The Southport Inquiry has heard that the age of people referred to a counter-terror scheme showing a fascination with extreme violence is “striking”. Hearings in phase two of the inquiry began on Tuesday with the first in two weeks of seminar-style hearings to discuss topics around “violence-fixated individuals”.
Chairman Sir Adrian Fulford plans to make recommendations to try and prevent another attack like the one carried out by Axel Rudakubana, then 17, at the Merseyside dance class on July 29, 2024. Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine; Bebe King, six; and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, were killed in the atrocity, which phase one of the inquiry found “could and should have been prevented”.
Striking findings on age and referrals
Richard Taylor, from joint counter-terror police and NHS group the Clinical Consultancy Service, told the hearing that of the 1,534 cases referred to the service between April 2024 and January this year, 11% involved individuals who had a fascination with extremist violence and mass casualty attacks. He said almost 80% in that category were under 18 and 30% were under 15.
Dr Taylor said: “Which is of course a very striking finding, how young the cohort is.” He said the age of those referred to the scheme was “increasingly younger”. Those with an extreme right-wing ideology made up 34% of referrals and 16% of cases were related to Islamist extremism, he said.
New reality of online youth extremism
Speaking to the hearing in London, Prof Laura Smith, a social psychologist, said the “new reality of online youth extremism” was that people may join extreme interest communities on the internet, related to topics such as self-harm, eating disorders or gore, and find themselves becoming involved in “nihilistic” extreme violence communities.
She said: “Many of these groups offer status within the group in return for evidence of harm.” Prof Smith said once someone started to look at extreme content, algorithms on social networks would continue to show it to them. She told the inquiry parental controls should be something people had to opt out of, rather than opt into. She said: “It's a Wild West out there and we need to understand people's browsing, search history, app usage, gaming and social media usage as standard.”
Addressing victims and seeking change
As he started the hearings, Sir Adrian addressed the victims of the Southport attack. He said: “Although we are now moving on from the detail of events of July 29, 2024, I want to say directly to the victims and their families that what happened to them on that day is the sole reason for us being here as we seek to achieve the greatest possible understanding of why AR and others have been inspired or driven to such extreme levels of violence, and to identify for Government the measures which appear to be necessary to reduce, to the extent we are able, the risk of any repetition.”
Families of the victims have said they hope the second phase of the inquiry can bring change. Nicola Ryan-Donnelly of Fletchers Solicitors, representing families of children who survived the attack, said: “The only way that we can get proper change that is going to be meaningful is if we look across the country and we look at where things are at nationally. They want that exercise to be as detailed as possible, so the chair can make really strong changes that are actually going to work.”
