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

Do you have any experience dealing with angry young people like this? Sorry, but what you are suggesting as a credible solution is preposterous. It assumes cause and effect thinking for starters. Then, if the WiFi is removed that is a serious escalation which is likely to trigger huge violence.

Instead we need proper services to deal with people who represent a serious danger.

If he laid a finger on his son he would be in very serious trouble with police and social services.

Theres another thread about this about the ND factor within this and time and time again, threads pop up about managing a violent aggressive bullying child, who also happens to have ND

Time again, when posters point out that the child is in control and shouldnt have control, they are shouted down that either ODD or PDA profiles mean you cant use a concept like 'the child being in control' and the child feeling out of control is what is leading to their behaviour. BS

Not to mention the idea of the child 'feeling safe' and therefore thats why you see their worst behaviour. No, the child is behaving that way because they want to be aggressive and violent, is not because they were masking all day or because this is their safe space.

So this child was in control of the household and probably would hvae been explained away, the way it is so often on this site.

I can see the constant concerned Guardian articles about this now, children locked up who havent committed any crime. Sad face articles about how their childhood and freedom have been taken from them.

No sad face articles about their victims of course.

We used to have a robust justice system but in the last twenty years things have swung too drastically away from that. I can understand why because the 80s and 90s highlighted many miscarriages of justice.

But, our society needs to recognise that it's impossible to rehabilitate some people - they will always present a danger to other people. They need to be humanely confined to prevent them from harming the rest of us.

Our justice system has swung too far away from severe punishment towards postmodernism-influenced impracticality. As a society, we're basically too feeble when it comes to dealing with anti-social behaviour, we're always looking for a hard luck story when it comes to explaining why criminals commit crime. We've completely forgotten the fact that some people are just nasty or evil and there's no justification for their behaviour. Our justice system acts more like social workers than as an effective police and court system.

People need to know about the existence of, or to experience, sufficiently strict consequences for negative behaviour if we want to affect change in anti-social behaviour and our civic society leaders seem to have forgotten this fact.

Agree with every word except 'everyone' is to blame. The schools weren't. Time after time we have cases where schools try and raise the alarm, whether about radicalisation or a child being abused or neglected, and they're fobbed off. Schools have an impossible job trying to keep everyone safe with no backup.

Trust me, there are lots of establishments where a youth offender can be securely held, or someone with his history. No one had the balls to put this into motion though.
in addition, lots of children with ASD are also placed in secure units.

I have taught many children from war torn countries, including Rwanda. The vast majority would never behave in this way despite their trauma.
This was someone who had a lot of factors that influenced his actions, but whose parents were wholly ineffective in managing their son.

Very dangerous to try to 'control' an autistic child with very high levels of anxiety - whether you call that PDA or ODD or just high anxiety. It just increases their need for control and puts everyone at risk really. It's pick your battles, one thing at a time, reduce demands as much as possible. Also what's causing the anxiety? Demands? The environment?

Saying just take control off a child is far too simplistic as this can be very risky.

‘I read the inquiry transcripts, it's much worse than what's reported in the media...’

Yep. Parents enabled the killings and lied and lied and obstructed AR getting help - then lied and obstructed in court.

‘Saying just take control off a child is far too simplistic as this can be very risky.’

The child still has autism if you allow violent behaviour to himself or others. If you don’t, the adult will still be autistic, but might not be violent.

The higher the risk, the higher the control. Safety trumps other rights.

But there are some behaviours which are unacceptable regardless of what diagnosis and individual has. If you're talking about them having melt downs or stimming then, sure, allow them control of that as at the end of the day it's not hurting anyone. But if someone is stockpiling weapons and planning violent attacks then, yeah, you're gonna want to take control away from them pdq.

“I was frightened of what he might do to me if I didn’t let him have the knife, so I let him have the knife”
This isn’t the get out clause the parents think it is.

There were plenty of opportunities for services to step in for a very long time. We cannot just blame the parents. It's much more complex than that.

And the risk of not doing this? Try that argument with the parents of 3 young girls he murdered and all the others he tried to murder.

While you might consider which demands to put on a demand-avoidant child very carefully, one of the non-negotiable, consistently applied boundaries needs to be not hurting others.

It's not solely their fault but, at the end of the day, they are the ones who watched their son walk off to commit this massacre and they did nothing. He had told them he was going to do something like this, he had stockpiled weapons and then he left the house for the first time in years. And they thought he was just going for a walk? Please. Fair enough if they didn't want to tackle him themselves but a reasonable person would at least have called the police.

Not allowing your son a holdall full of weapons is not "laying a finger" on him.

Seriously, there are threads and threads about VAWG and demanding that men step up and take responsibility. How father's need to teach their sons properly.

Here it is a father's responsibility to keep his son in check, and people are saying that it isn't this man's responsibility!

Any boundaries have got to be put in very safely and in a way that doesn't increase violence. By reducing the child's anxiety behaviours will reduce - whether this is changing the environment, reducing demands on the child etc. This is when boundaries can be put in place. It's not acceptable to expect a family to implement any strategy that might put them at risk and in this case did lead to escalation. AR should not have been living with his family, they did not have the expertise or support to manage his level of need.

Where should he have been living and did the parents want him to go there?

I've also been thinking about what it does to us to live with the level of fear AR's parents were experiencing. Many of us have lived with an abusive, dangerous male.

I agree with this. Although the parents must take some responsibility for what happened, it must have been horrendous for them. We know that every year about 10 or 12 women are killed by their sons. Imagine how terrifying it is knowing that your child has a propensity to extreme violence.

If services weren't prepared to provide support at home & MH support plus respite and wouldn't admit him to a CAMHS bed then it's residential care. The situation wasn't improving, it went on for years, the family and others were at serious risk. This could have happened. It didn't.

If you read the report, towards the end AR going into care was suggested, even if for a temporary period. After that, the parents refused to allow SS into the house.

They could have forced a placement if they had really wanted to.

Agree. As far as I can tell the schools were the only ones who thought about the impact on other children and their right to be safe.

Schools must be allowed to exclude in order to keep other children safe. There is far too much pressure on them to fulfil the role of social care for the minority rather than focus on education of the majority.

Pretty much every organisation failed and the parents failed but the schools did not. However it's utterly ridiculous he brought a knife to school so many times before being excluded and why on earth was this also not a criminal charge? (I watched the statement from Sir Adrian Fulford and I think he said he took a knife to school TEN times). Absolute insanity that schools are expected to deal with this. Bring a knife to school one time should be permanent exclusion from that school with no chance of appeal. Apart from anything else, why on earth should teachers be expected to work in that environment?