Ten months after their arrests, Maxie Allen and his partner Rosalind Levine still struggle to pinpoint the most traumatic part of that day.
Was it the surreal moment TV producer Rosalind realised their family home was swarming with uniformed police officers who had roared onto their Hertfordshire street in two squad cars and a van?
Or was it watching their terrified three-year-old daughter Francesca, her tiny chest heaving in panic, sob as her parents were taken away separately, as though they were being detained for violent crimes? Police would call her grandmother to look after her, but neither Maxie nor Rosalind were permitted to comfort or even reassure her before leaving the house.
‘Both those things were pretty horrible,’ says Maxie, a 50-year-old radio producer. ‘But equally grim – and I’ll never forget it – was the clang of the cell door closing behind me. It was the first time I’d ever been locked in a police cell and I just couldn’t believe that this was happening to us.’
Rosalind, 47, recalls her disorienting fear as she was marched through the custody suite. ‘They made me remove my shoes to take an imprint [from the soles],’ she recalls. ‘I later learned it was standard practice, but at the time, I remember being so discombobulated, I wondered whether I was being framed for something. When I asked why on earth it was necessary, the officer muttered something about checking whether I’d bought them in a charity shop – which had nothing to do with anything. It felt like madness.’
Indeed, just about the only thing that was clear was that common sense had long since left the building. Earlier, as the police had brandished handcuffs – though ultimately agreed not to use them – the couple had been informed they were being arrested on suspicion of ‘malicious communications, harassment and causing a nuisance on school premises’.
Their ‘crime’? Expressing criticism of their elder daughter’s primary school on a private WhatsApp group of parents. ‘An offence of “hurty feelings”,’ as Rosalind dryly puts it now, still incredulous.
After being held in custody for 11 hours the couple were released on bail. But it would take another five agonising weeks before Hertfordshire Constabulary confirmed there was no case to answer.
Now, ten months later, after announcing their intention to sue for wrongful arrest, the couple have finally secured official admission from the police that they should never have been arrested at all. The police will pay them £20,000 in damages – £10,000 each – plus a full reimbursement of their legal costs.
‘It was quite an emotional moment when the email from our lawyer came through,’ Maxie reflects. ‘It was vindication and exoneration, finally. Not just for us, but for our girls, for our parents, and for everyone who saw what happened.
‘This whole situation has dominated our lives for 18 months. It’s been overwhelming. I do try to keep it in proportion – other people have suffered far worse at the hands of the police. We weren’t imprisoned long term, or harmed physically. But it was shocking, surreal and leaves a mark.’
For Rosalind, the overriding feeling has been relief. ‘Because even when you’re not charged, people look at you differently if you’ve been arrested.
‘They wonder, “Well, something must have happened, we’re not getting the full story here.”
‘You sense it in their eyes and sometimes they even say it out loud. To have the police finally admit our arrest was wrongful –that helps us start to rebuild our reputation.’
Despite their resilience, it’s clear the couple are still deeply shaken. The roots of the saga date back to July 2024, when Cowley Hill Primary in Borehamwood – the school attended by their elder daughter Sascha, now ten –announced its headteacher was retiring. A perfectly ordinary occurrence of course – that is until Maxie and Rosalind began to suspect that due process wasn’t being adhered to in the search for a replacement.
Concerned, and knowing that the process of recruitment in a state school was a matter of legitimate enquiry, Maxie sent an email to all the school governors asking questions about it.
He also sent a copy to 15 parents in a private WhatsApp school group normally used for messages about school bake sales and PE kit. The school reacted swiftly, sending a round-robin letter requesting parents ‘refrain from negative discussion’ about the school online, even in closed groups, and threatening ‘action’ if they did.
‘That felt like a huge overstep,’ says Rosalind, recalling how, with rather eerie prescience, she subsequently wrote a sardonic message in the same WhatsApp thread. ‘Imagine the ‘action’ – “Hello 999, one of the school mums said something mean in the WhatsApp group… please send back-up”.’
Their messages about the school on the WhatsApp thread, Maxie maintains, were wry, occasionally frustrated, but never abusive.
There were disparaging comments about a senior leader at the school being a ‘control freak’, for example, who ‘manipulates people into thinking they’re her buddy’. Another said: ‘I don’t believe she writes any letter she puts her name to.’ Rude perhaps, but hardly dripping poison.
‘We also weren’t the only ones who felt that due process wasn’t being followed in the recruitment process,’ says Rosalind.
Yet the school escalated matters quickly. A warning letter from the chair of governors accused the couple of inflammatory comments and threatened to ban them from the premises.
And when Maxie and Rosalind wrote back to challenge the tone and substance of that letter, the ban was implemented.
In one fell swoop, the couple were barred from all school-run events: no school gates, no parents’ evenings, no school assemblies or even waving their daughter off on a five-day school residential trip.
‘That was devastating, especially for Sascha,’ says Rosalind, visibly emotional. ‘She was nine at the time and it didn’t make any sense to her.’
Sascha has epilepsy and is on the SEND register, yet the couple were told that henceforth all communication with the school must take place via email, even on matters related to her support needs.
But it didn’t stop there. In December, a police officer visited their home, informing the couple they needed to stop asking about the recruitment process and limit communication with the school to one email per month.
Astonishingly, he also suggested they take Sascha out of the school. ‘Which, the last time I looked, wasn’t exactly police business,’ says Maxie.
