article_snippet: Over the weekend it also emerged that letters from Scotland Yard to advice families – explaining that the pupils would be part of the inquiry into the pupils friend's disappearance – had been given to the schoolgirls rather than the pupils parents.
article_snippet: Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe admitted that ‘with the benefit of hindsight’ officers should have communicated directly with the girls' families.
article_snippet: However, the girls' families refused to accept any responsibility for the teenagers' actions when the girls' families appeared before a committee of MPs earlier this week.
article_snippet: Instead, the girls' families spent spent more than an hour castigating police over what the girls' families claimed was a failure to inform of the girls' families children's potential radicalisation.
article_snippet: the girls' families were led by the girls' families lawyer Tasnime Akunjee, once the representative of a close associate of the Woolwich killers, who repeatedly demanded an apology.
article_snippet: their lawyer Tasnime Akunjee, once the representative of a close associate of the Woolwich killers, who repeatedly demanded an apology accused Scotland Yard of a catalogue of errors in its handling of the disappearance of the trio in February and the girls' families close friend in December.
article_snippet: The country's top police officer was later forced to apologise to the families over a misplaced letter relating to the fourth girl's disappearance.