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

I would also like to add that it's tough on professionals too. They would have loved to have been able to help AR's family.

Except the one who accused the school of being racist. She was just hoping for some woke points.

THIS

They're not all hard working and hard done by. Some of them are incompetent fools some of them are actively pushing their own pet ideologies to the cost of not doing their job properly.

And the fact that these people aren't facing disciplinary action and there's no accountability makes the good professionals' jobs harder.

You just need to look at the number of threads on here from parents who are “unable” to get their (usually male) children to stop gaming and rotting away in their bedrooms. The idea that my parents would have ever allowed me to behave like that is laughable. It’s lazy parenting, pure and simple. It’s just kicking the can down the road to allow bad behaviour to escalate to the point that “the authorities” have to get involved, and then they can be blamed for lack of resources.

I just think that by that stage there was so much trauma and they were very scared of professionals. It's hard for professionals too - there are no winners in this.

Re respite there are places for weekends and PAs in a 2:1. Either way the family shouldn't have been expected to manage it largely by themselves. It's not a local issue but a systemic one.

I have a feeling this woman will be one of the ones publicly named by the families' lawyers if nothing is done to address her actions (or inactions) directly.

The biggest argument in our house (nothing else even comes close) is about screen time limits.

No it's not easy but it IS necessary.

And conversations like this remind me how important it is.

Wrt the father, you can’t judo your way out of being set on fire, or even being stabbed in your sleep.

Also, the parents can’t have been completely passive if he had this litany of referrals and EHCP reviews etc - managing that stuff (chasing it, arguing for it etc) is a part-time job by itself!

His father was obstructional, a liar and completely 9n denial about how dangerous his son was.

Exactly. It is completely unrealistic to expect the state to get involved at every point. Every thread I see about behaviour on this thread ends with (usually hundreds) of posters saying contact the school, CAMHS, the council, the GP etc etc etc. Even in a well-functioning society it would not be possible for the state to step in to do so much basic parenting, it’s just not feasible.

This is a systemic issue too. The whole system is geared away from a successful interception. From staff saying don’t stereotype to the police taking him back home with a knife smiling about what he’d do.

None of the systems prioritise safeguarding whoever eventually receives the obvious violent potential.

🎻

It goes back to what @likelysuspect says about the focus of agencies, including the police depressingly, being on AR's individual rights and needs and not on the risks he posed to others.

It's a rot - and a misogynistic rot usually - at the heart of most institutions. This is why you get one bloke destroying the rights of large numbers of nurses when he muscles his way into the women's changing room. The incredibly stupid (and discriminatory) focus is all about that one man not about all the women affected and the risks to and impacts on them.

I dread to think, though it would be useful to know (don't know if the inquiry looks at this) the amount of public money (including staff time and costs) spent on AR. Because I bet it was a lot and what good did it do. Sweet fa. I think it would be a useful exercise to consider whether that same amount of money would have been sufficient to house him a secure unit, with no internet or access to knives, for a period of time, staffed by qualified professionals, and whether that might have been a better use of public money delivering better safeguarding for everyone else.

You’re contradicting yourself. There can’t be ‘no services’ and yet your job is providing a service for YP.
There ARE services - the list of services involved in his life from around 12 years of age is long. We need to remember that AR is a total outlier thankfully. One whose needs cannot be managed within the services that are currently available. With any luck 🙄 the recommendations from this report will kick start service providers to get their shit together and genuinely collaborate.
Ultimately though, the whole mindset of waiting until there’s a problem before trying to access any professional support for a child who may be at risk of having a serious need is the wrong way round. Every school setting should have at least one full time member of staff who has appropriate qualifications to identify such children, support families and access agencies in a timely manner. The funding for that role shouldn’t come out of a school budget and the school itself shouldn’t be the employer.

Yes - he was going to therapy, trying to get education in place as education of course wasn't in place. Working on trying to get AR to eat and all the work that went into that. He actually did quite a lot. The more complex your child and the more services are involved the more work there is to do.

