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

[IwantToRetire]

The words "failure", "failing" and "failed" appear more than 200 times in Monday's Southport Report

Its findings leave almost no agency, organisation or individual involved in Axel Rudakubana’s life unscathed.

The police, council, mental health services, Prevent programme – none of them took ownership of the risks that he posed.

Only The Acorn School, which the attacker attended after being expelled from Range High School, is noted as having repeatedly intervened.

But the Chair of the inquiry, Sir Adrian Fulford, also clearly believes in parental responsibility.

The attacker's father, in particular, is described as "obstructive" and "manipulative" in relation to the authorities.

It is rare to see a killer’s parents singled-out for not doing more to prevent their child’s crimes.

Together, the Southport attack was a failure of both parenting and policy – nobody, says the Chair, agreed who was responsible for the troubled teenager.

There was a "merry-go-round of referrals, assessments, case-closures and 'hand-offs'", he says.

There is even a specific moment when Sir Adrian believes the murders could have been prevented, after the attacker was caught with a knife on a bus in 2022.

But no arrest or search of his home took place, leaving the poison in his bedroom and the warped search history on his computer undetected.

The report’s recommendations include setting up an agency with overall responsibility for monitoring risk, to avoid repeat failings.
But there are searching questions too about access to online materials for children, the availability of weapons and the complexities of the attacker’s autism (the Chair is keen not to stigmatise others with condition).

Ultimately, only the attacker can account for his crimes. But for the families of the victims and survivors, today’s report contains the painful conclusion that he could – and should – have been stopped.

https://www.itv.com/news/2026-04-13/southport-report-finds-failures-by-authorities-and-at-home

The Southport Inquiry: Phase 1 report
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-southport-inquiry-phase-1-report

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.

@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.

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.

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

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

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

@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.

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.

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

To me, it's common sense.

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.

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.

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.

As @MeetMeOnTheCorner says* *residential school with the option to stay in the holidays would be a good option for those who can't cope with normal every day life and are a risk to others.

Well if the professionals who failed are sacked, as they should be, there will be no need to name them as there will be no risk they will fail again, will there?

There needs to be accountability or this will happen again.

It's a bit much to say you wish the families healing but stand behind there being no possible accountability for the professionals who failed.

Frankly I'd rather an adult who failed in their job to protect children face angry comments online from angry parents than another child killed.

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.

Ime CAMHS has the 'standard pathway' and the 'ND pathway' and the latter is extremely short and leads straight to an exit door because "all autistic people are anxious" (and sometimes suicidal, and intermittently violent, etc) and "we can't address that as it is part of the condition".

TBH if you wanted to design a legal, wholesome-looking service to make people feel anxious, suicidal and potentially violent you couldn't do much better than the ND pathway at CAMHS!

I didn't say that the professionals shouldn't be held accountable. I believe that is done through misconduct hearings, re-training, supervision at work, even criminal charges etc. I don't think it should be done by leaving working people open to verbal and possibly physical attack.

The son poured a bottle of oil over him and threatened to kill him according to an article in today's Times.

Lots of young people are beyond parental control for whatever reason.

Maybe some of them are inherently cruel, nasty people, whose parents have no chance with them.

I hope that if I thought there was a genuine danger to the public, that I would report it. But how would you know? The police caught this person on s bus with a knife but didn't do anything. If they didn't think it was a grave concern, why would you?

Sounds to me like the inquiry is criticising the parents not for their parenting but for their public-mindedness. They kept their son in a familiar, safe environment, fed him etc. What they didn't do is put the wider community ahead of their son - they protected him, not the community. Bad behaviour but not sure that's bad parenting.

He didn't get services, he got referrals to services, who all said "not us" and discharged him. Prevent said he didn't have an ideology. CAMHS said he didn't have a mental health problem, that it was a social care issue. Social Services kept opening a case then discharging him. The last social worker involved took 9 months to write up her report. Btw she is being investigated for this, the only professional involved to be under any possible sanction.

I actually did a Google search on the parents of the killers of Jamie Bulger. Both killers came from single parent households and both seemed to have horrific upbringings. In contrast, this perpetrators home life seems outwardly idyllic.

If they didn't think it was a grave concern, why would you?

But being caught in public with a knife should be a huge concern. If my kids did this' I'd report them to the police. Because once you start covering this sort of thing up, it will all end in tears. I am not judging the parents, their family life must have been hell and even if the dad was possibly arrogant or protective, none of us know how we'd feel or our our innate traits would repose to a child like AR. But we have got to get back to some sort of shared understanding of what's right and wrong otherwise we are doomed as a society. Knife = bad = serious consequences. If the police was lax then the parents ought to to have come down on him like a ton of bricks.

All the professionals are named in the inquiry report (with 2 exceptions) published and available for anyone to read.

I think was a fair, balanced and well researched inquiry. Credit is given to professionals (especially the Alternative Provision Head/Deputy Head) and others where their actions were appropriate.
It is damming to others, whilst acknowledging for some, they tried their best and failings were due to systematic failures. To others, it is damming where there is personal failure.
The issue is that no-one really risk assessed or worked with AR around his potential to harm others, it was more around safe-guarding him, 3 x referrals to Prevent where basically ignored, there a lack of information sharing and the parents were allowed to dictate terms of engagement. I rarely say this, but in this instance, after reading the report, dad especially was obstructive and was untruthful at least with professionals....

If as parents we don't teach our dc right from wrong we simply fail them.

If someone lashes out and becomes aggressive and violent due to autistic 'meltdown' if that's the correct term, it's a completely different situation because it's not sadistic, it's a fight, freeze or flight stress response. This person can be supported by giving them the necessary adjustments e.g at work or school. But AR is a sadistic evil man who murdered innocent children in cold blood. I really find the supportive messages about his parents to some extent him ("if only he had had support") very concerning. We cannot be a peaceful and healthy society if we don't deal with violent people, no matter what their condition or background is.

It's a really difficult situation as CAMHS are completely on their knees. They were before COVID, it's so much worse now. So many professionals have emigrated for nicer jobs, others go private. They can't do much. Social care are inundated, education failings just puts more pressure on them all. And it's going to get much worse because of the SEND white paper. Residential placements cost a fortune, budgets have been slashed. It's a lot of stress for professionals, they get burned out and probably very worried that at some point they'll be hauled up to give evidence at an inquest. It's all such a mess.

What gets written on paper doesn't always reflect the reality of things (IME at least, it may not have been the case here). Profs can't just write we have no funding. So be mindful of that.

I always feel sad that agencies, parents etc are pitted against each other when everyone wants the same outcome really. It's a huge systemic issue, I wish that the news focused on this more than the parents or certain professionals.