Picture Shows: Scenes of Crime Officers searching for evidence following the Southport Atrocity.
It is clear even from a cursory glance at the reporting of the inquiry into the Southport Atrocity that a multitude of state agencies failed including the police, child and adolescent mental health services, education providers and children’s services. They messed up and their messing up whether for reasons of DEI obsessions within agencies or lack of resources or whatever directly led to the deaths of three young girls at a Taylor Swift themed dance event and serious injuries to many others.
Talking to those in my circle and other contacts who have had to have dealings with children’s services and child and young peoples mental health providers, it’s fair to say that although these entities may have good people working within them, provision for mentally ill children and young people is woefully bad in the United Kingdom. Cases that should be dealt with as early as possible get forgotten until something terrible happens and a child or a young person injures themselves or others. If mental health provision is the ‘Cinderella’ section of the National Heath Service (NHS) then children’s mental health provision is even more so. It is the lowest of the low when it comes to health service provision priorities it seems and parents are often just dumped by the services that should help them and left to deal with a mentally ill child on their own too often with zero support. As a nation we need to be doing much better with mental healthcare provision for children and young people.
What we have with regards to how the perpetrator of the Southport Atrocity is a Swiss Cheese situation where all the holes lined up which meant that multiple chances to get this man into a secure hospital in good time were missed and this, as we know, led to disaster and the deaths of three children.
Whilst the agencies that dealt with the perpetrator prior to the have obviously failed to act in a proper manner and in a timely way we can’t forget the perpetrator’s parents in all this. They misled those agencies that could have intervened and maybe got the perpetrator into a secure hospital before he could do harm.
Someone on X, a person who describes themselves as an ex-police officer has written a brilliant series of posts that lay a great deal of blame for the Southport Atrocity on the perpetrator’s parents. I have, or reasons of clarity and because I was impressed with the article, pasted it in its entirety below. The amount of information that the parents held back from the authorities, information that could have prevented the Southport Atrocity is absolutely astounding. There were multiple chances for these parents to go to the authorities and tell them what was happening with their son. When the parents found Ricin in their child’s room, when the child was ordering knives, when the child was consuming odd and violent written and other material. Any or all of these things might have been the red flag that got the appropriate authorities off of their backsides and get the perpetrator into a secure mental hospital. They didn’t do that. They suppressed relevant information even though we can now see how that information if it had been supplied by the parents might have made a great deal of difference.
I find myself in agreement with much of what this person, who goes by the name of Donna-Louise @NoLongerTheFuzz , when it comes to the perpetrator’s parents. They did withhold information that could have stopped their son from committing a triple murder and cause multiple serious injuries. There are indeed a lot of questions that need to be asked about how and why this family were given asylum in Britain in the first place and I agree with Donna-Louise that because of the gravity of the perpetrator’s offences and the failure of his family to deal honestly with mental health and other services that their right to remain needs to be looked at again.
About the only thing that I disagree with in Donna-Louise’s piece is her call for it to be an offence for a parent not to report to the police their child’s offending. Whilst it is reasonable that a parent should report serious criminality is it also reasonable that a parent should report their teenager for experimenting with alcohol or expressing unorthodox opinions (something that can be a crime in the UK) or minor shoplifting, if these matters can be dealt with successfully by not involving the criminal justice system? Personally I don’t think it is. Better to ground a teenager or take away privileges for getting drunk or doing stupid stuff than go to the police in some cases. What might be reasonable when its serious crime might be less reasonable for minor stuff or stuff that shouldn’t generally be criminalised such as opinions or words. Do you really want parents to be compelled to report their teenagers to the police because they uttered an opinion that some might not like as this is where such a law could lead to especially if there was a government that was hostile to freedom of speech? Also I doubt that any law compelling parents to grass on their kids will be much of a deterrent for gangster families or families where there is multi-generational criminality, they’ll just shrug this off as for them the unwritten rule of not grassing on those who are blood relatives is far more strong for them than the law. For obvious cases where there is collusion between parent and child with regards to criminality there are various conspiracy laws that could encompass such behaviour as well as laws pertaining to perverting the course of justice. Maybe it’s not new laws that are needed but the enforcement of existing ones?
As I said earlier, there were key people and agencies who failed to stop the Southport Atrocity and they failed in lesser and greater ways but they all failed. But their failure might have had less impact had the family of the perpetrator realised that what their son was doing was not going to end well. If there is any great irony in this story it is that the parents tried to protect their child from the authorities with the result of their ‘protection’ being that he’s now doing a 52 year stretch and is unlikely to ever be released. It would have been better all round if the parents had realised that they were out of their depth because their son’s mental illness was so extreme and not hidden key facts from social workers, educators, police and other agencies.
Here’s Donna-Louise’s piece about the family at the centre of the Southport Atrocity. This is a multi-post thread from X hence the formatting.
Today the Southport Inquiry published its findings.
I’m not talking about the agencies right now.
I’m talking about his parents.
