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

If the child is in a place where violence isn't possible - a secure place with people trained to contain such violence safely - then it wouldn't be an issue.

This is clearly a case where AR should have been deprived of his liberty. His parents should have been clear about their difficulties and the fact they were scared of him says it all. It’s not acceptable to do nothing.

This man has been arrested and charged. He is 27 years old. Not a child. He was also known for many years to local youth workers working on schemes including knife crime/prevention. Those schemes obviously failed. No one knows what to do with these people or what works.

I agree with this. So many threads on here from parents who excuse away their children’s poor, violent, manipulative behaviour and allow them to spend their days online doing god knows what.

Well those little children become big adults, and if a child is able to manipulate and hurt its mother at the age of 5 then imagine what that child will grow up to be able to do to society at large?

I do blame the parents. I had a cousin who would happily sit there and tear the wings off flies and his parents did nothing. He is now in prison. These behaviours always escalate if they are not stopped.

It could still be an issue tbh if it's not done properly and with proper MH advice and support. I suspect there would be a risk of placement breakdown which could lead to ATU type placement (which would cost the NHS a fortune). It's all about money and no resources on the ground. It's systemic. Everyone has to protect their budget and resources, there's no joined up thinking or working. Services really struggle to coordinate with other services.

That's irrelevant to the point I'm making about how terrifying angry young men can be. I don't know what my sister in law would have done if he had done that. She had been trying to get help for him for years. Then when he turned 18 she asked him to leave - there are practically no options for housing single young men. No one offers any practical help. You are more or less on your own.

Yes no £££ but then a fortune spent on another public inquiry. If all the money spent on public inquiries after the fact were put in front line services they would be so much better resourced.

I'm saying that some children are beyond the parenting stage - that in these cases, the authorities need to step in and take over.

This family was in the system, only the system kept down playing the dangers and sending the boy home.

We need to accept that some children ARE dangerous - part of the problem herevis that some factors (his ethnicity, autism, lack of a mental health diagnosis, lack of an ideology) meant no one took that step and upgraded him to the serious level.

No matter what he did, he was sent back home.

Being beyond parental control is a well established concept in social care. It comes about for various reasons.

The various authorities he kept being referred to should have understood this and taken him into some kind of expert service.

Either we accept that some young people need this level of support and put the support in place, or we take the view that all children must stay at home and we will leave it to their parents, regardless of how challenging they are or how effective the parents are.

I want us to have the former.

Society needs to be kept safe.

We don't need any more dead kids.

We shouldn't have any more dead kids.

Kids shouldn't kill kids.

Society needs to be kept safe.

It was a failure of institutions and parents - as found in this inquiry.

One thing that would save £££ that there is always claimed there isn't enough of would be no appeals for exclusions for bringing weapons into school. For some things we need to take a hard line as a society, to prevent what happened to Alice, Elsie and Bebe ever happening again.

My thoughts are with their families and the other families affected and I hope they manage to hold some people accountable now this inquiry has found he should have been stopped and there were opportunities to do so. Whilst I am sure they already really knew that their children should not have died, it must be hard nevertheless to hear this conclusion and I will do all I can to support them in their fight for justice.

Insane he was allowed into school 10 times with a knife. Insane when stopped by police for having a knife on a bus he was allowed home. This is not the sign of a decent society.

It’s completely relevant to the point. It’s a demonstration of escalating behaviour. And I’m sorry but I would not have walked on eggshells around him. Sometimes these “angry young men” need to face some consequences for their actions. Maybe they need to witness the fury of others for a change?

A lot of times the men who supposedly have mental health or whatever other issues that we're supposed to give a shit about are sane and competent enough to know which are the weaker humans to target, killing women and girls and not aiming for the big muscly men who would have a decent chance of fighting back and doing as much damage to them as they hope to inflict on others.

And it's about time the police recognise that a young man like this being allowed to walk free so many times is a death sentence to women and girls. When he was spoken to by police for having a knife on a bus he should have been arrested which then would have allowed the police to search his room where they would have found ricin, many weapons and a terrorist manual - reason for several charges. And those girls would not have died.

So basically you're saying that I can have a child, teach him to be violent and resent the world, and then walk away and blame the state for what he's become?

