Parents failed in 'moral duty' to report Southport killer

"Catastrophic" failures by the parents of the Southport killer and various agencies meant clear chances to prevent the 2024 dance class child murders were missed, a public inquiry has concluded.

Axel Rudakubana, 17, should have been detained before he walked into the Taylor Swift-themed dance workshop and stabbed three girls, inquiry chairman Sir Adrian Fulford found.

Sir Adrian said if his parents had done "what they morally ought to have done" and reported the suspicious behaviour he had displayed, he would not have been free on the day of the attack.

But a "merry-go-round of referrals, assessments, case-closures and hand-offs" meant no agency took the lead or understood the danger he posed.

Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and nine-year-old Alice da Silva Aguiar were killed in the attack while eight other children and two adults were severely wounded.

In a 760-page final report - following Phase One of the inquiry into how Rudakubana was able to carry out the attack - Sir Adrian called for the end of what he described as a "culture" of agencies passing responsibility between each other or downgrading their own involvement in cases like Rudakubana's.

He described it as the "single most important conclusion" of his report, adding: "This failure lies at the heart of why Rudakubana was able to mount the attack, despite so many warning signs of his capacity for fatal violence."

Those criticised included Lancashire Police, the government's counter-extremism service Prevent, various NHS mental health services, Lancashire County Council, elements if children's social care, youth offending services and a broader "multi-agency" approach.

Sir Adrian said: "Over a long period of time, Rudakubana had become an aggressive, near-total recluse, who bullied and threatened his family and unashamedly lied to officials."

The retired High Court judge singled out an attack Rudakubana carried out on a boy with a hockey stick at the Range High School in Formby in December 2019, a couple of months after he had been expelled for admitting carrying a knife, as a "watershed moment".

He said it proved "beyond doubt that Rudakubana was motivated by an ensuring desire to inflict severe harm on and possibly kill another pupil.

"Nothing occurred during the next five years to indicate that this level of danger had diminished."

The report also focused on another serious incident in March 2022, when the teenager was reported missing and found by Lancashire police officers on a bus with a knife.

Sir Adrian described that incident as the "most marked example of the consequences of poor information sharing".

He said: "Had the agencies involved in this episode had a remotely adequate understanding of Rudakubana's risk history, he would have been arrested on this occasion and in all probability his home would have been searched leading to police and other agencies gaining critical information about the ricin seeds he had bought and the terrorist material he had downloaded on his computer."

Instead, Rudakubana was simply taken back to his family home in Banks, West Lancashire, and no criminal action was taken.

There was stark criticism particularly for his father Alphonse Rudakubana, who Sir Adrian said had deliberately withheld information about his son amassing a stash of deadly weapons including the biological toxin ricin.

Sir Adrian said if the parents had reported their true level of knowledge to the authorities before the attack, the killer would "undoubtedly have been taken into care or held in custody".

He did accept that Rudakubana had made his mother and father's lives "a nightmare" and parenting him had been "challenging".

Speaking after the report's conclusions were made public, Sir Adrian said: "One of the most striking conclusions from this inquiry's extensive investigation is the sheer number of missed opportunities over many years to intervene meaningfully, which directly contributed to the failure to avert this disaster.

"Numerous systems that should have provided oversight, assessment and protection were ineffective or inadequately used. Some failed outright.

"The consequences were catastrophic."

The Phase One report came after months of evidence from police officers, medical professionals, social workers and teachers - as well as witnesses, survivors and parents of the children both killed and wounded.

The recommendations of the report call for a joined up approach with agencies able to share information more effectively.

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