The shocking way a mum found out her teenage son was a NAZI – and her desperate fight to turn his life around again

A Victorian mum found out her teenage son was mixing with neo-Nazis after she spotted him on a TV news report of a far-right extremist group’s protest in Sydney.

The mum, ‘Emily’, whose name was changed for privacy reasons, revealed she was devastated when she saw her son ‘Scott’, then 17, on a 6pm news bulletin standing next to notorious Australian neo-Nazi, Thomas Sewell.

Emily told ABC’s Four Corners program her son had said he was just going on weekend trip with friends but she was shocked to see him with Sewell at a press conference.

Scott was on camera wearing a black face mask and sunglasses standing near Sewell, leader of neo-Nazi group the National Socialist Network (NSN).

Emily told Four Corners the sight left her ‘absolutely devastated’.

‘I thought, “This is war”,’ Emily told the ABC. 

‘You literally started a war on my family.’

Emily later found out her son had met NSN members at a rally against the Indigenous Voice to Parliament in 2023.

She said Scott ‘was drawn in by the group’s offer of friendship and fitness’. 

‘They offered him boxing lessons and then slowly haul them in until you find your kid at their monthly gatherings while they’re reading from Hitler’s delusional Mein Kampf as if it’s the Bible, ‘ Emily told the ABC. 

The shocking revelations came after Emily noticed changes in her then 16-year-old son who had been a ‘quiet boy who loved reading and sports’.

‘You have your average grumpy teenager but this was different,’ she said.

‘There was less respect. He was silent a lot.

‘At first you think “Oh maybe he’s got girl problems” or is he getting bullied at school, or is he struggling in class. 

‘I felt something was off and I couldn’t pinpoint what. I did not think he’d be involved with a neo-Nazi organisation.’

Emily also feared her son would leave home and move into the NSN’s Melbourne HQ which the worried mum said was a house ‘full of Nazi books and Hitler portraits’.

Emily also claimed an NSN agitator encouraged her Scott to ‘save money and get his affairs in order’ so he could move out ‘no strings attached’.

‘Breh I’ma be real – you probably can’t move out until you are 18,’ read a text sent by an NSN member to Scott.

‘Spend the next few months getting control of your life wherever you can, i.e. your own bank account, Medicare card, save up for a car (urgent). So that when you are 18 you can leave no strings attached.’

Emily reached out to authorities for help without success but finally received support from Exit Australia, which helps ‘disengage’ people from far-right groups. 

Founder Matthew Quinn said Emily was ‘desperate for help for her son’.

‘(Emily was) willing to do anything really to get some attention and couldn’t find anything,’ Mr Quinn told the ABC.

Mr Quinn helped Emily’s son access a Victoria Police early-intervention program.

Emily said she is hopeful her son won’t return to the neo-Nazi gang after he joined the program, but is calling for more support for Aussies with radicalised family members.

‘A lot of parents are either not informed or not even offered a chance, which is absolutely disgusting,’ Emily said.

‘Parents are left in the dark, and that needs to change.’

Sewell and fellow neo-Nazi Blair Cottrell caused uproar when they both appeared on an episode of Sam Newman’s You Cannot Be Serious podcast earlier this month.

Sewell is a former leader of the European Australian National Socialist Network and founder of the Lads Society.

He was convicted in 2022 of assaulting a Nine Network security guard and was sentenced to an 18-month community corrections order. 

Sewell also pleaded guilty to a charge of violent disorder and was sentenced to one month and seven days jail in 2023.

It followed an attack on hikers at a gathering of far-right groups at the Cathedral Range State Park northeast of Melbourne on May 8, 2021, for a ‘camping weekend’.

Sentencing Sewell and his associate Jacob Hersant, Judge Kellie Blair said the offending was ‘inherently serious’.

‘The victims posed no danger or threat to your group,’ she said.

‘You were both active participants in the violent offending in that you both performed acts.’