The most basic thing I would demand of a child is to not murder other children.

That's not what I said.

Some children are just incredibly challenging.

I have two adopted children and am part of the adopter community. Research shows that about a third of adoptions in the UK end up with the children going back into care or the family living in absolute terror - and i know some of these families.

And that's also how I know how difficult it is to get help.

My nephew has severe mental health problems btw. He has been sectioned twice.

My point is that some children are not manageable at home and they need specialist care. I think that's generally accepted - the issue then is the threshold for getting this care.

If we keep expecting parents to manage these young men, we will continue to have serious incidents.

Do you have experience of successfully turning around a mentally ill young man?

What are your credentials in this field? This boy had myriad professionals trying to support the family - many who had a wealth of experience in managing children with significant mental health illnesses. It made not a jot of difference to his victims.

Well you clearly do not.

Exactly. These failures are appalling. We need answers as a society. So many agencies were involved here. So many collective years of experience. So much allocation of tax money. And absolutely nothing was achieved. It started with parental failure and ended with professional failure.

Because people are scared. Scared of being seen to be racist. Scared of being seen to ableist. Scared to be accused of Islamophobia. Being frightened leads to total impotence and the reason these cases get passed back and forth is that no one wants to actually deal with it nor be responsible for it.

Absolutely this! This is not about mental illness. It’s about violence and manipulation. Why did he target those little girls? Why not storm into say a gym or a shop or a restaurant? Because he knew the girls couldn’t fight back. They know exactly what they’re doing and exactly who to target. How many of these “mentally ill” men kill their fathers? Because the rate at which they’re killing their mothers is exploding.

What makes you think the police would search his room after being arrested (not that he would have been) for having a knife?

The reality is, the systems around us in society do not support young people being criminalised, I dont think he would be locked up as people keep claiming he would be

Someone made the point earlier about 'specialist care' or secure settings. Firstly, again, all the advice given to professionals is not to try to contain children who are ND, that it is counter productive, so if a LA got as far as saying they would accommodate him, a wealth of evidence is needed to demonstrate that he would not be damaged by being essentially locked up in secure, when he has not committed a crime (or not enough of one thats any different to many of his peers). They are short term placements in any case, a few months if you;re lucky

That is assuming he would be offered a placement, its likely he would be seen as too high risk and/or cannot progress, ie they cannot work with him to change him considerably. His issues were internally based, not exploitation or contextual. Often young people like that do not get offered placements

The idea of 'specialist care' doesnt really exist, its simply residential care with lots of staff who may or may not be able to restrain him if a court agrees a DOLs, but again, its only a short term order and is often seen as harmful to children who are ND so the courts/Guardians not keen to support.

We really need to be honest with ourselves about what we want as a society, no appetite it seems for essentially restraining or witholding someones freedom if they havent committed crime, lots of concern about 'controlling' children who may be ODD/PDA, yet alternatively concern that he wasnt restrained or controlled enough.

When people talk about non negotiable boundaries around hurting people or murdering people, it doesnt start with that does it, it starts with him probably kicking off at home, spending hours online, so the parent who wants to 'pick their battles' may say 'well Im not going to control the hours on the internet because thats not a non negotiable' but what it leads to is the build up of rage and anger.

The people in society don’t want to be killed or have their loved ones killed. The government that oversees society has decided that a certain amount of death through collateral damage is acceptable.

Nope, people vote governments in for what they want. The narrative driving public policy, social policy in the last 40 years or so has moved, as others have said, away from the collective and toward prioritising the individual. So the individual mustnt be inconvenienced or disadvantaged even if, as you say, the rest of us are collateral.

The narrative driving the practice around working with challenging behaviour is that boundaries, punishment, consequences etc are all dirty words.

This boy murdered, but there are plenty of kids exactly like him who just by chance, by luck for the rest of us arent motivated to go quite that far, or arent organised enough to go quite that far, but they are stil roaming around harming others, beating up their family members.

Conversely actually one of the reasons it wouldnt have been very likely that he would have been made subject to a DOLs order or secure order would have been because he wasnt out roaming around very much, he was pretty much reclusive.

I find it astonishing how little the mother features. usually the media would be all over it blaming the mother on everything.