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

You wouldn't report your son if he had weapons and murderous intentions? You sound like a nice parent and as such I am sure you'd feel morally obliged to protect innocent people from being harmed. If your som lashes out when frustrated in a difficult situation due to overwhelm thats a completely different situation. Saying that if he did seriously hurt members of the public, he should not be able to do that.

Firstly, RIP to the poor little girls. Wishing their poor families peace and healing in time.

I am quite disturbed by the attacks on the parents. I don't remember hearing this kind of criticism of the 2 sets of parents of the attackers of Jamie Bulger, which seems a similar case of horrific violence from minors.

My son is autistic and has already been punished by school for a violent incident, when he struck several people. Perhaps I am being self-serving but it seems the choice being presented is - inform the authorities on your own child to ensure he is incarcerated (because being involved with CAMHS and Prevent is not enough) or be liable for your son's violent acts and be sent to prison yourself.

I do not know if I could dob in my son. Being taken from the family home would be very detrimental to him, his autism would intensify and he would probably never leave incarceration again. I don't know if I could do that to him. Perhaps if you know he has knives etc, it would be easier but I don't know.

For reference, previously, he was referred to CAMHS but they put the issue he was dealing with at the time down to his autism, said he wasn't in crisis if he was eating and sleeping well so they couldn't help, apart from 1 follow up appointment months later.

I have attended several events to try and find support and he now attends fortnightly charity group sessions but there is very little actual practical support out there to raising an autistic son.

From reading other posts, investing in more part-time or full-time residential care for young people might be the best option.

I don't think blaming the parents will help. And I also think naming individual professionals involved is potentially inciting and inviting more violence.

And also, I'm Gen X and I didn't grow up with social media either. I can tell a scam though.

We teach about sex before it's legal, we can teach early about other things too.

Well other countries are doing it so I guess we'll see.

To me, it's common sense.

I don’t think that would work at all. We do still have at least one generation of people who did not grow up with social media, and based on the number of scams people fall for, the amount of information they willingly share without question, the AI they can’t recognise, the fake news they can’t detect etc etc., then capability to deal with social media is not based on age, but on controls around exposure and A LOT of education.

Well you're kicking it down the road until a time where the child is older and is likely to be more capable of dealing with it. That's the whole point.

@outinthenrightWhat we actually need are far more residential schools for dc like this. It’s 100% clear that mainstream schools are not the right environment and neither is home. The big issue with any school though is what happens in the holidays and some dc should not go back to parents. Often parents cannot cope and the issues with dc resurface. We try far too hard to be inclusive and only take limited action to deprive a young person of their liberty when the young person is at risk of significant harm and vulnerable. We don’t act quickly enough when the public is vulnerable or other dc. This case needs parents to feel safe in reporting their grave concerns and that dc will get help. We all need these dc to have a different pathway through adolescence.

Thank you. It's very different when you go through it yourself as you can see a lot of parallels so do have a slightly different perspective. But I can understand why people wouldn't, it's not something even very close friends understand as no one can really come and help you as it's too dangerous and could escalate the situation. You don't want to put them at risk or your child. And people expect you to just get over it when you've been through extremely traumatic experiences. So I can feel compassion at the same time as not condoning what the parents did or didn't

That's fair. Sorry for your difficulties and for sounding sarcastic

They need to bring back institution and asylums for people like AR to segregate dangerous delinquents from society.

I've experienced it myself so it's something I feel quite passionate about as I know how difficult it is for families. Maybe they had a completely different experience than I did. Maybe a tonne of support did go in place for them. I do not know. You're probably right, it isn't helpful to speculate based on my own experiences of the system and living with extreme violence and the trauma that goes with that.

@outinthenrighteverytbing written there is in the public domain so it is fair response. The only opinion bit is whether he wanted his wife hurt or shielded which is a fair assumption tbh.

Are you mind reading or do you know this family? Or generally just advocating for them? Your posts suggest you know a lot about this family's private experience at home.

Of course it's not just social media though, it's the internet. I doubt AR found his ricin manual on 'social media'.

