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?

Also, a guilty plea helps reduce a sentence

https://www.sentencingcouncil.org.uk/sentencing-and-the-council/types-of-sentence/life-sentences/

You haven't killed children though.

No. And I never would.

That wasn't my point really.

I just think it's a sliding scale of things of what makes someone a killer.

People who have had cruel abusive childhoods often go on to be cruel.

I see this man (the killer) has spoken out that he received a lot of racist abuse when he was a child.

@Lalgarh yes calculated, planned and sadistic. He will have got pleasure from doing this. That is why.

Similar profile to Brady, who enjoyed hurting and killing children.

This makes them feel good. Which is why you cannot let such people out. The chief motivation will be to do similar crimes.

It wasn't random as such though. There was a build up to the attack over many years. It was careful planned and carefully selected. It would seem to be motivated by a combination of a personality disorder of some kind plus terrorism and perhaps misogyny. He wasn't on a wild rampage after all. He didn't attack the taxi driver or the guy who challenged him about not paying the taxi father.

Obviously, he is mentally ill, and he needs to be fully assessed to prevent future cases; as we have many more like him roaming the streets!

There's no "obviously" about it.

I agree. Nobody is trying to 'excuse' his crimes or show him sympathy. But he is clearly very unwell and there doesn't seem to be resources to intervene early enough the next time such a person presents themself, which they will.

Can we not say this guy was mentally quite different to the standard/ the norm?

Can we say this guy was mentally off his nut ( my very professional term there 😬) and that there is something about his wiring that is messed up and is not quite the same as the default. Can we consider that he is mentally unstable as his default mentality by way of operating is out of a mindset akin to a personality disorder?

No one excuses him. No one thinks he's magically curable. No one thinks he needs to be freed and rehabilitated here. No one thinks ' mental illness ' equals killer. There are multiple afflictions that come under the definition of mental illness. If it can't be treated as an acquired illness, it won't be defined as such - personality types such as sociopath or psychopath for example.

Emma Kenny, no fan of her I admit, is quite certain he is a product of radicalisation and brainwashed. We won't know without further details.

There's no "obviously" about

Exactly

He didn't meet the threshold for action.

You want people to be locked up for crimes that haven't happened?

Was it someone here who said Prevent can only intervene in cases where the person actually wants help?

If this offender has a personality disorder like psychopathy he will be very clever and manipulative. We saw a bit of that yesterday.

I would take his stories of persecution or racism with a very large pinch of salt for that reason.

You will find a lot of disordered people have stories about how badly they have been treated, and this often forms part of their justification for acting as they do. In reality, it may be a serious red flag in anyone, particularly if it is strongly at odds with actual evidence.

He seems like a highly driven and dangerous person, who had a lot of autonomy in his life. If you look at other child killers then he starts look similar.

Who is 'they'? Mitigation doesn't mean forgiveness or lack of accountability. It's a legal principle, thoughtfully applied by a highly qualified judge. There are multiple aggravating factors too. His sentence is fifty years in prison.

There were preventative orders but they've been repealed bc ppl were being detained for setting fire to curtains and stuff. It's a campaigning point for human rights activists

A colleague made a joke saying "he's not the right complexion for a mentally ill defence"
It got me thinking though.
I personally think he does have issues, evidenced from his past behaviour but due to the publics demand for revenge to this case they would never allow this as a defence as people want their pound of flesh.

Anyway it's all over now so no point in speculating, especially on sites like this one who applauded the thugs rioting and buring buildings with people inside Last year and who now are salivating over trump.

You're right. There would have been people saying something bad is going to happen here and they knew it. But you just can't lock someone up.

I wonder would any medication have changed the way he was or managed it in any way. Does it exist.

The more I think on this the more I am thinking about him being male ( I know more likely to be violent) but, what was he looking at, who was he talking to online. How much fed a misogyny. He did only attack girls. Appreciate that could have been simply as easier to overpower.

This I do agree with. It's only one jury but the one thing that stood out for the criminal that was found guilty was a strong motivating factor of feeling there was an unfairness

He wasn't mentally ill but on why commit a crime and plead innocent the heartfelt part where he claimed society was unfair felt like a good insight to why

Agree. My late aunt was a lifelong schizophrenic and heard voices all the time. She was kind and loving but it's no insult to her to be fully aware that schizophrenia and psychosis are sometimes the root of violent crime. I'm on sertraline, who isn't? I'm not offended by the fact that most of the prison population are too.

To assume a person with evil tendencies has a mental health issue is totally wrong and perpetuates fear of people who genuinely experience mental ill health.

That's not what I got from the lecture at all. She is trying to understand the factors that lead to an evil state of mind. I found it balanced although I can appreciate very difficult for victims of crime to consider explanations of something that has devastated their lives. It's short sighted to say they are just evil because it doesn't help us prevent the crimes of the future.And she makes that point very clearly.

Insane is a legal term with criteria that must be met. It is a term/measure used to determine that the perpetrator didn't have capacity and therefore it reduces culpability.
Someone with legal knowledge, please correct me if I'm wrong but it can mean more lenient sentences and a perpetrator of a very serious crime such as murder being housed in a high security hospital rather than a maximum security prison.
AR, I believe, was found to have full capacity. He had planned the attack, he knew what he was doing and where he was going, it wasn't random, he knew what he did afterwards, and he showed no remorse.
He didn't have the defence of insanity.

I agree with you about PPs' use of the term 'evil' though. It's always used when describing a person who has done awful things but seems to be used as a noun, not an adjective.
I think it's an easy get-out because it makes us so uncomfortable to believe that people are capable of such heinous acts.
I'm firmly in the camp that believes people aren't 'evil' or 'monsters' as though they're not fully human. They are human. The simple fact is that some people, for whatever reason, faulty wiring; a brain that hasn't developed properly; their environment - nature + nurture - are capable of terrible things that most of us find abhorrent.
I've also found that there's no point in making that argument because there will be a stream of people who post after you saying 'he was simply evil.'

The kid he attacked for bullying him didn't know who he was as he was as the victim is younger than him.

He was born in Cardiff. I don't believe Wales is that much different from England in its level of violence.

It's not necessary to resort to the idea of evil imo. This offender was a sadist. He enjoyed what he did. And enjoyed the sentencing hearing, seeing all the emotion, manipulating all the families, terrifying the children, all of it.