Southport report lays bare the failures of authorities - and the attacker's parents

His brother was attacked by AR from a young age and terrified of his brother. AR posed a clear risk to the family and more should have been done to protect everyone. What was the safety plan? Where was the respite?

Well I come from a culture where disrespectful and violent behaviour like this would not be tolerated and would be dealt with. I’ll give you one example from my own family: my teenage niece was being bullied at school and it turned out that her (male) teenage cousin was taking part. What do you reckon happened when his dad found out? Let’s just say it never happened again. No wringing of hands, no trying to understand his POV, no asking him about his needs. Because none of that is important when another person’s safety is at risk.

The other brother is physically unable to commit such level of violence because he requires a motorised wheelchair (that was funded by five local Rotary clubs).

His father also sought help, fought for educational provision and engaged with therapies.

If professionals were that concerned about the parents (who had other children who seem to have been fine) they would have removed AR.

So your credentials are really anecdotal observations of adopted children who were being brought up by people who already knew that their children had likely suffered ACEs - ie not the same as AR.
You’re omitting the overwhelming evidence that his father in particular covered up and excused his behaviour time after time, lied to professionals or just outright refused to engage.

@likelysuspect That’s where the parents needed to take action. Of course they could have searched the house. The big problem is that every professional backed off. Passed the buck. I do think they because he wasn’t visible he didn’t get attention but parents can do far more than these did.

AR was not adopted, he got his belief system in the home, a home in which the father was an officer in the Rwandan rebel group (so already had an ideology of being against the state), a man who had no problem with his son amassing a collection of weapons in the living room.

His parents raised him, and they raised a murderer.

No. I have girls. And I am saying that it needs high level professional input, more than most parents can provide. You think you know what would work though and I just wondered if you had tried your suggestions out on a really challenging son.

I know this, you might know this, its my job, but society at large has moved away from this and so has policy and strategies. Now Im talking in blanket terms and there are nuances to this which I cant be bothered to type out but generally speaking this is whats happened.

Their interventions were at a pretty basic level. Everyone who worked with him just withdrew, said he didn't meet their criteria...he was left to his parents to sort him out and they couldn't do it.

My "credentials" are knowing loads of adopters (i am an adopter) who are living with young men who are beyond parental control and all services can offer is parenting courses. The high input interventions just aren't there - they are mostly for yp at risk of self harm. Threaten your parents, for example, nothing will happen.

Boundaries, punishment and consequences are very much not dirty words when it comes to working with children with challenging behaviours. Quite the opposite in fact!

I find it astonishing how little the mother features. usually the media would be all over it blaming the mother on everything.

Nope, people vote governments in for what they want. The narrative driving public policy, social policy in the last 40 years or so has moved, as others have said, away from the collective and toward prioritising the individual. So the individual mustnt be inconvenienced or disadvantaged even if, as you say, the rest of us are collateral.

The narrative driving the practice around working with challenging behaviour is that boundaries, punishment, consequences etc are all dirty words.

This boy murdered, but there are plenty of kids exactly like him who just by chance, by luck for the rest of us arent motivated to go quite that far, or arent organised enough to go quite that far, but they are stil roaming around harming others, beating up their family members.

Conversely actually one of the reasons it wouldnt have been very likely that he would have been made subject to a DOLs order or secure order would have been because he wasnt out roaming around very much, he was pretty much reclusive.

The people in society don’t want to be killed or have their loved ones killed. The government that oversees society has decided that a certain amount of death through collateral damage is acceptable.

What makes you think the police would search his room after being arrested (not that he would have been) for having a knife?

The reality is, the systems around us in society do not support young people being criminalised, I dont think he would be locked up as people keep claiming he would be

Someone made the point earlier about 'specialist care' or secure settings. Firstly, again, all the advice given to professionals is not to try to contain children who are ND, that it is counter productive, so if a LA got as far as saying they would accommodate him, a wealth of evidence is needed to demonstrate that he would not be damaged by being essentially locked up in secure, when he has not committed a crime (or not enough of one thats any different to many of his peers). They are short term placements in any case, a few months if you;re lucky

That is assuming he would be offered a placement, its likely he would be seen as too high risk and/or cannot progress, ie they cannot work with him to change him considerably. His issues were internally based, not exploitation or contextual. Often young people like that do not get offered placements

The idea of 'specialist care' doesnt really exist, its simply residential care with lots of staff who may or may not be able to restrain him if a court agrees a DOLs, but again, its only a short term order and is often seen as harmful to children who are ND so the courts/Guardians not keen to support.

We really need to be honest with ourselves about what we want as a society, no appetite it seems for essentially restraining or witholding someones freedom if they havent committed crime, lots of concern about 'controlling' children who may be ODD/PDA, yet alternatively concern that he wasnt restrained or controlled enough.

When people talk about non negotiable boundaries around hurting people or murdering people, it doesnt start with that does it, it starts with him probably kicking off at home, spending hours online, so the parent who wants to 'pick their battles' may say 'well Im not going to control the hours on the internet because thats not a non negotiable' but what it leads to is the build up of rage and anger.

Absolutely this! This is not about mental illness. It’s about violence and manipulation. Why did he target those little girls? Why not storm into say a gym or a shop or a restaurant? Because he knew the girls couldn’t fight back. They know exactly what they’re doing and exactly who to target. How many of these “mentally ill” men kill their fathers? Because the rate at which they’re killing their mothers is exploding.

Because people are scared. Scared of being seen to be racist. Scared of being seen to ableist. Scared to be accused of Islamophobia. Being frightened leads to total impotence and the reason these cases get passed back and forth is that no one wants to actually deal with it nor be responsible for it.

Exactly. These failures are appalling. We need answers as a society. So many agencies were involved here. So many collective years of experience. So much allocation of tax money. And absolutely nothing was achieved. It started with parental failure and ended with professional failure.

Well you clearly do not.

What are your credentials in this field? This boy had myriad professionals trying to support the family - many who had a wealth of experience in managing children with significant mental health illnesses. It made not a jot of difference to his victims.

Do you have experience of successfully turning around a mentally ill young man?

That's not what I said.

Some children are just incredibly challenging.

I have two adopted children and am part of the adopter community. Research shows that about a third of adoptions in the UK end up with the children going back into care or the family living in absolute terror - and i know some of these families.

And that's also how I know how difficult it is to get help.

My nephew has severe mental health problems btw. He has been sectioned twice.

My point is that some children are not manageable at home and they need specialist care. I think that's generally accepted - the issue then is the threshold for getting this care.

If we keep expecting parents to manage these young men, we will continue to have serious incidents.

The most basic thing I would demand of a child is to not murder other children.