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

Can the victims families bring civil actions against the parents or the authorities that failed? Because as PPs have said the total lack of accountability and the ability to just wash your hands and walk away in this country is a big part of the problem.

And in terms of authorities, what we need is people losing their jobs. Not some compensation (nothing can compensate for a child's life) because public bodies have bottomless pockets paid for by everyone they're letting down.

I watched the inquiry. All of it! I had a very long project to complete so had it in the background.

Everyone is to blame. The police, MH services. But yes also it was the parents. And ultimately they were the ones who knew he had purchased and stock piled weapons the week prior. So it was the parents. I know it’s hard to get someone sectioned but it is possible if you don’t let it go. And they did. They gave up.

I'm still not sure what could have been done, legally.

Would he have met the criteria for detention under the mental health act, or for a custodial sentence, prior to the Southport murders?

Could secure accommodation have been found - would there have been a legal framework for detaining him there?

My solutions to have prevented these deliberate murders of 3 young girls:

If a child is found to be carrying a knife, police can search his bedroom / house. If they find evidence of buying weapons online, they can do repeat searches.

If a child has shown violent behaviours or threats, the government can stop internet access to their home. Tough for the parents, sure, but necessary. They can go to a library to access the internet, the child can go to school.

This latter one would have a beneficial knock on for many people in society who don't want to be forced to do everything online that companies would be forced to offer an alternative also. Including schools providing paper homework not online.

I'm sure there would be a lot of handwringing about both but frankly it's all bullshit compared to the lives of 3 young girls.

And more generally, the police start arresting for and prosecuting low level crime and not wait until it's escalated to murder (as they also did with Wayne Couzens). Stop policing free speech and start policing actual crimes.

I agree with this. It will have been highly traumatising for them to live for years in an extreme situation, being told the issue was them and getting no useful support. For years. Devastating in fact. CAMHS won't help as they say it's autism, social care didn't step up as no money. A family expected to live in terror of AR but he's their child, they love him. Having to deal with an under resourced system at the same time as being met with no compassion. Not being listened to. And a family not being protected themselves from violence and treading on eggshells every day. Expected to put strategies in place that would only escalate the violence and being criticised when they don't even though it poses danger to themselves and their children. No doubt they were getting conflicting advice. They didn't have the expertise to look after him, he needed intensive and expert care. The family needed respite.

As a society I think there's a massive problem in how we deal with violent, mentally unstable individuals. (When I say "individuals", we're mostly talking about men.) We no longer lock them up in mental institutions. We let them live in the community and ask them to take their medication - but, apparently, in the Valdo Calocane case, where he refused to take his medication, it was felt that nothing could be done.

There seems to be a fear of going back to a situation of cruel Victorian institutions where people were locked up for life for 'crimes' such as homosexuality or pregnancy out of wedlock.

It is - surely - possible to recognise that some people should be removed from society for their own and (more importantly) others' safety. That can be done humanely and with all appropriate legal oversight, but it still needs to be done. Care In The Community has been an enormous failure, and time and time again it has lead to people being killed by those who should long since have been kept safely away. Sometimes 'locking them up' is the help they need AND the least worst option for everyone else.

I think they thought that the main aim was to keep him stable, as then he wouldn't escalate and do something. My nephew was really quite scary as a young man. We all walked on egg shells around him. It's easy to say they could have done this or that but the idea the dad wasn't scared of him....the fury these young men can unleash at the drop of a hat is utterly terrifying to most people. And if dad had laid a finger on him, chances are he would have been charged, given a criminal record, forced to leave the house by the nice professionals working with the son, leaving his mother to deal with him on her own. Fact is, families are in a very dangerous situation with these volatile, angry young men.

I’m a mental health nurse. Everyone ‘gives a fuck’. Most agencies are working at the very edge of their capacities and staffing. The issue is, that there is enormous tension between the role that services have in helping people and the role that they have in monitoring people and locking them up if they behave in a way that society considers deviant. Most people don’t want the state to be able to arbitrarily detain them without very strong evidence-and this is reflected in changes to the Mental Health Act (2025), for example, but then you end up with situations like this tragic case. The law does not let you let put people in prison or hospital indefinitely, just in case, and nor would we want it to.

It's only one factor which was involved in the lead-up to this horrendous crime, but it has to be called out:
under 16s having 24/7 access to the internet, usually via smartphones.

The Chair of the Enquiry spoke of AR being steeped in misogyny and violence from the websites AR was spending so much time on. Given his age at the time of the murders, he probably had 24/7 unsupervised online access from an early age.

Over half of under-13s had access to social media in 2024, according to Ofcom
Ofcom: Almost a quarter of kids aged 5-7 have smartphones
and that means access to everything on SM, including profoundly disturbing videos, extreme ideology, violent pornography, live-streaming of murders etc.

The two 13-year old boys who sexually assaulted and murdered a 14-year old girl from their school in Dublin in 2018 were found to have been 'consuming' violent porn on their phones. Yes, aged 13, they were already into violent porn. Their parents, of course, hadn't a clue and presumably gave them smartphones because all the kids have them, it's just how they keep in touch these days...

Even if a child is not influenced to copy it as those two boys and AR were, children are viewing material that is beyond their understanding and traumatically disturbing for them.

By the time he was 17, AR was already a threat to his family and had been so thoroughly immersed in violence and misogyny that he carefully plotted and carried out this horrendous murder of little girls.

His unsupervised online life is a warning of what the dark corners of the online world can do to an already disturbed young mind.

