An online ‘wild west’ is radicalising children to carry out nihilistic violence and mass casualty attacks, the Southport Inquiry heard today.

Psychologists are attempting to understand a ‘new set of motivations for violence’, promoted to teenagers under the age of 15 via pro-anorexia, self-harm, or so-called ‘gore’ communities on the Internet.

The second stage of the public inquiry, set up in the wake of the murders of three young girls in the Merseyside seaside town, in July 2024, is focusing on ‘violence fixated individuals’ – people not driven by ideology but who seek to terrorise society by causing widespread harm.

Chairman Sir Adrian Fulford said he was seeking ‘the greatest possible understanding’ of why killer Axel Rudakubana and others have been ‘inspired or driven to such extreme levels of violence’.

Phase one of the inquiry found the atrocity ‘could and should have been prevented’ and the aim of phase two is to identify new measures the Government can introduce to try to stop a similar attack in the future, the chairman added.

‘It does not need for me to say that this is a truly challenging task,’ he told a hearing in central London.

Rudakubana was 17 when he murdered Bebe King, six, Elsie Stancombe, seven, and Alice Aguiar, nine, in a knife attack at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class on July 29, 2024. He was later jailed for life.

It emerged during the first stage that the killer, who was autistic, had become fixated on the belief that he was being bullied at school and obsessed with ‘very disturbing imagery’ that included pictures of war, beheadings and genocide.

Rudakubana was jailed for life and ordered to serve a minimum term of 52 years for the murders of Bebe King, six, Elsie Stancombe, seven, and Alice Aguiar, nine, who he stabbed to death at a Taylor Swift-themed dance holiday club

Chairman Sir Adrian Fulford opened the second phase of the inquiry, which is investigating ‘violence-fixated individuals’

Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, were all murdered in the atrocity on July 29, 2024

Since the tragedy, three teenagers have also been prosecuted for planning ‘copycat’ attacks.

Richard Taylor, from the joint counter-terror police and NHS group, the Clinical Consultancy Service, told the hearing that almost one in ten of the 1,534 individuals referred to them, between April 2024 and January this year, had a fascination with extremist violence and mass casualty attacks.

It was ‘striking’ that a third of those were aged under 15, he said.

In comparison, those with an extreme Right-wing ideology made up 34 per cent of referrals and 16 per cent of cases were related to Islamist extremism, he said.

Around 30 per cent of those with a violence ‘fascination’ had a confirmed diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) which, he said, begs the question: ‘Why is autism linked with fascination of extreme violence and mass casualty attacks specifically?’

‘There’s no research evidence of increased violence among those with autism spectrum conditions, but we are seeing these dramatic elevations in the proportion coming into contact with CT policing and coming onto the CCS,’ Dr Taylor told the inquiry.

‘We don’t fully understand this. One possible hypothesis is that the online extremist environments have evolved in recent years in a way that they tap uniquely into the vulnerabilities of autistic individuals, who may then follow the algorithms.’

Professor Laura Smith, a professor of psychology at the University of Bath, 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.’

Professor Smith said once someone started to look at extreme content, algorithms on social networks would continue to feed it to them.

She said that common features among those radicalised were a ‘disillusion with society, glorification of violence and a desire to bring about social instability, chaos, or collapse’.

Her team looked at around 500,000 messages from 1,500 users in one such internet group.

Dr Richard Taylor, of the Counter Terrorism Clinical Consultancy Service, told the inquiry it was ‘striking’ that a third of people referred to them with a fixation on violence were under the age of 15

Pyschologist Professor Laura Smith said young people were being introduced to extreme violence online via ‘gateway’ groups relating to self-harm, eating disorders and ‘gore.’

Dr Tina Irani, a consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist, told the inquiry young people ‘lost’ to education, such as those out of mainstream schools who were being homeschooled, were of particular concern

Rudakubana pictured in the distinctive green hoodie he wore on the day of the attack. CCTV cameras caught him outside the Hart Space dance studio, in Southport, shortly before he launched the mass stabbing

Police and forensic teams on Hart Street, Southport, following the stabbing

Professor Smith said users would engage in ‘banal’ everyday conversations, interspersed with others about extreme violence.

‘Harm is present, significant harm, but at the same time, the atmosphere in these chat channels is very convivial, talking about Christmas and New Year’s Eve,’ she said.

The topics were ‘highly disorganised and somewhat banal, if it wasn’t for the harm,’ she said.

A lot of the activity involved so-called ‘sexual hazing’, where established members try to force new recruits to share sexual material that is then used to coerce and humiliate.

‘It’s very conflictual, very combative, but also they talk about video games, family, a bit of politics, recreational drugs, animals, and so on,’ Professor Smith said.

‘The success of this network, and the popularity of it, is actually in the status of the social network. 

‘People socialise within this network, and they can achieve status if they are willing to share content and coerce harm.’

She told the inquiry parental controls should be something people had to opt out of, rather than opt into.

‘It’s a wild west out there, and we need to understand people’s browsing, search history, app usage, gaming, social media usage as standard in order to understand the kinds of networks they’re interacting with,’ the professor added.

Internet access should also be restricted for those people where harm has already been perpetrated, or where there’s significant risk they pose to others, Professor Smith said.

She called for consensus on the definition of the ‘new threat’, a strategy to clarify responses and guidance on which agencies are responsible for monitoring such individuals.

‘People need more awareness of the risks and threats currently online – that includes frontline staff in the NHS and education, but also parents and carers,’ she said.

‘We need training and education and we need mechanisms for sharing insights and standard operating procedures across agencies.’

Another child psychologist also warned that children were ‘way smarter’ than adults when it comes to navigating the online world and agreed parents needed more education and help monitoring their internet use.

Dr Tina Irani, a consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist, told the hearing young people ‘lost’ to education, such as those out of mainstream schools who were being homeschooled, were of particular concern.

‘We need to really think through young people who are increasingly socially isolating themselves,’ she said. 

‘This has become a key concern. You have young people who were struggling to come to school and parents are taking them out and homeschooling them, so they become completely lost to the system.’

She added: ‘Young people are way, way smarter and quicker than us.

‘Once they’ve accessed something online, they know how to break every [parental control].’

Families of the victims have said they hope the second phase of the inquiry can bring about ‘meaningful’ change.

Nicola Ryan-Donnelly, of Fletchers Solicitors, representing families of girls who survived, 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.’