Axel Rudakubana

[Dylanxoxo]

I haven't seen anything in articles I have read about Axel Rudakubana today about a mental health assessment. His behaviour is so extreme, that it is difficult not to suspect he is suffering from an untreated mental health condition. Does anyone else think that mental illness may be at the root of his horrific crimes?

There is absolutely no excuse for his actions BUT I think it may be useful to look at reasons to see if there are ways to prevent crimes like this.
He is obviously mentally ill, nobody could do what he did if they weren't but he may well be "evil" (whatever that really means) as well

Why do we even name this scumbag savage? There was a campaign to just use initials for other pieces of excrement. Can we do this with this too?

Agree

Maybe a little more will be revealed at the Inquest or by the Enquiry but unless the parents say more to the media in future it will remain largely unknown

Also these are real people not characters in a drama so xs speculation feels distasteful and disrespectful to me

No sane person does things like this

That would just mean the far right would always say it’s a cover up and claim the perpetrator was an immigrant, etc.

Fortunately the legal system has a process for determining whether this is the case

And in this instance your view is at odds with that

I am reluctant to look at news headlines today, I honestly do not want to read more about this terrible crime. It's over now, there's nothing we can do and nobody can do anything to bring those poor children back.

It's not very coherent whatever point you seem to be making.

Is it just a kind of banal point that technically any sentencing includes it because there is defence? In which case, it goes to nothing.

The offending here is so gross, so obscene that counsel did their bare function as set out in the relevant rules of procedure. Had there been a contested fact or matter of mitigation that would have made a substantial difference, counsel would have addressed it. But they didn't.

@ContactNightmare I can't recall who said the pp was incorrect. My response to that was they weren't. You could have moved on and accepted that.

It's pretty scary to think there are people that are clearly very different in terms of empathy and violence yet there's possibly nothing that can ever be done when all the flags are popping up.

I agree with the other poster. The definition of criminally insane is problematic. It is way too limited. This guy is very different. But how do you define that under 18 and what can you do I suppose if the disordered personality that he clearly has can't be medicated away. Difficult.

I know of 3 families locally with teenage boys in solo placements because of their violent presentations owing to a whole host of diagnoses. Autism, ADHD, PDA, PDD, attachment disorder, and emerging conduct disorders and one has a chromosomal micro duplication.
These families are 'white, sharp-elbowed, middle-class ' and have had the means and wherewithal to fight the local authority for support and keeping the agencies accountable. It's been a full time job.
So we have 3 boys in their mid teens who started off in group residential care because they werent safe at home or at school, one had two 24/7 carers living in the family home, but that failed and now they are all in out of county solo placements in their own homes with 24/7 carers. None are accessing education in any meaningful way. The therapy they get doesn't really make a dent.
They refuse to take the medication prescribed.
It's a £3million+ per annum holding pen until they reach adulthood. The mum I'm particularly close to fears that her DS is another Jonty Bravery in the making and will fight all her life to make sure that he is to never be in public unsupervised, not as a child, not as an adult.
How many other parents are trying to get help for their violent child? But can't work on their child's case all the live long day? Don't have the funds? Don't have English as a first language to navigate through a highly complex system? Or don't have the level of education/organisational skills to navigate a hugely complex system?
And ultimately the kind of intensively therapeutic settings these children should be in and would benefit from simply don't exist as was concluded in the Jonty Bravery serious case review.

I agree with the other poster. The definition of criminally insane is problematic. It is way too limited.

I'm glad the legal process and definition is robust and individual views on SM are neither here nor there

Agree 100%.

I also know of a young person like this. His family are educated and well heeled and are at their wits’ end with The System and keeping everyone safe. The trajectory their son appears to be on seems unstoppable.

^ this. I wish the families could have support. I wish governments could be sued for not responding to the many reports that they commission on all sorts of key issues

Isn't there a 'thing 'that there are certain mh diagnosis you can't get til you are 25?
It's utterly depressing that either the bar is sky high and/ or there are no services so this murder was more likely than not to occur

Well he’s not your average Joe that’s for sure because average people don’t go round murdering.
I think he’s just rotten to the core, he will have been assessed for mental illness.
Whatever he is, he ain’t coming out and that’s exactly as it should be.
I don’t care if he’s miserable in prison, in fact I hope he is. I hope he suffers every day of his life.

No need to be PA @EasternStandard

You'd think that discussing the very reality the man is pretty disordered mentally means we all want him walking free. Is that what you're getting bothered by on these threads?. Do you think we'd like him released early in the population with us? I assure you, not me thanks.

Perhaps it's actually fear and hopelessness knowing that there are other people just like him who will and do fall through the cracks. His other ' issues' are so relevant it's terrifying.

You can't be diagnosed Sociopathic or Psychopathic under 18. These are Anti Social Personality Disorders. So many people in society and in prison probably sit somewhere on the scale.

The current system is problematic as upsetting as posters are finding this. I don't know if you can really do anything to intervene with multiple flags but no ' mental health illness '. So this guy is off his rocker clearly, but most of us who are going on about this accept his different way of being is not a mental illness or makes him criminally insane. There were multiple flags of behaving that was completely ' abnormal '.

The question I now realise is - with all the resources in the world can you intervene in these cases? Could you intervene with that Jonty kid who did what he did. He wasn't forcibly section able and I don't think many are these days.

@RelativePitch scary situation. So many parents on their knees right now in situations not necessarily this severe but they're bad. The resources needed to deal this would be significant.

They will whitewash right over this I fear and focus on buying knives from Amazon.

@Tittat50 I'm not I mean I really am grateful for the robust system we have and the knowledge the judge clearly has.

Yesterday was awful, emotionally impacting and I can only imagine what the families are going through. It's unbearable

The one thing that helped was listening to the clear and compelling statement from the judge. I'm relieved at least we have that in this country

And no I don't think you want him to be free, but I still don't agree with posters who are keen on attributing insanity or mental illness where not part of the legal process. I think he is depraved and should be incarcerated in line with that.

@EasternStandard yes, I understand that 🙏. I think most of us would like him away for the rest of his life. If presenting no mitigating factors makes that happen, I'm ok with that. I don't want a reprieve as he is way too gone and I don't see this being treatable. ( I don't know the answer to that for sure but wouldn't want to risk finding out tbh)

This was unheard of 40 years ago when children were parented correctly from day 1. Sorry, but at some point there needs to be a brutally honest conversation about this before society collapses completely.

That's nonsense - just a bit longer than 40 years ago - young people like this were admitted to 'Mental Handicap Hospitals' - usually at around the age of 12 when their parents could no longer manage at home and then stayed there for life. Many were absolutely awful places rife with cruelty and abuse

They were simply hidden away in closed institutions on the periphery of major towns and cities - nothing to do with falling standards in parenting - what an awful thing to say

Obviously they are all closed now with the move to community care

My guess is that he will indeed turn out to have some sort of personality disorder. However, they are rarely diagnosed in teenagers because you cannot diagnose until the personality is fully developed. So there being no diagnosis yet means little.