I think that's a very basic and naive reading of both the situation in that house and abuse dynamics.

I also think 'may have fought in a civil war' is a somewhat misleading description of the experience of an 18 year old Tutsi man during the Rwandan genocide.

And to suggest that being a judo instructor means someone will be immune from fear of a disturbed person is really quite astonishing.

Inquiry chairman Sir Adrian Fulford called for the end of what he described as a "culture" of agencies passing responsibility between each other or downgrading their own involvement in such cases.

"Failings were from [the attacker's] parental failures and also the individual state failures," Walker said.
"All of those agencies, the performance of those agencies, failed to a totally unacceptable level.

Britain generally in 2026.

No one takes responsibility. It's always someone else's. There's total massive institutional failure across the board cos no one gives a fuck.

In the UK they get a new house, identity and police protection.

You're talking about being a woman and living with an abusive man. The situation here is that there is a father, who is a Judo instructor (used to physically fighting other people), who may have fought in a civil war, but apparently unable to do anything about his physically unimposing (when compared to him) son.

As a society I think there's a massive problem in how we deal with violent, mentally unstable individuals. (When I say "individuals", we're mostly talking about men.) We no longer lock them up in mental institutions. We let them live in the community and ask them to take their medication - but, apparently, in the Valdo Calocane case, where he refused to take his medication, it was felt that nothing could be done.

If they commit violent offences that don't result in someone's death, then they might spend a few months in prison - though then again, if they are deemed insane, they might not even do that.

In the Rudakubana case, lots of people knew he was dangerous, but nobody did anything about it. And the tools we do have for addressing men or boys like this are pitifully inadequate. I agree with the kiopsd's comment that the "issue with interventions, therapies and anger management classes is that a child has to want to engage at some level." What do you do with someone who doesn't engage?

I've also been thinking about what it does to us to live with the level of fear AR's parents were experiencing. Many of us have lived with an abusive, dangerous male. Many of us know what it does to your way of thinking, your ability to assess risk, your perspective, your thresholds (to an outsider a particular event is a notable, awful traumatic thing and to you it is just another fucking Tuesday, it barely registers). Many of us know the one rule that is always followed, has to be followed, is unthinkable not to follow, is that you don't tell anyone anything and you don't let outsiders see in and you keep up the pretence. He was their child: he was also a violent, controlling, disturbing, dangerous male on the edge of adulthood. They are frightening people.

With all my heart I wish either AR's mother or father or brother had had the moment of terrifying clarity it takes to pick up the phone and admit how utterly terrible things are and how badly help is needed, but I can honestly understand why by the time he committed those foul crimes they were past being able to.

I agree the whole system failed on this. At every point people dismissed or were asked to remove stereotyping that highlighted any issues.

The parents experience of their son being found on a bus with a knife by police and stating that he wanted to stab someone and had had thoughts about using poison was that the police brought him home and advised then to hide their household knives.

That doesn't to me suggest encouragement to them to take his risks seriously, because the police certainly did not do so.

The parents experience of professionals was that there were endless referrals, discussions and meetings, and that said professionals could be persuaded to change wording in certain documents with a little pressure.

That doesn't to me suggest encouragement to them that if they did honestly share information about their son's risks, the professional response would be robust.

I think it is very easy, and comforting, to sit back and state this is mostly parental failure. I don't think there is a single person or agency to blame, but I do blame the systems and agencies with knowledge of the family more than the family themselves. Various practitioners had witnessed the level of control AR exerted over his parents and would have known these were not parents who could recognise and appropriately respond to AR's risks. Yes, their parenting was inadequate, with appalling consequences. But that their parenting was inadequate was known already and the system did not act.

So many parts of this coming together to allow what happened.

So awful to see how easy it was made.

One look at that lad and you could tell he was evil. The Head of the special school was right yet she was shut down because of some left wing hand wringer

That's not really going to work is it? Looking at people and telling they are evil?
Refering to left wing hand wringers.

Arran2024, i totally agree that there needs to be better services. We need more and far sturdier punishment for such young adults, anyone caught with a knife is a potential murderer and needs removing from society and quite frankly we need to stop worrying what colour they are, how poor they are or whether their mummy bought them a play station or not. One look at that lad and you could tell he was evil. The Head of the special school was right yet she was shut down because of some left wing hand wringer. We need harder firmer people staffing these services.

I think we match this sort of stuff up with our own exeriences as parents possibly?

And there is no match.

I don't care how traumatised the parents were....how did they think thimgs would progress?

Those he criticised included Lancashire Police, the government's counter-extremism service Prevent, various NHS mental health services, and the County Council among other services.

Will any of those who Sir Adrian Fulford criticised, face any consequences such as losing their jobs?

The parents are absolutely to blame. The weapons were stored in the living room, the father was a Judo instructor (but apparently scared of his son), and his history in Rwanda (particularly around involvement in the civil war) is ambiguous.

I simply don't buy the "they were scared" excuse.

Services to help possible young offenders are staffed by people who are impossibly naive, in my experience.

SACRO wanted me to hold a restorative conversation with the 15 yr old who punched me in the stomach. They accepted hook line and sinker his story that he was the 'victim of a homophobic attack' and that I'd 'got in the way' whilst he was defending himself. I refused.

I was [barely] pregnant at the time and trying to keep well away whilst I phoned for back-up.

I was smeared as a homophobe by the boys' friends. Years later, the now grown man was boasting about the time he punched Mrs Weary.

www.sacro.org.uk/

My previous post has a typo. Should be "are now told to make allowances for those under the age of 25."