Prevent - there are more children like Rudakubana

[noblegiraffe]

I just read this interesting and worrying article about the increase in children being referred to Prevent but not getting support from them due to lack of terrorist ideology.

https://schoolsweek.co.uk/school-prevent-referrals-rise-but-fewer-get-support/

I can see that if Prevent resources are geared to children who are being groomed into jihadist ideology or white supremacy then they wouldn't necessarily be able to tackle someone who just wants to go on a killing spree. However it is clear that if violent tendencies and posing an obvious risk do not meet the threshold for Prevent support, then we either need a different agency to deal with these troubled children, or Prevent needs to widen its remit.

If Rudakubana phoned Childline aged around 12 to say he wanted to kill people, if social services were involved, if CAMHS was involved, if there were enough concerns that he was repeatedly referred to Prevent, then clearly there was need for a type of support that wasn't on offer.

The article says "In the year to April 2024, two in five school referrals were found to involve a vulnerable child, but one deemed not to be driven by a terrorist ideology.
That meant more than 1,000 cases from schools were classed as “vulnerability present but no ideology or CT [counter-terrorism] risk” – an increase of 140 per cent since before Covid."

"Just 8 per cent of all school referrals in the year to April 2024 resulted in a decision to give the child specialised support through Prevent"

Then what on earth is happening with the other 92%?

The parents interactions with their own kids are disgusting but at the same time they are defensive of them (sometimes) in school and are told that the school are to blame for their inaction whereas anyone with ounce of intelligence can see the root of the problems and the cycle of issues that may also have an impact on society.

Do we know that the parents actually wanted the police to do something? Sometimes parents call the police hoping that will be enough to 'scare' their children, but they won't support police by making a statement because they don't want to criminalise their child.

The problem is these services just don’t exist anymore.

I have an adult child with a leaning disability and autism. Without extensive support from
me he has the potential to be dangerous. Not to the level of murdering someone as that would involve the capability to plan his actions which he doesn’t have. He can have very unpredictable behaviour, toddler style tantrums despite being 6 foot tall, no understanding of consequences etc. and so could injure someone quite easily if he were alone in this situation.

The second he left school at 16, that was it. No more support. Been on a waiting list for CAHMS so long that he aged out of their service and was taken off the list. Adult social services couldn’t be less interested, no supported living available, no respite available, no day groups available. Best they could offer was untrained, minimum wages carers popping in twice a day but they are unreliable and massively out of their depth so almost no help. GP says nothing available to help him as the conditions are not treatable.

What exactly happens to these people that don’t have family support, or have families that can’t cope, deceased parents etc. There is quite simply nothing. I worry every single day what will happen to him when I am
no longer here.

How soon till anyone with asd can be sectioned?

This is so honest and so pertinent. Thank you for sharing. I think it’s entirely appropriate AR was sent to prison for an extremely long time (hopefully the rest of his life). But calling him evil and moving on misses the bigger picture. There are families screaming out for help with their violent, unstable, school refusing children up and down the country. Children who don’t fit nicely into a recognised or treatable mental health condition and haven’t yet committed a serious crime, so therefore nobody wants to know.

I hope the enquiry doesn’t just gloss over this and takes a deep dive into how AR slipped through the net and what, if anything, can be done to address this problem.

I've worked in secondary schools for decades. I've taught and worked with thousands of teenagers in that time. Two I have taught are in prison for murder. Neither surprised me. I think there are just some people, boys usually because of our patriarchy who just express their violence outwards. And neither were mentally ill and both were flagged up multiple times by multiple services. As a police officer once told me we can't preemptively arrest people nor can we imprison people for things they havnt done but probably will.
It's a problem evil has always existed and the results of evil people are horrible.

I'd put good money on it that these kids have CPTSD from childhood. Might not be a "recognised and treatable mental illness" (is it? I genuinely have no idea) but people do not grow up in perfect loving families, with no adverse childhood experiences and become murderers.

Because while you might call that very disordered or concerning or morally wrong thinking, and I would agree, that is not the same thing as a mental disorder.

Having a mental disorder means fitting into a set of criteria laid out in the DSM or ICD manuals. Those things are designed to classify mental illness diagnoses, ideally so that people can be offered treatment or support, they aren't designed to identify people who are a potential risk to society.

Some posters are referring to personality disorders, but these cannot be diagnosed until a person is at least 18. He was 17 when he committed the crime.

A child/teenager can be diagnosed with conduct disorder, which is a precursor to a diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder or psychopathy, but this is based on a pattern of behaviour over an extended period of time. It doesn't cover thoughts, wants or plans - it is based only on behaviour. It specifically says in the diagnostic criteria that a single criminal act is not suggestive of this disorder.