The school has said it sought police advice due to a ‘high volume’ of public comments and emails, although Maxie and Rosalind point out that email was the only channel the school had left them and by then they were doing their best to navigate a formal complaints process.
Either way, by January, it was clear reconciliation was impossible and, reluctantly, the couple made the difficult decision to withdraw Sascha from the school and enrol her at another local primary. ‘She cried the night before her last day,’ Maxie remembers.
‘She loved her friends. But we had to protect her and ourselves. And we thought it would at least draw a line under everything that had happened.’
On that latter point he was utterly wrong: just five days later – and three days into Sascha’s first week at her new school – the police arrived at their door.
Rosalind opened it, stomach dropping at the sight of six uniformed officers. ‘I genuinely thought something catastrophic had happened to Sascha. Then I was being told I was under arrest – in front of my younger child,’ she says. ‘The shock was immense. My heart was beating so fast I thought I was going to collapse.’
Her husband, meanwhile, saw the police officers arrive in the backdrop of his work Zoom call.
With their devices seized, it was left to a police officer to phone Rosalind’s bewildered 80-year-old mother Jeri, who lives locally, to ask her to come and look after Francesca and instruct a neighbour to pick up Sascha from school. ‘That’s the thing I can’t let go of,’ says Rosalind. ‘She was in her third day at a new school, looking for me at pick-up… but I was locked in a police cell.’
‘This,’ Maxie adds quietly, ‘is why we felt so strongly about seeking accountability. Because it wasn’t just disruptive – it was traumatic. For us, for our daughters, for family. And leaving aside the absurdity of the arrest in the first place, none of that trauma would have been necessary had the force seen fit to arrange an interview with us rather than swoop in in the way they did as if we were hardened criminals.’
Shortly after news of their arrest was made public, Hertfordshire Police Chief Constable Andy Prophet said the arrest ‘could have been handled more discreetly’, but explained that the inspector had authorised it because he believed the couple might not consent to a voluntary interview. ‘We were never asked,’ Rosalind notes, with a wry smile.
Taken in separate vehicles to a custody suite in Stevenage, the couple were fingerprinted, photographed, DNA swabbed and placed alone in bare cells.
Rosalind vividly remembers crying to the duty solicitor, repeating, ‘I don’t know why I’m here’ – a sentiment that seemed to be shared by the police station representative appointed to advise her during her subsequent interview. ‘He asked the detective why we weren’t just invited in for an interview,’ Rosalind recalls. ‘The detective shrugged and said, “It was just handed to me.” Even he seemed confused.’
After 11 hours, they were bailed and sent home at 1am to find their children fast asleep, clutching each other’s hands. ‘It’s an image I can’t shake,’ says Maxie.
Five long weeks passed – weeks of fretting about their family’s future and the extent to which this shadow would follow them professionally and personally –before a detective phoned to tell them the investigation was closed, with ‘no evidence’ found.
‘I could have told him that on day one,’ says Rosalind. A formal letter arrived the next day, confirming no further action. After going public with their story – which made headlines worldwide – they received contact from senior police officers offering a meeting. ‘They were polite and professional,’ Maxie acknowledges. ‘But you couldn’t shake the feeling that it was more about smoothing things over than addressing the root issue.’
Officially, the couple had been arrested for malicious communication and harassment. ‘But when we asked whether officers had actually read the WhatsApp or emails, I got the distinct impression they hadn’t.’ Indeed the officer replied rather ‘sheepishly’ to the enquiry, Maxie recalls.
Unsatisfied, the couple sought legal advice, issuing a letter before claim to Hertfordshire Police seeking full admission of liability and damages.
Finally, last week, came that email from their solicitor granting both. The couple were also told their legal costs – covered by the Free Speech Union – would be reimbursed.
‘In their message they still say they had “reasonable suspicion” because of the school’s report,’ Maxie says. ‘But they concede they had no necessity to arrest.’
What the couple have not received is an apology. ‘It would’ve meant something,’ says Rosalind. ‘But maybe that’s not in their vocabulary.’
Their legal action, she adds, was ‘never about money’. ‘Of course, that helps but it doesn’t erase those memories. It’s not the worst thing I’ve been through but it’s pretty up there and it was needless. It also hurt our girls. No cheque makes that disappear.’
Their story may be part of a wider shift. Just last month, the Met announced it would no longer respond to ‘non-crime hate incidents’ after a public outcry following the arrest of writer Graham Linehan by armed officers at Heathrow Airport, in relation to three posts about trans issues. His case was later dropped.
‘The Met is a different force, obviously, and we were arrested for an actual “crime”, but emotionally, it is the same story,’ says Maxie. ‘The use of the police to intervene over hurt feelings or close down criticism is dangerous. I hope our case makes authorities think twice about how they behave because, for us, this wasn’t a dispute between two private individuals, it was between a public authority and parents. And it felt like here was a public authority trying to use the police as a tool to close down legitimate scrutiny.’
Earlier this year, Cowley Hill told the Daily Mail: ‘We took police advice due to high volumes of correspondence and public posts from two parents that were upsetting for staff and governors. We are always happy for parents to raise concerns but ask that they do so appropriately and in line with policy.’
Back at the family home in Borehamwood, Rosalind admits that what unfolded has shaken her faith in our public institutions – and particularly the police.
‘I’m afraid I can’t see them the same way now,’ she says. ‘But I don’t want that for our girls. I want Francesca and Sascha to believe someone in uniform will help them if they need it.
‘But I also hope they’ll never have to go through what we did.’
