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

You're talking about being a woman and living with an abusive man. The situation here is that there is a father, who is a Judo instructor (used to physically fighting other people), who may have fought in a civil war, but apparently unable to do anything about his physically unimposing (when compared to him) son.

In the UK they get a new house, identity and police protection.

Inquiry chairman Sir Adrian Fulford called for the end of what he described as a "culture" of agencies passing responsibility between each other or downgrading their own involvement in such cases.

"Failings were from [the attacker's] parental failures and also the individual state failures," Walker said.
"All of those agencies, the performance of those agencies, failed to a totally unacceptable level.

Britain generally in 2026.

No one takes responsibility. It's always someone else's. There's total massive institutional failure across the board cos no one gives a fuck.

I think that's a very basic and naive reading of both the situation in that house and abuse dynamics.

I also think 'may have fought in a civil war' is a somewhat misleading description of the experience of an 18 year old Tutsi man during the Rwandan genocide.

And to suggest that being a judo instructor means someone will be immune from fear of a disturbed person is really quite astonishing.

It's only one factor which was involved in the lead-up to this horrendous crime, but it has to be called out:
under 16s having 24/7 access to the internet, usually via smartphones.

The Chair of the Enquiry spoke of AR being steeped in misogyny and violence from the websites AR was spending so much time on. Given his age at the time of the murders, he probably had 24/7 unsupervised online access from an early age.

Over half of under-13s had access to social media in 2024, according to Ofcom
Ofcom: Almost a quarter of kids aged 5-7 have smartphones
and that means access to everything on SM, including profoundly disturbing videos, extreme ideology, violent pornography, live-streaming of murders etc.

The two 13-year old boys who sexually assaulted and murdered a 14-year old girl from their school in Dublin in 2018 were found to have been 'consuming' violent porn on their phones. Yes, aged 13, they were already into violent porn. Their parents, of course, hadn't a clue and presumably gave them smartphones because all the kids have them, it's just how they keep in touch these days...

Even if a child is not influenced to copy it as those two boys and AR were, children are viewing material that is beyond their understanding and traumatically disturbing for them.

By the time he was 17, AR was already a threat to his family and had been so thoroughly immersed in violence and misogyny that he carefully plotted and carried out this horrendous murder of little girls.

His unsupervised online life is a warning of what the dark corners of the online world can do to an already disturbed young mind.

I’m a mental health nurse. Everyone ‘gives a fuck’. Most agencies are working at the very edge of their capacities and staffing. The issue is, that there is enormous tension between the role that services have in helping people and the role that they have in monitoring people and locking them up if they behave in a way that society considers deviant. Most people don’t want the state to be able to arbitrarily detain them without very strong evidence-and this is reflected in changes to the Mental Health Act (2025), for example, but then you end up with situations like this tragic case. The law does not let you let put people in prison or hospital indefinitely, just in case, and nor would we want it to.

I think they thought that the main aim was to keep him stable, as then he wouldn't escalate and do something. My nephew was really quite scary as a young man. We all walked on egg shells around him. It's easy to say they could have done this or that but the idea the dad wasn't scared of him....the fury these young men can unleash at the drop of a hat is utterly terrifying to most people. And if dad had laid a finger on him, chances are he would have been charged, given a criminal record, forced to leave the house by the nice professionals working with the son, leaving his mother to deal with him on her own. Fact is, families are in a very dangerous situation with these volatile, angry young men.

As a society I think there's a massive problem in how we deal with violent, mentally unstable individuals. (When I say "individuals", we're mostly talking about men.) We no longer lock them up in mental institutions. We let them live in the community and ask them to take their medication - but, apparently, in the Valdo Calocane case, where he refused to take his medication, it was felt that nothing could be done.

There seems to be a fear of going back to a situation of cruel Victorian institutions where people were locked up for life for 'crimes' such as homosexuality or pregnancy out of wedlock.

It is - surely - possible to recognise that some people should be removed from society for their own and (more importantly) others' safety. That can be done humanely and with all appropriate legal oversight, but it still needs to be done. Care In The Community has been an enormous failure, and time and time again it has lead to people being killed by those who should long since have been kept safely away. Sometimes 'locking them up' is the help they need AND the least worst option for everyone else.

