Online safety to come under scrutiny in next phase of Southport attack inquiry
There was “scant regard” and a “lack of curiosity” paid to the risks arising from Axel Rudakubana's online behaviour, the report concluded
The report into the Southport attack said its next phase of work will consider whether more restrictions and monitoring of youngsters’ internet access should be considered after hearing Axel Rudakubana (AR) spent much of his time alone at home looking at extreme content on the internet.
Listen to this article
And the use of virtual private networks (VPNs), used by the killer to get around age verification to order knives online, will also be looked at.
“I have no hesitation in concluding that the degrading, violent and misogynistic material which AR was viewing online contributed to – and ‘fed’ – his already unhealthy fascination with violence,” Sir Adrian Fulford, the report author concluded, following a nine-week public inquiry at Liverpool Town Hall last year.
He added: “In the digital online age, it should be self-evident that how someone is behaving online, and what they are seeking out or exposed to, can be both a powerful influence and an effective predictor for how they are likely to behave offline.”
Tablets recovered by police from Rudakubana’s home showed he had downloaded documents on violence and conflicts, the inquiry heard.
Read more: History could have been different says Southport inquiry chairman
Read more: Southport inquiry blames killer's parents for failing to prevent attack
As well as an al-Qaeda training manual, he had also downloaded a wide range of disturbing imagery, as well as articles and papers relating to atrocities.
He had deleted his internet history shortly before leaving to carry out the attack but had then searched social media site X for the Mar Mari Emmanuel stabbing, which led to video footage of Bishop Emmanuel being attacked while livestreaming a sermon in Australia.
At school Rudakubana was known to have searched computers for school shootings, had asked about access to pictures of weapons or severed heads, and he had searched for information about terrorist attacks and global conflicts.
At home, from 2019 until the time of the attack, the killer’s parents had no online parental controls set at their address.
There was “scant regard” and a “lack of curiosity” paid to the risks arising from his online behaviour, the report concluded.
And while there are “difficulties” over what powers are available to oversee and monitor online behaviour by children, Sir Adrian said there would have been interventions available – such as after Rudakubana’s arrest after going to school to attack another pupil.
The inquiry heard evidence from X’s head of global government affairs, Deanna Romina Khananisho, who said it would be “tyrannical overreach” for the site, formerly known as Twitter, to remove the video of the attack on the bishop in Australia.
Rudakubana had a number of accounts on X, which required users to enter a date of birth to verify their age, but the content of his messages on the site would not be disclosed by the company without a legal order.
Sir Adrian said “regrettably” X did not show “the same ready willingness to co-operate with the inquiry as almost all other organisations…”
His recommendations include the Department for Education reviewing its guidance to schools on monitoring and filtering online systems and the use of VPNs or other software to circumvent age-related protections, which will come into focus in the next phase of the inquiry, later this year.