Because somebody fucking has to.
I’m a former detective. 21 yrs in the force, I know what I’m looking at
I’m already seeing it.
“Oh but it must have been SO hard for them.”
“They were in an IMPOSSIBLE position.”
“What were they SUPPOSED to do?”
I’ll tell you what they were supposed to do.
Their job as parents.
That’s fucking what.
His parents knew he had RICIN in his bedroom.
A biological toxin. 6,000 times more poisonous than cyanide. Al quad-a manual.
They knew about the knives. The machete they PERSONALLY signed for. Bows and arrows.
A small arsenal.
IN. THEIR. HOUSE.
And they reported NONE of it.
A week before Southport he tried to leave the house to attack his old school.
His dad stopped him. ✋
Good.
Then did absolutely FUCK ALL else.
Didn’t call the police.
Didn’t tell a single agency.
Just texted his wife:
“Our child needs to be protected.”
Not THOSE children. His.
The day of the attack they watched him leave.
SAME outfit as the week before.
SAME weapon.
SAME direction.
They saw the empty knife packaging on the way out.
AND THEY DID NOTHING.
Nothing.
Yes. The agencies failed. Over years.
I’m not dismissing that.
But EVERY single agency that failed – failed on INCOMPLETE information.
Information this father was DELIBERATELY withholding from them.
The father knew. In real time. And said nothing.
That is NOT the same thing.
Nobody takes responsibility in this country anymore.
NOBODY.
Always someone else’s fault.
Always someone else’s job.
Always someone else’s problem.
Those three little girls were EVERYBODY’S problem.
And nobody acted like it.
Least of all their killer’s parents
He didn’t just stay silent.
He ACTIVELY blocked a safeguarding report from reaching the youth offending team.
He WITHHELD information about weapons from mental health services.
He wasn’t a frightened father fumbling in the dark.
He was interfering. Deliberately. Repeatedly.
To everyone saying “imagine how hard it was for THEM”
I want you to imagine something else.
Imagine it was YOUR daughter in that dance class.
YOUR six year old.
YOUR seven year old.
YOUR nine year old.
Still feeling sorry for them?
This family came to this country from Rwanda.
How and why they were approved to be here has NEVER been properly explained.
This country gave them everything – housing, schools, police, social workers, mental health services.
And the father sat on information that would have saved three little girls’ lives.
The inquiry chair said it was “almost certain” the attack would have been prevented if the parents had spoken up in that final week.
ALMOST CERTAIN.
Elsie. Bebe. Alice.
ALMOST CERTAINLY STILL HERE.
The CPS says the evidence doesn’t meet the threshold for charges.
He knew about the weapons ✅
He knew about the ricin ✅
He withheld all of it from agencies ✅
He interfered with safeguarding ✅
He watched his son walk out the door ✅
He did NOTHING ✅
Tell me again whose fault this isn’t.
Let me tell you about Section 38B of the Terrorism Act 2000.
This law exists for ONE reason.
To make it a criminal offence to stay silent when you know someone is planning terrorism.
Not a guideline. Not a suggestion.
A LAW.
Here’s exactly what it says.
If you have information you KNOW OR BELIEVE might help prevent an act of terrorism –
And you don’t tell the police –
YOU. HAVE. COMMITTED. A. CRIMINAL. OFFENCE.
Maximum sentence: 10 years.
His son was convicted under the Terrorism Act.
For possessing an al-Qaeda training manual.
If it was terrorism enough to convict the SON –
How is it not terrorism enough to charge the FATHER for knowing and saying NOTHING?
Someone answer that. I’ll wait.
This law has been used before.
A woman knew her husband was planning terrorism.
She said nothing.
She was convicted.
So somebody explain to me –
With a STRAIGHT FACE –
Why this father is any different.
In the aftermath of the attack this family were moved to a secure location.
At taxpayer expense.
How much has that cost?
We don’t know. Nobody will tell us.
Whether the arrangement is still ongoing – we don’t know that either.
That information hasn’t been made public.
Which is itself a question worth asking.
There is no law that compels a parent to report their child to police.
There SHOULD be.
Because when you’ve seen the arsenal –
Signed for the machete –
Watched him try to leave armed the week before –
And you STILL say nothing –
That is not helplessness.
That is a CHOICE.
And choices have consequences.
When a family comes to this country and a parent shields a child who is building a BIOLOGICAL WEAPON and stockpiling knives –
From every agency trying to intervene –
The question of whether they have any right to remain here needs to be asked.
Loudly. Now. WITHOUT APOLOGY.
Today’s report made 67 recommendations.
Not ONE of them is about holding the parents to account.
Not. One.
Elsie Dot Stancombe. 7 years old.
Bebe King. 6 years old.
Alice da Silva Aguiar. 9 years old.
Three little girls who deserved better from every adult in their killer’s life.
EVERY. SINGLE. ONE.
Say their names. Don’t let this get buried.
RT if you think the parents must face consequences.
They have blood on their hands.