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A teenager who killed herself after becoming the youngest person in the UK to be charged with terror offences had been groomed online by an American “neo-Nazi”, an inquest has been told.
Sixteen-year-old Rhianan Rudd, who was autistic, had been referred to the government’s Prevent counter-radicalisation programme by her mother, Emily Carter, the counsel to the inquest, Edward Pleeth, told the hearing.
Carter was concerned her daughter, who at the time was 14 years old, had become “fixated on Hitler and started to admire him”. In correspondence with Prevent, she said Rhianan “calls herself a fascist” and expressed concerns about “the way she looks at other races”, the inquest heard.
The court was told that Rhianan, who had a shrine to Hitler in her bedroom and was a “Holocaust denier”, downloaded a bomb-making manual and sent messages “deemed to be suggestive of a violent and rightwing ideological mindset”.
She was later arrested and charged, until the prosecution against her was dropped in December 2021 in light of evidence that she had been groomed and sexually exploited.
Rhianan was found dead at Bluebell House residential home in Nottinghamshire on 19 May 2022, the chief coroner, Judge Durran, told the inquest at Chesterfield coroner’s court. She had been moved there after her arrest and was a looked-after child at the time of her death, the court heard.
The inquest was told Rhianan had sent messages saying she “wants to kill someone in the school or blow up a Jewish place of worship” and that she “does not care who she kills and nothing matters any more”.
Police initially decided not to arrest her but to gather evidence instead, as officers believed an arrest might “risk some impact on her mental health” and “could possibly lead to further self-harm and suicide attempts”.
Two police officers visited her home in Bolsover, Derbyshire, in October 2020, where she handed over items including a diary and USB memory stick, Supt Stephen Riley, the head of counter-terrorism policing East Midlands (CTPEM), told the hearing.
Later that day, she was treated in hospital after carving an image of a swastika into her forehead, and a day later, on 21 October, police decided to arrest her. That same month, CTPEM shared information with MI5 which then opened an investigation. In April 2021, Rhianan, then aged 15, was charged with six terrorism offences.
At the time, she was the youngest person to have been charged with terror offences in the UK. In May 2021, a 13-year-old boy from Darlington was arrested and later convicted, as part of an investigation into far-right terrorism.
The inquest was told that Rhianan had been communicating with “known far-right extremists” online. The hearing heard that for several months she had been in contact with Christopher Cook, an American white supremacist, who according to the US Department of Justice was later convicted of being part of a terrorist plot.
Rhianan self-harmed because she had “too many emotions” and “did not know how to deal with them”, the inquest heard.
In a description read at the beginning of the inquest, Carter described her daughter as “one of the kindest, most loving children I had ever had the honour to know”, who “brought so much joy”. But she said she noticed Rhianan change after she was groomed online.
The teenager had loved animals, particularly horses and cats, liked to cook and bake, and was “very good” at art, which her mother said was “her outlet for her when she didn’t know how to say something”.
“She was generous and had a kind heart and was also different,” Carter said. She said Rhianan, one of four siblings, had a “small problem of mixing at school, making friends”, but was “there for them in any situation” when she did build friendships.
“Her being groomed was huge and I saw Rhianan change,” Carter said. “This had a great impact on her and I did all I felt was right by her.”
She added: “I miss her more than life itself. I miss her smile, her laugh and her conversations. I just miss her.”
The inquest at Chesterfield town hall is scheduled to last for three weeks.
