As headteacher of a referral unit, Joanne Hodson knows a bad ‘un when she sees one. And she saw one in Alex Rudakubana, who had been put in her charge, having been kicked out of regular school for taking a knife into a class.
From day one, Joanne knew the teenager was ‘’very high risk’’ with a manner ‘’ devoid of any remorse’’.
So, uniquely in this scandal, she did the right thing (so rare she should be congratulated and awarded a bonus) and raised her concerns with Samantha Steed, a children’s mental health worker.
You would have thought that on hearing the worries of a skilled head, Ms Steed would have swooped into action and had him placed in some secure unit.
Instead, Ms Steed accused Joanne of "racially stereotyping" Rudakubanu as a "black man with a knife".
And, as Joanne told the inquiry, that accusation of racial stereotyping had ‘’effectively shut me up’’.
In the world that teachers live in, such a charge could cost you your job. Well, he was a black man with a knife. And as we all know used that knife to murder three little girls.
The threat that Rudakabuna remained in his ECHP document, only to be trotted out at the public inquiry. How scandalous is that?
What do you imagine has happened to Ms Steed since the Southport tragedy? Has she been disciplined for a fatal error of judgement of such a scale that she should be dismissed?
Or, more likely, some idiot in her employment area will have put their arms around her and said don’t worry, we all make mistakes. Or possibly she will be given extra training to make sure that in the future she recognises a ‘’black man with a knife’’ is a danger.
I’ve been covering these kinds of public inquiries for decades, and shockingly, in the world of mental health, police, hospitals, and even education (all of which we pay for), there’s hardly ever any consequences.
How do the Southport parents feel about this woman still being employed while they have lost their child, which potentially could have been avoided had she done the right thing?
Ms Steed is not the only state worker to have fouled up. Lancashire police should hold their head in shame as they discovered him on a bus with a knife, but instead of arresting him treated it as a ’safeguarding issue’. If they had gone to the house, they would have found the knives and the poison ricin.
Race should never have got in the way of stopping the Southport Killer. We now know it did - Kelvin MacKenzie
|Reuters
Prevent got it wrong. Alder Hey psychiatrists treated him for anxiety and never bothered to wonder if he was a danger to others because they didn’t bother to read his notes about his violent past.
A lawyer for the family is threatening to name those who failed to take action. I very much hope he does.
Every day, those families will wake up without their lovely daughters, knowing that if the agencies, which they pay for, had done their job properly, they would be alive today.
There’s hardly been a peep out of Starmer because he believes least said soonest mended. He couldn’t be more wrong.
The nation needs leadership. The nation needs names. If he can’t do it (and I suspect he can’t), he should go.