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2 months ago
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A senior UK cabinet minister has said he hopes the Southport killer will never leave prison and confirmed that “nothing is off the table” in possible reforms to sentencing as a result of the attack.
On Thursday, Axel Rudakubana was sentenced to 52 years in prison for the murder of Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, at a dance class last July, the attempted murder of eight others, as well as two adults who tried to save them. He avoided a whole-life term because he was 17 at the time of the murders.
The defence secretary, John Healey, said Rudakubana should stay in prison for the rest of his life as ministers reviewed sentencing guidelines.
Asked on Sky News if a life order should be used for murderers who were close to the age of 18, Healy said: “The judge passed a sentence yesterday of 52 years and made it clear that he doesn’t think that Rudakubana will ever get out of prison, and I hope that is the case.”
Healey said: “The prime minister is right to say: ‘Now nothing is off the table.’ We need to make any changes that are necessary. That means that we don’t just get justice for these victims but we get the changes that they deserve, and we will deliver that.”
He also expressed horror at the details of the attack, which were read to Liverpool crown court on Thursday.
“I think this is a day of shock for us all as we heard the details in the court and the sentencing yesterday. I felt it actually hard to catch my breath when I read about the details and about the unbelievable savagery of this man who killed Bebe and Elsie and Alice.”
He said Rudakubana would have killed many more young girls had he not been stopped. Healey said: “Quite clearly, [he] would have killed the other 26 young girls in that dance class if he’d been able to.”
The Labour MP for Southport, Patrick Hurley, said the sentence was “unduly lenient”. Writing on X he said he had asked the attorney general, Richard Hermer, to urgently review Rudakubana’s sentence, “with a view to making sure he is never released … My community deserves nothing less.”
Hurley said he was alarmed by the prospect of Rudakubana being allowed to apply for parole when some of the survivors of the attack would be in their 50s.
Speaking to BBC Breakfast he said: “What I don’t want is that those little girls, who’ve had their childhoods traumatised, are then re-traumatised when they get to the age of 55, maybe 56, and have to see him apply for parole again and again.”
Sentencing Rudakubana, the judge, Mr Justice Goose, said: “It’s likely he will never be released.”
Hurley said: “The exceptional nature of those circumstances necessitates an exceptional sentence and I would very much like to remove that word ‘likely’ from the judge’s sentence.”
A solicitor for the families of the Southport victims urged the public not to post graphic details online about the attacks
Sara Stanger, head of serious injuries and public inquiries at Bond Turner solicitors, was asked by BBC Radio 4’s Today programme about online claims that the media was covering up details of the attack.
She said: “The families plead for respect and restraint when people are posting online. They want to remember their daughters for the lives that they lived and not how they died. This isn’t a cover-up in the media’s respectful reporting, and the families call for the public to be as sensitive.”
