Was it in public interest to cover up the terror links to the Southport stabbings?

I think it damages every child, in particular boys. Although maybe the damage to girls is just different.

Wyllow3

Sentencing is this morning.

This is the best article I've come across to date which gives details of all the contacts agencies did have before the incident. Stuff that hasn't come out before.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c78w7nlwz9po

He's been taken to hospital this morning.

Back again in the dock now.

Thanks Wyllow3 - he obviously had a MASH (Multi Agency Safeguarding Hub) referral so it's not as though "nothing was being done". His referrals to Prevent were not taken up because he didn't meet their criteria.
As he got older I expect he was also a bit "between services" and as he wasn't engaging with the mental health team that was a problem too.

He was a victim of bullying/racial abuse it seems - as well as a perpetrator.

Everyone has been let down here.

By saying "let down" I am not making light of the terrible actions he took.

Just wanted to make that clear!

And removed again.

You can follow it on
www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/czepl8406n8t

the prosecution did get a chance first to say "There is no evidence that he ascribed to any particular political or religious ideology - he wasn’t fighting for a cause" but pretty sick in all senses words.

Kate1949

That lovely little boy stabbed to death here in Birmingham yesterday wasn't in a gang or anything. He was, according to his classmates, sweet, kind, always attended lessons, never got into trouble. It seems it was a random attack. Poor kid.

Yes, that was truly shocking.

I think we've got to the stage where, whatever age the murderers, they should get whole life sentences.
There seems to be no deterrent any more.

NotSpaghetti

By saying "let down" I am not making light of the terrible actions he took.

Just wanted to make that clear!

Feel the same - in the article you can see how something built up - no excuses, reasons.

I've just read that five people have been stabbed near an Asda supermarket in London today.

And in Plymouth also last night, a woman was fatally stabbed in the street, and the perpetrator still at large.
I'm sick of the phrase "isolated incident" too. I get it's legal terminology, but it's wrong. These dreadful happenings are not uncommon anymore. They are neither rare, nor exceptional, they are happening everywhere. Surely they all have to be linked somehow in the bigger picture. Having people on a watch list and doing nothing about it, obviously doesn't help.

Kate1949

I've just read that five people have been stabbed near an Asda supermarket in London today.

Yes it was Asda in Croydon and SKY are reporting that someone has been arrested.

GrannyGravy13

Kate1949

I've just read that five people have been stabbed near an Asda supermarket in London today.

Yes it was Asda in Croydon and SKY are reporting that someone has been arrested.

It was a warehouse near to an Asda

escaped

And in Plymouth also last night, a woman was fatally stabbed in the street, and the perpetrator still at large.
I'm sick of the phrase "isolated incident" too. I get it's legal terminology, but it's wrong. These dreadful happenings are not uncommon anymore. They are neither rare, nor exceptional, they are happening everywhere. Surely they all have to be linked somehow in the bigger picture. Having people on a watch list and doing nothing about it, obviously doesn't help.

I agree stabbing appear to be on the increase.
When police refer to an isolated incident, I suspect they mean it is not mass murder, or a knife person on the rampage. It in no way suggests one isolated incident in the country

*Galaxy" You say that banning porn "wouldn't go down well with progressives". I am not sure what you mean by progressives, possibly people who are sometimes described as "woke". I think banning porn, online gambling adverts, the depiction of extreme violence, smart phones for under 16's, etc. would primarily not go down at all well with big business. It is the people who have derived great wealth from these industries who continue to object to bans, or even effective controls.

As to parents and carers being blamed for children accessing material that may be damaging to them, I think that is unfair and unrealistic. Of course, they should have some oversight of what their children are viewing, but, in my experience, children are really far more knowledgeable about these matters than their parents are. Often they know how to circumvent any measures intended to limit their viewing.

The young man who attacked the little girls and their classmates was obviously full of hatred and completely devoid of any sense of humanity - or fear of what would happen to him. Do people think he and other crazed killers were born that way? We need to understand what turns them into monsters and try to learn from it.

Things do seem terrible at the moment but I think we are forgetting many terrible things that have happened in the past. They undoubtedly caused terror but they were not then described as "terrorism". In 1996 in Dunblane a man killed 16 children and their teacher and injured 15 others. In Hungerford in 1987 a man killed sixteen people, including his own mother. And what about Harold Shipman, who has never been described as a terrorist but who is estimated to have killed well over two hundred people over a period of years.

Now there are calls for capital punishment to be re-introduced, despite the fact that studies showed that it is not a deterrent.

In my view, we need to see that whipping up more and more fear and hatred will not save us from these sorts of atrocities. We need to study and understand what turns innocent little babies into dangerous killers. so that we can try to take steps to prevent this happening.

Eloethan Thank you for your sensible measured post.

Yes, thank you.

