness.”
So what went so bad? In the most basic terms, Allen and Levine, who both work in the media, made complaints about the school directly in the school WhatsApp group they founded and on social media, starting in the spring of last year. The school said it had been bombarded with “upsetting and derogatory social media posts on Facebook and WhatsApp”. He reported the couple’s actions to the police and, after a warning, banned them from entering the school grounds.
The pair were arrested in January on suspicion of harassment, malicious communication and causing a disturbance on school property, but police said no action would be taken against them in March following an investigation. They then told their story to the Times, where Allen worked as a producer, and the story went stratospheric.
Sitting in their living room a brisk 10-minute walk from the school, Allen said the experience was surreal, to say the least. “It’s taken on a life of its own,” he said. “It’s almost like it happened to someone else.”
They face a deep distrust of the police, Levine said. When six uniformed officers from Hertfordshire Police turned up at her door (a moment widely shared for posterity via doorbell camera), she thought her daughter, who had epilepsy, had died. “Every time I see the footage of the police coming to the door, it makes me sick to my stomach,” he said.
According to Levine and Allen, the trouble began in November 2023 when the school’s principal announced he would retire in June 2024 and the assistant principal would take over.
Allen, a former parent of the school, wrote a letter to governors in May 2024 asking why the open recruitment process had not begun. In June the chairman of governors wrote to all parents saying a “very small minority” were using WhatsApp and social media to “cause discord” and “make incendiary and defamatory comments about senior leaders at the school”.
Levine and Allen said they were willing to discuss school issues on WhatsApp and that their comments were private and not abusive. But the school sent a letter to the couple in July, referring to WhatsApp messages they had sent and saying the school would consider “contact management measures” if they did not stop. “It suddenly seemed like bullshit,” Sarah said. “You look at other people and you’re like, ‘Was that him? Who’s taking screenshots of our messages? And that sucked, too.’
Cowley Hill – 4th year
from WhatsApp
Rosalind Can you imagine what the ‘action’ they say they will take is? ‘Hello 999? One of the school mothers said something bad about me in the school mothers’ WhatsApp group. Can you please arrest them?’
Maxie No public institution has the power to control what people say about itself.
Parents This should be a safe group where parents feel free to talk and share their opinions about how they feel about the school, its actions and activities; No more, no less, end of story.
Rosalind Definitely. I thought the Facebook group I wrote in was a safe space.
Maxie No matter what, it’s none of their business what we say or don’t say. Schools have no power beyond their doors.
The couple responded later that month by obtaining copies from a county councilman and some local education authority officials, and Levine posted the letter on his personal Facebook profile. Then, six days after the warning, they were banned from entering the school building, banned from talking to or seeing teachers, and given an email address that would be monitored once a week. They then submitted a subject access request and went through the school’s complaint process.
The school said in a statement that it welcomed dialogue with parents but the “nature and sheer volume of communications and public postings” during the dispute meant it could “no longer manage using normal internal procedures”.
In November, Michelle Vince, a former county councillor, also emailed the school to question its headteacher recruitment process after receiving Allen’s correspondence. In December, Allen and Vince were visited by a police officer.
Vince was away but in an email seen by the Guardian, police asked him to stop contacting the school “as you may risk being recorded as a suspect in the harassment investigation”. He said the entire story “created a culture of fear.” “This definitely put the fear of God in me.”
Allen and Levine were arrested on January 29, five days after their daughter started a new school. At 1.05pm, 66 minutes after officers arrived at their home, Cowley Hill primary school sent an email saying its acting principal had taken the job. Hertfordshire county council said in a statement that the role had been publicly advertised and complied with all regulations. “Following the departure of the former director, an interim chairman was appointed for a period to allow time for a proper recruitment process to be carried out… We are confident that this was a fair, transparent and timely process,” he said.
A parent at the same school as Allen and Levine said he was told to close a WhatsApp group in 2022, which he politely declined. “ [then deputy head] “He told me he knew a lot of people and could call the police on me,” the woman said. A school spokeswoman said the current principal “did not recognize this description of the conversation and denied the accusation, stating that the school did not subsequently receive any formal complaints.”
The couple say since they first told their story in March, they have been in contact with dozens of other parents who allege overreactions to raising issues at their schools. Others online criticized parents’ use of social media to discuss their complaints. Did the couple ever worry that they were causing disharmony in a very well-balanced ecosystem?
“If you say let’s go throw rocks or use very personal, derogatory language, that’s one thing,” Allen said. “But what we did was comment on governance and policy and how [the school] was operated. “You cannot exempt a public authority from this review because this is a school.”
Allen and Levine now want the Department of Education to fully review what happened. The school, which declined interview requests, said it remained focused on “providing an excellent education for its students” and would not comment further.
What is clear is that this very modern school drama has left its mark on everyone involved. “None of the mothers talk to each other anymore,” Sarah said. “It left a terrible impression.” He said the WhatsApp group remained open but largely unused. “Funny enough, a mom actually wrote in there about a week ago,” he said. “He was asking someone for help getting the truck.” Nobody answered.
