Revealed: Police quizzed wrongfully arrested Jewish mother over her faith

Documents seen by the JC now suggest Cowley Hill Primary School cited Levine’s emails relating to her Jewish faith, her Israeli family and her desire to promote Shoah education as part of a harassment report.

Levine said it felt like she had “slipped into an alternative reality” when she was forced to explain her religious rights from inside a police cell. “I felt I was in a weird nightmare,” she told the JC.

Shadow education secretary Laura Trott, said: “The family’s Jewish faith was entirely irrelevant, and questioning them about it was unacceptable. Freedom of religion is a cornerstone of our democracy, and any attempt to threaten it must be fought absolutely.”

Shadow DfE equalities minister Claire Coutinho called on Hertfordshire Constabulary “to come clean” on why Levine was questioned about her religion.

“This appears to be part of a worrying trend of Jewish people being asked about their religion in police interviews in a way that other groups wouldn’t be,” Coutinho said.

Former Attorney General Sir Michael Ellis added: “The appalling way these parents have been treated exemplifies the dire state of British policing at the moment.”

The couple were arrested on suspicion of harassment, malicious communications and causing a nuisance on school property – allegations later dismissed as baseless.

Rosalind with her children[Missing Credit]

Hertfordshire Police initially stood by the arrests, but this month admitted the legal criteria “were not made out” and agreed to pay the couple £20,000 in damages.

“We’re happy they have admitted liability because that was the one thing we wanted,” Levine said. “An apology would have been nice, but I don’t think that word is in their vocabulary.”

The full extent of the extraordinary line of questioning inside Stevenage Police Station can now be revealed for the first time.

Recalling the “deeply traumatising” interview, Levine said the officer began by asking when her issues with Cowley Hill Primary School had started.

Levine explained to the officer that she believed the tension stemmed from her partner – a former parent governor at the school – challenging the school’s recruitment process for a new headteacher.

But the detective stunned her by informing her that the case against her “started on Holocaust Memorial Day 2023”.

Levine was astonished when this came up as it related to what she thought had been a positive engagement with the school.

The mother-of-two had contacted the school in January 2023 with an offer to help out after hearing that the school planned to mark HMD. The school accepted her offer, and Levine helped to organise a talk by two survivors via the Holocaust Education Trust.

She said she was “surprised and shocked” that this positive interaction with the school was later presented as part of a harassment complaint.

Then, she said, the interview took an even more bewildering turn when the officer asked about an Easter assembly – an event from which Levine had tried to withdraw her daughter, Sascha.

“I said I pulled my daughter out of communal worship as I am entitled to do,” she recalled. “I couldn’t believe something so benign had been reported to the police.”

The questions appeared to relate to April 2023, when her daughter came home saying she had been told to “put her hands together and think of Jesus”.

A year later, in March 2024, emails seen by the JC show Levine requested that Sascha be excused from an Easter assembly for “religious reasons”.

Levine said she was baffled that police were bringing this up – and even the interviewing officer, who had not previously been involved with the case, looked “bemused, as though he had enough common sense”.

After the police interview, Levine told her partner about the questions. Allen – who is not Jewish – was not asked about the Holocaust or Christian prayer.

Speaking to the JC, he said it was “absolutely extraordinary that Rosalind was questioned by police about organising an event for International Holocaust Day.

“It is barely less startling she was also quizzed about a request to withdraw our daughter from faith activities. These are highly emotive subjects. Who decided they had any relevance to a criminal investigation? And why did the school report this to police? There are some serious questions to be answered.”

Following their release and back home after an 11-hour ordeal, the pair decided to find some of these answers.

They submitted a subject access request (SAR) to Hertfordshire council in a bid to understand why the police had pursued such bizarre lines of questioning for Levine – and what had led to the pair’s wrongful arrest in the first place.

Information released in the last month as part of the request revealed that the exchanges between Levine and the school relating to the Holocaust and Easter prayer had been logged in a document titled “timeline – cease and desist”.

The first entry on the document from Levine was labelled “email about Holocaust Memorial Day – what will it entail”, sent at 7.21pm, with the time highlighted in red to denote that it fell “out of school time”.

More than a month later, on March 31, 2023, the log recorded a “complaint about Easter assembly. Mum stating this is not ‘agreeable to them’.”

A further entry on April 17 noted that Levine was “chasing the email complaint about the Easter assembly”. Several additional entries followed, relating to subsequent correspondence regarding the school’s collective worship policy.

