Some pupils 'slept in their cars' during Ballymena riots

The principal of a school that lost almost a fifth of its pupils in the wake of rioting in Ballymena has said staff found themselves in a "completely unprecedented situation".

A report into the effect of the "racially motivated" disorder on young people has found that schools including Harryville Primary School were seen as a safe haven for children whose homes were under attack.

However, it also found that 41 pupils from migrant families did not return to the school, which had to arrange hotel accommodation for some who were afraid to return home.

Principal Neil McCullough said some families slept in cars due to the fear of what was happening on the streets.

The rioting broke out after a planned peaceful protest, in response to an alleged serious sexual assault in the County Antrim town.

Attempted rape charges against two Romanian teenagers were withdrawn in November 2025 by the Public Prosecution Service.

Harryville's roll fell from 235 pupils on the first day of the riots to 120 the next day, with 41 children never returning.

The principal described "the fear" of seeing what the children were going through.

"We were seeing the houses of our pupils being attacked, protests outside houses," McCullough said.

He added that families "turned up" the next morning at the school after the first night of disorder because they knew that was a "safe space".

"They didn't have anywhere else to go with the prospect of having nowhere to go again that evening, nowhere to stay, some of them had slept in their cars in car parks the night before due to the fear of what was happening on their streets."

Speaking on Evening Extra, he said the school did all it could "to protect them in any way we could" and had to help "find housing for them that night".

"Children weren't getting to bed due to what was happening on the streets, due to sirens, due to the noise.

"Children were coming into school having not slept the night before, children were coming into school with fear from walking the streets, even coming to school.

"That took a heavy toll on our staff because they were carrying that burden and being cheery and upbeat and using our trauma-informed approach to try to look after those children."

McCullough describes a new report into what happened as showing "the power of relationships within community".

Meeting, Mapping, Moving - Ballymena Recovering looks at the "harrowing" impact the rioting had on people, particularly on children, young people and minority communities.

McCullough said it builds on the "incredible work that's going on in Ballymena".

"It's a report really focused on people and the power people can have to make a change whenever there is a shared vision and a shared goal," he said.

The report looked at a consultation by the Inter Ethnic Forum community, which conducted interviews with people from minority communities about how their lives were "disrupted".

"Respondents described the terror of that night and the chaos that followed, with no clear pathway to safety and support arriving late or not at all for many families," the report states.

One of the "system failures" identified by participants was that the Education Authority (EA) "failed to provide guidance or support" to Harryville PS, and left the school to "make impossible decisions alone".

It said the EA told the school that families needed to leave the building by 18:00 BST, because of statutory restrictions but "given no alternative".

"The school ultimately paid for hotel accommodation from its own budget. This is a damning indictment of institutional unpreparedness," the report added.

McCullough said the EA "did what they could" in an unprecedented set of circumstances, adding people from the EA "did contact me and tried to offer what support they could".

"None of us are perfect and we, as a school, didn't get it perfect either," he said.

In a statement, the EA said it "made a range of support available" to schools in the area during the disorder, including Harryville.

It said it supported pupils, families and staff, and organised activities and programmes afterwards.

"We continue to work with schools, families, communities and statutory partners to ensure children feel safe, supported and able to learn."

Youth worker Kim Carson, from Bytes, talked about the work she's been doing with some of the young people who were involved in the unrest.

"They just felt very angered and frustrated, she said, adding: "A lot of them took their frustrations out in the wrong way."

She said after the disorder there was "a lot of difficult conversations" with the young people.

She added it was important to provide them with a "safe space" but to also "challenge what their thoughts were and give them other perspectives".

Lisa Mooney from Radius Housing, who helped bring the report together, said the "trauma" of what happened in June 2025 is still being felt in Ballymena.

"It's had a huge and devastating impact on children and young people," she said.

She said she hopes there is no more unrest but says one of the questions the report wants to answer is "what do we need to do" to make the community more ready if something does happen?

She added it was important that grassroots work goes into planning how to deal with any future unrest by "listening to the community in terms of watching for a rise in tensions".

"So creating a system where you're using local knowledge to identify tension early," she said.

"A lot of this is about building and maintaining the relationships and continuing to do that."