I might post this other-thread but I have just read an article that asks the very questions you address, and that of the thread title.

"Could calling attacks like Southport 'terrorism' help to prevent them?"

"it looks at the lone person planning in bedroom" phenomena
and asks "why"

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c62enpv2870o

I’m shocked that there are a couple of posts suggesting you can tell the murderer is evil by his appearance! How?

This man is not 'evil'. He was a child with a known obsession with violence and weapons, who was known to all the necessary authorities, whose parents were worried and sought help for him, even had the police to their house because his behaviour frightened them and NOBODY DID ANYTHING about him, when he ceased attending the mental health services, or going to school.

If proper action had been taken in time, if someone in one of the many groups involved with him had joined the dots and seen that sooner or later a youngster with his obsession with violence and his history was going to to make that obsession real, the tragedy at Southport would never have occurred

Just because people knew about him doesn’t mean he wasn’t evil.
He’s evil through & through & I hope he rots in hell.

He was once a baby with loving parents, much as you probably had 1Kadinsky. Are you saying he was evil then. At primary school he was a happy little boy fitting in with others. Was he evil then?

Sadly things went badly wrong at secondary school and he did not get the help he should have got.

As said. I will say nothing to diminish the terrible things he did and his well-deserved sentence, but everyone i this case victims and perpetrator were let down by the Children's mental welfare service and other bodies who dealt with him.

Thepanaramawoman

I’m shocked that there are a couple of posts suggesting you can tell the murderer is evil by his appearance! How?

It’s rather like going back to the days when the measurements and appearance of a person’s head were thought to determine their level of intelligence and propensity for criminality. The photograph used by the press is in stark contrast to the photo we have seen of him as a young boy. The young boy certainly didn’t look evil. He looked like a normal child. Something happened to that young child later on. We don’t yet know what that was or how or why it happened, though there has been speculation. He committed unspeakable acts but I don’t believe a loving God would condemn him to rot in hell as Kandinsky wishes. I remember the vicar who buried my mother saying he expected to meet Hitler in the afterlife.

I don’t think you can tell that a person is evil by a photograph. This person looks deranged in my opinion in his latest photograph. He certainly committed evil acts; if that makes him evil so be it. If people want to call him evil, and many will, then they can. He certainly had a liking for evil because he studied genocide and other atrocities, or so we were told.

You don't know he was' a child with loving parents.'
You know that the police were called to the house at the parents' request because they were frightened of.him.
Do you know that they followed any of the advice given by all the authorities involved?
Do you know if the father reported his son to the police after preventing him going to his school to mount an attack with a knife?
Do you know where he got the money to buy all the sophisticated equipment in his room which enabled him to access violent attacks and terrorist propaganda?
Do you know if his parents made any attempt to prevent his obsession with violent material?
I certainly do not, but I am tired of the blame always being laid at the door of the 'authorities' who offer help and support which is then ignored or rejected.
Many parents call for help and then refuse then to follow even the simplest of structures which might help their child.

I am not aware that the parents have made any public comment.I sincerely hope they do not appear in a Panorama programme as did the parents of Valdo Calocone, to the great distress of the families of his murdered victims.

We really don’t have enough information to put the max blame on either his parents or the various agencies. It’s good a oublic inquiry will clarify some of these unknowns.

FWIW I speculate these parents were ‘good enough’ in the legal framework of The Children Act. They phoned police for help, the allowed all agencies entry to their home. It’s difficult not to consider this young man was developing mental health problems which combined with his personality and the diagnosis he was on the ASD.

Our CAMHS are devastated, ineffective, unavailable. Unless evidence emerges to contradict, it’s my impression these parents were doing ok until their son was lost to them and agencies who were trying to help. Anyone who has seen this happen to ‘ordinary’ families will feel compassion,

Very few parents 'good' or 'bad' willingly report children to the police, they always believe that they can manage the situation witout outside help. Even when those children are in their 30s and subjecting them to physical abuse.

He has an older(?) brother who seems to be OK and not causing any problems. His father clearly stopped one attack that we know of. Other cases in the news we are always told when there have been family difficulties in the life of a young offender and we have not been told this in this case, which suggests he came from an adequate functioning family.

I do not always blame the authorities. I do not in this case for example, blame Prevent . They were set up with a specific purpose to try to deradicalise, people radicalised by specific terrorist groups and where the violence starts because of the commitment to that group. That is a very different scenario to trying to stop someone being drawn to violence, where they are violent for violence sake not because they espoused a particular religious or political cause.

However when we here of deeply disturbed children self-harming and uncoltrollable, locked up for years in exclusion rooms in hospitals, When a relation of mine, a voluntary patient in hospital could be sectioned within hours because he refused to have ECT treatment. I cannot understand why the mental health authorities could not have been more active in sectioning and containing him, when he stopped cooperating with the authorities.