Agree with this though I'd argue reducing social media up to 18, with a very limited exposure from 16 to 18 alongside strong and compulsory education (not ideological) would be essential.

I'd love a global social media ban but too much money to be made from it.

There are part of social media that are overall good (MN if MN counts...) but the negatives definitely outweigh the positives.

The Dad was fighting for support and complaining so this is quite possibly why. I don't know but I guess he was viewed as the primary person so gets the criticism. It's usually the other way round as it tends to be mothers who link in with services. Again I don't know what the relationship was between father and son but I suspect he was the one who tried to put boundaries in (wouldn't have wanted his wife hurt)

I think in practicalities she also worked nights so was out then and asleep most of the day so had less interaction with him

I have wondered why most of the heat is on the Dad rather than the Mum. I can see the dad was obstructive and lied but there are examples of her being obstructive too. She equally seemed to want to keep him at home and I get the impression AR had a better relationship with her. He told his dad that if either of them would be leaving the house it would be him. She didn’t appear to do anything proactive to reduce AR’s risk or be transparent with services.

The issue I would have with a social media ban is that it would not go hand in hand with online safety education, so we would end up releasing 16 year olds into a world of social media they have never accessed before and therefore have built no knowledge or resilience on how to use it. The ban in itself would not solve the issue-again it would be kicking the can down the road.

Now a global social media ban for all? That’s a thinker.

100% and there's a lot of attempts to divide women and play on their socialisation to 'be kind'.

We always need to remember that being 'kind' to a violent male usually means a girl or woman will be harmed somewhere down the line and just perhaps our kindness should be focused there for once.

Yep and women are always asked to look away. The few who receive the violence don’t worry about that we need to preserve the systems that make it more likely.

All sorts of backlash if you say put women and girls first.

I suspect that part of the reason was that he had by that point normalised the behaviours (this happens - it really is a thing), his overriding instinct was to protect his child and completely underestimated the risk. Who knows? What led him to become obstructional? They clearly engaged or tried to for a long time. Had there been more trust between parents and services, respite in place would that have happened? We do not know.

Don't get me wrong- I would LOVE the state to help in some ways re tech. A smartphone or social media ban for U 16s for example. Peer pressure is immense so if everyone has the same rule to follow that really helps.

And cracking down on dangerous online content.

But when it comes to gaming etc, no it's not healthy to sit and do that all day, to the detriment of everything else.

And that's where parents must step in for their children's sake.

I'm afraid a lot of the public sector seems to be involved in what is mostly a wordy, long-winded and costly exercise in blame avoidance rather than actually doing anything positive for society.

Especially around safeguarding. Take single sex toilets in schools. Unquestionably safer, unquestionably required under several laws, yet schools with mixed sex (by stealth, or not) toilets (and presumably associated higher levels of sexual harassment and assault - not least indecent exposure which is a crime - and I'd bet good money higher absence rates from the girls too ). Schools spending years sending word salad to parents who raise safeguarding concerns at a huge staff cost not to mention the cost of lawyers to support their pet project to get penises into girls changing rooms. It really shouldn't be for a child and her parent to bring a legal challenge on this. It's the law to provide single sex changing / toilets in schools over a certain age as well as an obvious and basic way of safeguarding children properly. Mixed sex changing rooms in a Brighton secondary school - part 3 - we're really cooking now | Mumsnet

Edited to add: funny how there's money in the school budget for fighting the law and redefining words whose definition has been clarified by the Supreme Court. It's not just underfunding (though that also exists) it's also misuse of existing funds. See also - paying unqualified outside activists for school resources. And schools are probably one of the most effective and more underfunded public organisations and in AR's case did the most to stop him. I'm just using this as a prominent example of a profligate waste of public money avoiding safeguarding duties.

Yes - he was going to therapy, trying to get education in place as education of course wasn't in place. Working on trying to get AR to eat and all the work that went into that. He actually did quite a lot. The more complex your child and the more services are involved the more work there is to do.

I just don't know why people constantly bring up the judo thing. He really would not have been allowed in any way, shape or form to use that.