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

No, they should have reported it to the police! They absolutely did fail in their moral duty but they too deserved protection from AR as no violence is acceptable towards anyone at all.

How many children have you placed in a secure unit?

You're sort of explaining why I'm struggling with this. I am the parent of an autistic child and I am trying to learn where the other parents went wrong. So I dont do the same.

But the choice is still - ruin your own child's life over something he MIGHT NEVER DO or ignore it all! Where is the correct choice? Where is the middle ground? How can anyone possibly see the future?

If my son was a genuine danger to people, I would expect to be told and asked to consent to institutionalising him. That's what I thought happened. And that is what 8 would do. Instead, it sounds like he will be unsupported whilst I put up with domestic violence.

@likelysuspect Me, personally, 2. That’s relatively unusual as I live really close to a medium secure adolescent unit and so we do use it as an option. However, most of the people being discussed are adults- AR was 9 days from his 18th birthday, and, regardless, there are provisions for managing potentially violent adolescents. The point is that “asylum care” in the way that most people would understand it is already an option; the issue is who gets those beds and how we define and understand risk.

You'll just end up having to cope and probably normalise everything, it's just the way it is sadly. If you read older books about autism they say that this is often part of autism (or rather some children with autism) and that parents may need to consider residential school etc. But nowadays it's very much treated by society and sometimes by professionals as parents failing to control their child/general parents failing kind of thing - on the surface at least.

If a child has high levels of anxiety for whatever reason then boundaries have to be relaxed and then put in place once the anxiety is reduced otherwise you'll get escalation and things can get quite dangerous. This does seem to have been recognised decades ago for children who had an ASD diagnosis back then. Unfortunately nowadays this can lead to a lot of criticism and you will get judged by a lot of people even if you explain that it reduces dysregulation and behaviours as it is viewed by many as poor parenting.

Things like residential aren't generally an option as very expensive, not always seen as being in the best interest of the child and things can genuinely turn around eg if their environment becomes more predictable. There is very little money available for carers, respite etc.

AR clearly had issues that went beyond all of this but for very many reasons slipped through the cracks and the outcome was horrific.

On welfare grounds or criminal justice route?

Had they had DOLs before in the community or straight to a request for a Secure Order? Did you need to give evidence or was it not contested?

Did the Guardian support you?

How long were each child there, what was the step down plan?

Yes if you get it wrong terrible things happen - like Southport, like Nottingham. No one is saying there aren’t asylums/units/whatever but the advent of care in the community type approaches have done incredible damage and decimated the system. If the risk assessment is the problem then fine let’s sort that but I highly suspect it’s underfunding and a lack of placements that are the real issue. But that would require our inept successive governments to accept there is a problem and to fund something that is actually needed.

Thank you for this post, it's really interesting. And I completely agree in that I have had close family friends tell me that my son "needs to be treated like everyone else".

Actually no he doesn't. We don't ask kids with mobility issues to walk upstairs and autistic children need similar adjustments made.

And we need to find humane and practical solutions for handling people who are dangerous, before tragic events occur.

Prevent is designed to assess and intervene to prevent terrorist offending and only terrorist offending. As violent and awful as his offence was, it was not terrorism in its goal or purpose so I would imagine when reviewing the case from that lense, other risks were not picked up/handed over to anyone else and that is where the failures occurred. It is not prevents remit to address risk of other violence. It seems as though a law change is required to capture and put services in place for people preparing to or posing a risk to carry out mass or serious harm to the public, but not in the name of terrorism. This was in the recent report by Jonathan hall.

@likelysuspect At the time I was working for CAMHS Assertive Outreach. Both kids were a tricky combination of mental health and criminal justice, and both held under 37/41 MHA. Neither was contested as it was obvious they couldn’t be kept safe in a standard adolescent acute unit but had acute psychiatric needs. One was stepped down to a secure children’s home and the other, as far as I know, is still there-but I don’t work for the service anymore so I don’t know. The trust is well provisioned for low and medium secure forensic meaning that it’s normally less about funding than suitability. Now, acute beds on the other hand…

It's really tough. I was resigned to being killed by my child for years, he's in a very different place now. Residential would have been a disaster for him so it was the right decision not to offer a place. It doesn't undo the trauma that we all went through though.

My advice would be that if your child is struggling at school do anything to protect their mental health before it collapses even if that's home educating. Don't wait. Schools can't cope as it is and things are going to get worse. Don't expect CAMHS to be able to offer anything as they just can't. Don't expect social care to offer anything. There's no point fighting for resources that don't exist anymore. No one has any money.

Don't listen to the marble jar and sticker chart people. If you have to just pretend you're doing it. Don't feel pressured into using approaches that escalate towards violence or self harm and don't listen to anyone who tells you to do this as that's irresponsible and downright dangerous. Expect a lot of criticism especially if you're 'mum' but be mindful that what is written on paper isn't always what people really think.

