A public inquiry into the Southport knife attack at a Taylor Swift themed children’s dance class will investigate failings which led to “one of the most egregious crimes” in UK history, the chairman has said.
Opening the hearing at Liverpool Town Hall on Tuesday, former Court of Appeal judge Sir Adrian Fulford described Axel Rudakubana’s crimes as an “unimaginable but nonetheless mercilessly calculated knife attack” which claimed the lives of three children and left eight more girls and two adults wounded.
The 18-year-old, who will simply be referred to as “the perpetrator” or “AR” in hearings out of respect to victims and their families, was jailed for life with a minimum term of 52 years for murdering Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, Bebe King, six, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven.
“However hard we try, ordinary language simply fails to reflect the enormity of what he did on 29 July last year,” Sir Adrian said.
“None of the most powerful adjectives even begin to suffice: there are no words that adequately describe what occurred and I am not going to try (and then fail) to find them.”
Instead, he said he will investigate how it was possible for Rudakubana to cause such devastation, analyse decisions taken “given his deteriorating and deeply troubling behaviour” and “identify without fear or favour all of the relevant failings”.
The inquiry will then make “comprehensive, sensible and achievable recommendations “ to help prevent a future attack and stop others who may be “drawn to treating their fellow human beings in such a cruel and inhuman way.”
Paying tribute to victims and survivors on the first day of the hearing, Sir Adrian stood for a minute’s silence in memory of all those caught up in the atrocity.
Home secretary Yvette Cooper announced the public inquiry in January to help understand after it emerged he had been referred to counter-terror officials as well as having contact with police, the courts, social and mental health services.
“There are grave questions about how this network of agencies failed to identify and act on the risks,” Ms Cooper said.
Three separate referrals were made to the government's counter-terror programme Prevent about Rudakubana's behaviour in the years before the attack, as well as six separate calls to police.
A review into the Prevent referrals published in February found there was sufficient risk to keep his cases within Prevent active, but they were closed prematurely while too much focus was placed on a lack of distinct ideology.
The inquiry will draw on evidence from interviews with witnesses and disclosure from 15 organisations, including MI5, Counter-Terrorism Policing, NHS England and Merseyside Police.
Widespread rioting and civil unrest which erupted across the country following the murders is not being examined.
A second phase of the inquiry, starting next year, will consider the “wider phenomenon of children and young people who are being drawn into extreme violence, determining what can and should be done to reverse this troubling trend”.
Rachael Wong, director at law firm Bond Turner, representing the three bereaved families, said: "We know that nothing the inquiry reveals or subsequently recommends will change the unimaginable loss felt by the families of Elsie, Alice and Bebe, but we all now have a responsibility to ensure that something like this never happens again.
"We will be doing all we can to assist the chair through the inquiry and uncover the truth. It is only through intense public scrutiny that real change can be effected."
