AIRED: April 13, 2014– 11 am PST
TITLE: “Why Good Kids Turn into Terriorists”
The shock of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings was soon followed by a revelation initially disturbing and mystifying: two apparently unremarkable brothers—one a teenager, the other a young adult; both well-liked immigrants and longtime U.S. residents—had allegedly triggered the bombs. Why were these two seemingly “normal” individuals driven to commit such acts of cold blooded violence?
Dr. Alice LoCicero’s new book, “Why Good Kids Turn into Terriorists”, examines not only the lives, motivations, and key influences of these infamous brothers, but those of other young, unexpected terrorists worldwide, comparing factors that contributed to their decisions to become terrorists and identifying methods used to recruit them into that deadly fold.
ABOUT DR. ALICE LOCIERO
Dr. Alice LoCicero has spent more than a decade researching what causes kids to become terrorists, and she explores her findings in the new book, WHY GOOD KIDS TURN INTO DEADLY TERRORISTS (Praeger, 2014). LoCicero has met with young terrorists from Africa, Asia, Europe, and the United States to find common factors that lead our children to lives immersed in violence.
What she found is that behind every child soldier or young terrorist…there’s an adult recruiter who profiles potential victims, targets them, and then profits from recruiting them. LoCicero shows that the Tsarnaev brothers fit the profile of young immigrants caught between conflicting identities, and who are susceptible to extremism after crises from parental neglect to drug abuse.
She then outlines methods for adults, parents, and communities to short-circuit the strategies of terrorist recruiters, and help kids understand what is happening. Her purpose with this book is to foster understanding of how older terrorists recruit vulnerable adolescents, how we can disrupt their tactics, and ways to involve the whole community to prevent future tragedies.