So health and criminal justice grounds then

Which is very different to seeking secure orders for children who dont have (which appears to be the case here) a MH, treatable diagnosed condition and/or a criminal justice provision to direct accommodation.

There is huge resistance to that, and when seeking for CAMHS to complege MHA assessments and then to follow on to detainment there again is a lot of resistance as I said earlier (or might have been a different thread, cant remember) to keep ND children/people out of hospital and away from secure and detainment. Its considered harmful to them

Yeah the pp is mixing apples with oranges. The MH route and the secure welfare route are completely separate. You don't get 'downgraded' to a secure children's home from a medium secure MH placement. The latter is more secure than the former and they're not on the same route.

I say this with a sad heart, but you are much, much more likely to get a bed at at secure children's home for a 14 year old female victim of a grooming gang than you are a 17 year old male with such a significant risk of violence. SCHs charge serious money and they decide who they take. It's easier money housing the former than the latter. And if they're already housing the former, they could argue that it would be negligent to accept the latter.

And believe me, the fact that the girls are locked up rather than the perpetrators is not lost on the girls.

As I said earlier, even with the order, the likelihood of getting a placement would be slim.

‘It is not prevents remit to address risk of other violence.’

It is. Prevent ignored the non-terrorist bit of their remit three times. Their remit specifically covers one-off haters.

Enquiry shows that officers couldn’t decide whether AR fitted into Isis or the white supremacists (really) so they said he probably didn’t (you don’t say) and let him go.

Three times.

Prevent was set up to address all risks of all lone youth violence including misogyny, religion, racism, and the rest - including one-off ‘no ideology but hate’ cases.

Prevent failed. They failed bad.

This is really interesting as it gives you a real insight into everything. Am I right in thinking that the lead agency should have been children's social care (people always say it is) or is it not as straightforward as that in this case? Why wasn't he on a child protection plan - or was he?

So do we get another round of finger pointing or real change? It seems to me we have far to liberal in this case and groups were focusing on mental health and autism rather than a real threat to life. Before in the months ahead everyone gets to wash their hands and avoid blame is this an opportunity to look at how accountability can be delivered including for the parents of AR? Do the parents of the victims have to sit through months of tortuous evidence without not a single individual being held accountbale; is this what they wished?

"It is. Prevent ignored the non-terrorist bit of their remit three times"

But the attack wasn't terrorist related? It wasn't promoting a particular idealogy?

The kid was a psychopath obsessed with violence? Camhs had seen him less then a week before and decided he was not a danger....

You are absolutely bang on and I suspect have, like me, waited in vain for a non existent offer from a SCH across the secure estate for many young people like this.

I don't know. The parents behaved extraordinarily recklessly, no doubt about that one, although that's very complex. Professionals acted in good faith. Can't blame services that are so under resourced that there's nothing to provide. The public won't fight for and fund this though even though everyone says they want change. Aren't they recommending some law change whereby parents will have to report? I'm guessing that's complicated too. It's complex.

Sorry, that was to @mids2019

The parents have said they want accountability. If we don't see anyone losing their jobs (and more than one person, and managers) I would fully expect more riots.

These three children cannot have died and nothing happen except reports. What kind of society do we live in if that happens?

I think the issue is that professionals' decisions were individually defensible and it'll just mean that professionals might start making defensive decisions which could just make the system worse. Plus it'll increase pressure on an already fragile system and add a lot of extra stress to overworked people. Which will lead to more turnover of people.

People need to push for more resources to avoid burn out and increase retention of professionals already in the system rather than adding to workload and stress.

@womendeserveequalhumanrights We live in a society that respects the law. It’s very easy to call for heads to roll, but which ones? These tragedies are always the fault of professionals working in isolation from others. If they put their concerns and evidence together, they might have readily seen the danger approaching. However where people are passed from one service to another they fall between the cracks. Even if the parents had spoken up, one wonders who would have taken ARs liberty away and for what reason? Scaring your mum? Collecting knives?

My feeling is that some dc need to be followed closely in terms of attitude, mental health and behaviour. AR didn’t fit the criteria for radicalization so he wasn’t firmly on the radar. We need to tighten up criteria for checking up on people.

I think it's increasingly likely we will have a change in law though how it will be framed will be a matter of debate. In the US parents were jailed for giving a mentally unstable teenager a fun which he used in a school shooting and such criminal action does in extreme circumstances seem just.

The much more complex area is where long term sub standard parenting leads to a criminal child. I am sure most offenders have less than perfect child hoods with deficient parents who will never face sanction yet we need to accept the truth that shi t parenting leads to deviant offspring.

There was an article about this in The Guardian yesterday and the journalist mentions that one in five domestic murders of women involve their sons, not their partners. This is horrific - so many families living with these angry young men.