I agree with this. It will have been highly traumatising for them to live for years in an extreme situation, being told the issue was them and getting no useful support. For years. Devastating in fact. CAMHS won't help as they say it's autism, social care didn't step up as no money. A family expected to live in terror of AR but he's their child, they love him. Having to deal with an under resourced system at the same time as being met with no compassion. Not being listened to. And a family not being protected themselves from violence and treading on eggshells every day. Expected to put strategies in place that would only escalate the violence and being criticised when they don't even though it poses danger to themselves and their children. No doubt they were getting conflicting advice. They didn't have the expertise to look after him, he needed intensive and expert care. The family needed respite.

My solutions to have prevented these deliberate murders of 3 young girls:

If a child is found to be carrying a knife, police can search his bedroom / house. If they find evidence of buying weapons online, they can do repeat searches.

If a child has shown violent behaviours or threats, the government can stop internet access to their home. Tough for the parents, sure, but necessary. They can go to a library to access the internet, the child can go to school.

This latter one would have a beneficial knock on for many people in society who don't want to be forced to do everything online that companies would be forced to offer an alternative also. Including schools providing paper homework not online.

I'm sure there would be a lot of handwringing about both but frankly it's all bullshit compared to the lives of 3 young girls.

And more generally, the police start arresting for and prosecuting low level crime and not wait until it's escalated to murder (as they also did with Wayne Couzens). Stop policing free speech and start policing actual crimes.

I'm still not sure what could have been done, legally.

Would he have met the criteria for detention under the mental health act, or for a custodial sentence, prior to the Southport murders?

Could secure accommodation have been found - would there have been a legal framework for detaining him there?

I watched the inquiry. All of it! I had a very long project to complete so had it in the background.

Everyone is to blame. The police, MH services. But yes also it was the parents. And ultimately they were the ones who knew he had purchased and stock piled weapons the week prior. So it was the parents. I know it’s hard to get someone sectioned but it is possible if you don’t let it go. And they did. They gave up.

Can the victims families bring civil actions against the parents or the authorities that failed? Because as PPs have said the total lack of accountability and the ability to just wash your hands and walk away in this country is a big part of the problem.

And in terms of authorities, what we need is people losing their jobs. Not some compensation (nothing can compensate for a child's life) because public bodies have bottomless pockets paid for by everyone they're letting down.

@StellaAndCrow Not under the Mental Health Act, no. The MHA requires a treatable mental health condition for detention to be legal.

I can absolutely guarantee you that had this boy at 17 been made subject to a welfare order, not a single secure unit in the country would take him, because the risk he'd pose to the other young people in the unit would be too great.

You would not believe how many teenage males are made subject to welfare orders by courts, who are recognised as posing significant risk to the public, who then don't get placed because their risk is too high!

It's a huge problem and there is an unwillingness of our politicians to recognise and address it.

He could have been given a secure welfare order under section 25 of the Children Act.

But as above, there is no obligation for any secure children's home to take him and I seriously doubt any would.

My suggestions of stopping internet for such a person and also allowing police to regularly search their home for weapons once they are found with an illegal weapon the first time would go quite far to stop such young men following through and / or posing such a high risk.

Perhaps alongside some compulsory voluntary service (somewhere away from girls and alongside decent men who can become better role models than the internet).

Of course, in a sane world he could also have been charged and sentenced to custody for carrying a knife, but the government just brought in more legislation to encourage non-court, community disposals for that too, so...

Nope. It is his responsibility as a father to keep his son in check. The man is literally paid to fight other men, but apparently it's "astonishing" to think that he would be fearful of his son. So fearful he allowed him to keep a holdall of hunting knives and arrows in the living room.

So your nephew is a scary young man, did his parents allow him to buy hunting knifes, arrows and poison and then keep them in the living room?

I like this idea but we'd have to move to China to have this level of state discipline and punishment or shall we call it robust management of unsavoury characters.

as no £££

I agree but, you know, human rights 🤐

A crime was also being committed when he was waving a knife around on a bus and threatening to kill people, when he was attacking other kids at school with a hockey stick, and all the other times the police were called and nothing was done.

And what would that thing be, that could or should have been done?