@batshitaboutcatshit

Interesting. I would normally agree with you. Some kids who have seen a lot of violence or been violently treated go on to be violent but I did wonder in this case if viewing lots of violent content, particularly before your brain is developed, desensitises you to violence and can leave you with a lack of morality and empathy and a love of violence.

There was a case here in Ireland where a young teenager killed a young girl and the profile was very similar - seemingly from a good home but obsessed with violent content and violence.

I'm starting to think that viewing violence on a screen is as damaging as seeing it in real life as a child.

The vast majority of terrorist attack are carried out by Islamist terrorist groups of various kinds. It's simply not true to say young white boys are the most likely to attack.

"This worries me. I understand there may be a threat from terrorists, which is awful. But for me the far bigger red flag with the whole Southport situation was just how many violent white men flooded the streets in the riots, completely believing their racist tirades were acceptable."

@LittleRedRidingHoody - why was that the biggest red flag from Southport for you? Wasn't it the violent black man who murdered three little girls and injured many others? Who it seems had not been dealt with despite being reported to the authorities many times?

Why did you find "racist tirades" so much more unacceptable than mass murder of children? Not that either are ok of course but I can't understand why the latter isn't by far your biggest concern

Sometimes I think people are just born evil, no matter their upbringing, the interventions they receive, they have and always be evil 🤷‍♀️

i know many people are saying that had h3 been locked up or arrested previously, he wouldn’t have killed those poor children. But, he probably wouldn’t have presented with anything to indicate that he should be locked up long term, as other than erratic behaviour and violent outbursts, the authorities wouldn’t have had him locked up permanently, so at some stage he would have been on the streets again, and would have gone on to kill someone anyway. The only way him killing anyone would have been avoided would have been to remove him from our streets forever, which just wouldn’t have happened.

Am I alone in finding this shocking? Primary school children?

It actually is largely white boys being radicalised

@Efacsen

He went back to his old school (expelled) went to assembly and at some point randomly attacked a pupil with a hockey stick breaking their wrist. The deputy head had to physically drag him out.

A specialist unit dealing with autism asked for police to attend visit with them due to his background and obsession with violent leaders.

What more evidence of risk of harm to others would be needed.

@mollyfolk yes. But one also wonders how and when he was told about his family history and the Rwanda genocide because he became fixated on that also

We need to have an honest discussion about mental health in this country. If integration into society isn't possible or is too expensive then institutionalisation must be easier, particularly with violent people. This seems like a very similar story to the man in London who threw that French boy off the Tate balcony.

Yes, possibly. But I don't believe that a mentally healthy, well rounded, non-neglected individual would a) access online violence repeatedly or b) if they did, they wouldn't necessarily act upon it. Like I said upthread, I feel that in these cases there's a number of "switches" that need to be turned on to eventually end up with a highly dangerous character.

Same reason why people may be born a psychopath but some go on to be surgeons and others go on to be serial killers.

"There was a case here in Ireland where a young teenager killed a young girl and the profile was very similar - seemingly from a good home but obsessed with violent content and violence."

The issue here is that absolutely no-one from the outside can know if someone was brought up in a "good home" or not. Things like emotional neglect, parental mental health and undiagnosed SEN with unmet needs would be completely invisible to outsiders.

Hard disagree on this one

So he could have a personality disorder but is just too young to be diagnosed? And a personality disorder isn't classified as a mental disorder? What's the difference?

I'd assume if it is based on behaviour only, there is enough behaviour in planning and executing that terrible, frenzied attack to suggest something?

For me it was more the fact that SO MANY men jumped on a racist, lawless 'trend' fuelled by completely false allegations which were disproved but the men involved simply wanted violence. They had no interest in doing any research themselves, it was a bandwagon to jump on. That horrified me. The complete lack of respect for the police, or common decent courtesy for the people who they were screaming at/throwing things at/attacking.

So I guess I feel like one outlier with some twisted brain did something horrifying - it makes me sick to even think about it - but then thousands of violent people doing violent, racist, and illegal things for no apparent reason was more shocking to me. I'm sure some of them feel they had their reasons, but it was clear so many didn't and I think were crazily lucky people didn't die because of it.

People have been campaigning for better mental health services for kids for years. My DS got referred to CAMHS for extreme anxiety and was on the waiting list for 3 years. Luckily we were able to rally round, help at home, do our own research, withdraw him from school (as that was a major source of the problem), etc. But the vast majority of people don't have the time to do this, so kids who are in crisis are just left to get worse and worse.

If young people can't even get an initial appointment without waiting years, then I don't know how the authorities are going to find time, money and staff to institutionalise people (which I don't agree with by the way).

Honest conversation about evil people. This was nothing to do with school or support network this was pure evil