The Southport murderer was known by services that failed – as former social worker warns of ‘holes in the system’ | UK News

When police arrived at the horror of Southport last summer, the teenager who held the knife was one they had been called many times before.

Since he was 13, Axel Rudakuban had been on the radar of police, security services, mental health teams and prevents, the anti -terror program.

His occupation of mass murder was known. The risk he was constituted was ready.

Still, there was nothing that stops him Go to a dance class, murder Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, Bebe King, six, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, and try to murder many more.

The Schedule of contact with the authorities reveals that Rudakubana had not slipped through the net – he was in the system. It failed.

The Public study that will now take place Must investigate why.

‘Limited opportunities for social workers’

Dr. Ciaran Murphy, a former social worker and member of the Association of Child Protection Professionals, believes that services designed to protect children now face several cases where children themselves are risk.

“It’s an area where we need to develop,” he said. “There is an increasing occurrence of referrals where parents are afraid of their children in terms of violence and mental health.”

He said the opportunities for social workers are limited. “You would still think about the child protection plan, you would still think of a strategy meeting,” he said. “But in the end, social workers can’t detain children.

“The obvious answers are communication with multiple bodies, working with multiple bodies, especially with the police and programs as Prevent. But when you do, you start to see some of the holes in the system.”

“In extreme cases, they can apply for a secure order for a child where a child is placed in a safe residence,” explained Dr. Murphy, but he said they are “very difficult to get, partly because it is so expensive and partly because it is so drakonic”.

The regulations must be given by the family courts and apply only to children under the age of 16.

Rudakubana’s more contact with police

Police were first alerted to Rudakubana when he brought a knife to school in 2019. It led to his exclusion and references to Multi -agecy Safeguarding Hub (MASH) and Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (Camhs).

But he returned to school months later with a knife in his bag and attacked a student with a hockey stake. He pleaded guilty to assault, and a youth hearing was sentenced.

Between 2019 and 2021 he was referred three times to Prevent. The first referral was for examination of school shootings during an IT time. Another referral was made when a teacher found out he had read about the terrorist attack on the London Bridge. However, he was not considered to be a terrorist risk.

Between 2019 and 2023 he received mental health care with Age Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust, but “stopped engaging” in February of that year.

By 2021, Rudabukana was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. Later that year, after reports of incidents at home, he stopped going to school.

In 2022, his mother reported him missing and police found him on a bus with a knife. The officers were called by the driver because he refused to pay. He was returned home and his mother got advice on how to secure knives.

Four of the calls to the police about him in the years before the assault were made by his own parents.

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“They often do not fit into a particular box”

Dr. Duncan Harding, an adviser to forensic psychiatrists for young people, said “A case like this one just highlights how systems should be made as robust as possible, to try to pick up people who may be acting in a lonely way with extreme ideologies. Maybe not ideologies .

“Working with young people who present themselves with perhaps mental health problems, maybe neurodiversity, criminal behavior. I have worked with many young people who fit into that category and they often do not fit into any particular box. What can it mean. is that they may fall under the threshold of a particular service. ”

He added: “I think when something terrible happens when something totally terrible happens that shakes society this way, we have to look at the systems, we need to look at things like thresholds.”

There is a consensus that more should have been done to stop Rudakubana.

Finding the cracks in a system that failed becomes the task of the public study.