Levine now believes that this log of events was seen by the police. “Why else would they have been questioning me like this?” she said.

When she saw the log, the questions “suddenly made sense to me,” Levine said.

The log, which the school said was used to record all interactions with the parents, also recorded an incident around Armistice Day 2023, when Sascha’s class was asked to bring in photographs of family in the armed forces.

This was shortly after October 7, and Levine sent her daughter to school with an image of their Israeli cousins in the IDF. But the school did not show the image. When Levine asked why, the school recorded her email on the log, saying she had “complained” and described the image of Sascha’s smiling cousins “in the Israeli army in full combat wear with a rocket/rocket launcher on back”. But Levine said these rocket launchers were really tents.

The school’s apparent preoccupation with Levine’s Jewish faith also emerged in a separate subject access request, which had nothing to do with the parents’ arrest.

When applying for her daughter’s Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP), Levine sent another SAR to the school. Within the document bundle returned to the family, a single email from the council appeared, revealing that the school had gone to council lawyers for advice about her request to withdraw her child from the Easter assembly.

The email suggests the school resisted letting Levine withdraw Sascha from collective worship. “The school are not sure about withdrawing the child at these times as it will encourage several other parents to do the same,” the council lawyer wrote.

“The pupil is Jewish and the mother has expressed her disgust that the daughter took part in the Easter assembly and prayer.”

The advice ultimately confirmed that parents have the right to withdraw children from prayer and that “the school must comply”.

The JC understands that the council provides regular legal advice to schools and the Cowley Hill collective worship policy means any parent can ask for their child to be removed from prayer.

But Levine said she was “really shocked” that requests about religious observance had been escalated to lawyers and then the police.

“I’ve absolutely no idea why the school had a problem with Holocaust Memorial Day or exempting a Jewish child from Christian worship,” Levine said.

Rosalind, Francesca and Sascha[Missing Credit]

Both parents said neither the HMD emails nor the correspondence about Easter prayer or Armistice Day seemed significant at the time, with two out of the three instances involving Levine “actively trying to contribute to school life”. 

Levine believes it is likely that police saw the timeline document as part of a file of information passed from the school to the police ahead of the wrongful arrest and interrogation.

She said the allegations of criminality and the ordeal of being detained and questioned had left a lasting mark.

“When you’re arrested, even if you’re not charged, people still think you must have done something wrong. Our reputation has been tarnished.”

Although she felt the detective interviewing her appeared to recognise the weakness of the case, Levine said senior officers who authorised the arrests had never been held accountable. “They were given information by somebody and didn’t look into it any further. It’s like they just believed everything they were told.”

The couple, whose children are now four and ten, say they emailed the school “regularly” following their ban to address issues concerning their daughter, Sascha, and to challenge the ban through the school’s official complaints policy.

They say they are still trying to understand how their communications could have escalated into a police raid. “We wanted to know what the hell had gone on,” Levine said. “It should never have happened.”

Levine stressed she had previously enjoyed a positive relationship with the school. “I hope that our case highlights the dangers to other schools,” she said. “They need to think before they pick up that phone to the police.”

She added that she feels “vindicated” with the police accepting the arrest was wrongful.

A spokesperson for Cowley Hill Primary School said: “Our school contacted the police following a very high volume of direct email correspondence that we considered upsetting in addition to derogatory social media posts on Facebook as well as messages in WhatsApp groups from two parents.

“As a school we welcome dialogue with parents, however the nature and large volume of the communication and public posts meant that the school were no longer able to manage using normal internal procedures. As a result, we sought advice from the police. Our school prides itself on being a welcoming place where children of all faiths can thrive in a safe learning environment. We strongly refute claims that the religion of anyone involved was a factor in any of the actions or decisions taken in this case.”

A spokesperson for Hertfordshire Police said: “Ms Levine and Mr Haddow-Allen’s were arrested due to allegations of harassment arising from their dispute with the school. The case was settled on the basis that the necessary criteria for arrest had not been reached. We are not able to speak further about the case or the particulars of the questioning, but any questioning would have been appropriate to the investigation of the offence.

“The allegations set out now by Ms Levine and Mr Haddow-Allen were not part of the previous claim against the Constabulary. As a force we enjoy a very positive relationship with our faith communities and given that this matter has been settled, it would be inappropriate to make any further comment at this time.”