I just don't know why people constantly bring up the judo thing. He really would not have been allowed in any way, shape or form to use that.

I'm afraid a lot of the public sector seems to be involved in what is mostly a wordy, long-winded and costly exercise in blame avoidance rather than actually doing anything positive for society.

Especially around safeguarding. Take single sex toilets in schools. Unquestionably safer, unquestionably required under several laws, yet schools with mixed sex (by stealth, or not) toilets (and presumably associated higher levels of sexual harassment and assault - not least indecent exposure which is a crime - and I'd bet good money higher absence rates from the girls too ). Schools spending years sending word salad to parents who raise safeguarding concerns at a huge staff cost not to mention the cost of lawyers to support their pet project to get penises into girls changing rooms. It really shouldn't be for a child and her parent to bring a legal challenge on this. It's the law to provide single sex changing / toilets in schools over a certain age as well as an obvious and basic way of safeguarding children properly. Mixed sex changing rooms in a Brighton secondary school - part 3 - we're really cooking now | Mumsnet

Edited to add: funny how there's money in the school budget for fighting the law and redefining words whose definition has been clarified by the Supreme Court. It's not just underfunding (though that also exists) it's also misuse of existing funds. See also - paying unqualified outside activists for school resources. And schools are probably one of the most effective and more underfunded public organisations and in AR's case did the most to stop him. I'm just using this as a prominent example of a profligate waste of public money avoiding safeguarding duties.

Don't get me wrong- I would LOVE the state to help in some ways re tech. A smartphone or social media ban for U 16s for example. Peer pressure is immense so if everyone has the same rule to follow that really helps.

And cracking down on dangerous online content.

But when it comes to gaming etc, no it's not healthy to sit and do that all day, to the detriment of everything else.

And that's where parents must step in for their children's sake.

I suspect that part of the reason was that he had by that point normalised the behaviours (this happens - it really is a thing), his overriding instinct was to protect his child and completely underestimated the risk. Who knows? What led him to become obstructional? They clearly engaged or tried to for a long time. Had there been more trust between parents and services, respite in place would that have happened? We do not know.

Yep and women are always asked to look away. The few who receive the violence don’t worry about that we need to preserve the systems that make it more likely.

All sorts of backlash if you say put women and girls first.

100% and there's a lot of attempts to divide women and play on their socialisation to 'be kind'.

We always need to remember that being 'kind' to a violent male usually means a girl or woman will be harmed somewhere down the line and just perhaps our kindness should be focused there for once.

The issue I would have with a social media ban is that it would not go hand in hand with online safety education, so we would end up releasing 16 year olds into a world of social media they have never accessed before and therefore have built no knowledge or resilience on how to use it. The ban in itself would not solve the issue-again it would be kicking the can down the road.

Now a global social media ban for all? That’s a thinker.

I have wondered why most of the heat is on the Dad rather than the Mum. I can see the dad was obstructive and lied but there are examples of her being obstructive too. She equally seemed to want to keep him at home and I get the impression AR had a better relationship with her. He told his dad that if either of them would be leaving the house it would be him. She didn’t appear to do anything proactive to reduce AR’s risk or be transparent with services.

I think in practicalities she also worked nights so was out then and asleep most of the day so had less interaction with him

The Dad was fighting for support and complaining so this is quite possibly why. I don't know but I guess he was viewed as the primary person so gets the criticism. It's usually the other way round as it tends to be mothers who link in with services. Again I don't know what the relationship was between father and son but I suspect he was the one who tried to put boundaries in (wouldn't have wanted his wife hurt)

Agree with this though I'd argue reducing social media up to 18, with a very limited exposure from 16 to 18 alongside strong and compulsory education (not ideological) would be essential.

I'd love a global social media ban but too much money to be made from it.

There are part of social media that are overall good (MN if MN counts...) but the negatives definitely outweigh the positives.

Of course it's not just social media though, it's the internet. I doubt AR found his ricin manual on 'social media'.