MI5 received evidence of the grooming and sexual exploitation of a schoolgirl months before she was charged with terrorism-related offenses.
After the Home Office determined that Rhianan Rudd was a victim of exploitation, the prosecution was withdrawn.
In May 2022, Rhianan, who was 15 years old when she was accused of terrorism-related offenses in the United Kingdom. She committed herself to a children’s home.
According to her mother, investigators should have treated her daughter “like a victim rather than a terrorist.”
The case raises questions about how the United Kingdom addresses the issue of youngsters participating in extremism. According to the top attorney in charge of examining terror laws.
Rhianan Rudd embraced right-wing extremism at the age of fourteen. Her mother Emily Carter remembers her as a “beautiful girl” who loves horses. Then, though, she began to exhibit racist and antisemitic sentiments, according to Ms. Carter.
“If you didn’t have blonde hair and blue eyes – Aryan, as they say – she didn’t want to know you. You were an inferior race, and you shouldn’t have lived,” her mother explains.
She claims that her daughter was a “sponge” for extremist ideologies. “She was altering herself; this is not Rhianan,” she explains. She was a child with an obsessive nature.
Rhianan had previously run away from home
Rhianan, who was born in Essex and later relocated to Derbyshire, had trouble forming connections. And “struggled in life,” according to Ms. Carter. She also received an autism diagnosis.
Rhianan had previously run away from home, and social services had been involved with his family. Her mother confesses that she made errors but “always tried her best.”
After Rhianan admitted to downloading a bomb-making manual in September 2020. Ms. Carter was so concerned about her mental state that she recommended her to Prevent, the government’s de-radicalization program.
Within a month, Rhianan was apprehended by counter-terrorism investigators. And her brief association with Prevent had to come to a stop. She was interrogated, released on bail as a terror suspect, and was no longer permitted to attend school.
She had been conversing with older individuals online for some time. Including American Christopher Cook, who espoused a militant strain of neo-Nazism and organized a terrorist cell.
Ms. Carter claims
There is evidence that the then-partner of Rhianan’s mother was also influential. Ms. Carter claims she was kept in the dark.
Dax Mallaburn, an American partner, was a member of a white supremacist prison gang in the United States. Through a prison pen pal program, he met Rhianan’s mother.
Mallaburn’s relationship with Rhianan’s mother had ended before her incarceration, and he had returned to the United States. Cook and Mallaburn had communicated, with Cook instructing Mallaburn to instruct Rhianan in the “proper way.”
Rhianan recounted being coerced and groomed, including sexually, and sending explicit photographs of herself to Cook during interviews with police. Eventually, an official government finding of exploitation would arise from the abuse she reported.
Certain public agencies, including the police, are mandated under modern slavery regulations to inform the Home Office of any possible victims of exploitation they encounter.
In the months before Rhianan’s arrest, none of the relevant organizations referred her to the specialized Home Office team that reviews such matters.
This was not due to insufficient information.
Around the time of Rhianan’s arrest, MI5 obtained proof that she had been exploited by Cook, including sexually.
An FBI investigation revealed communications and photographs from Cook’s devices depicting Rhianan being manipulated, coerced, and exploited. The FBI delivered the documents to MI5.
Rhianan was released on bail for almost six months while awaiting a judgment on charges. According to her mother, Rhianan’s mental health deteriorated throughout this era, as evidenced by self-harm, elopement, and suicide attempts. She was placed in care by the Derbyshire social services department.
She was charged with six terrorism-related offenses in April 2021, more than six months after her detention, for possessing instructions for building bombs and weapons. Prosecutors stated that one set of instructions was associated with a possible attack plot.
Derbyshire Council submitted Rhianan to the Home Office as a potential victim of exploitation days after she was accused, when newly-appointed defense attorneys intervened.
A decision was reached after an additional seven months. When it arrived, the Home Office concluded that she had been trafficked and exploited.
The prosecution was stopped in late December 2021.
Rhianan is part of a growing trend of minors who are frequently active in online right-wing extremism and are being examined by MI5 and the police.
In the past two years, convictions have included a 14-year-old Cornish child who led his online terrorist cell and a 13-year-old Darlington youngster who was apprehended.
In the instance of another youngster, a pre-sentence assessment stated that it was “probable that he was unaware of the broader repercussions of his actions, which have presumably been substituted by interests like Dad’s Army.”
Complexity pervades cases involving children. A youngster may have been groomed and used, but he or she still poses a risk of harming others.
In immigration cases involving young women who went to Syria to join the Islamic State and are challenging the revocation of their British citizenship, there are also discussions about human trafficking and exploitation.
In the instance of Shamima Begum, who traveled at the age of 15, the government has argued against charges of human trafficking and asserted that she poses a security risk. Her attorneys claim that she was trafficked and sexually exploited.
Few minors who are accused of terrorism-related offenses are ultimately incarcerated. In some instances, the investigation, arrest, and prosecution process can take many months or even more than a year.
The effectiveness of the current strategy
Jonathan Hall KC, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, reports that in 2020/21, only one youngster convicted of a terrorism offense was imprisoned, with the rest receiving “non-custodial punishments in the end.”
The effectiveness of the current strategy, according to him, needs to be questioned. He proposes amendments to the law that would permit authorities to inform a child terror suspect that he or she will either be charged or offered an injunction. According to him, these could include restrictions on the usage of mobile phones, the use of monitoring software, and mentorship.
“This can be accomplished very rapidly and will keep them out of the criminal court system entirely,” he says.
The mother of Rhianan believes that her daughter should have never been charged.
She says it is “logical” that police must investigate and search for evidence, but she believes they should have handled the situation “very differently” afterward.
“They should have considered her a victim, not a terrorist. She is a young girl with autism. She ought to have been treated like a child who had been sexually abused and groomed.”
A representative of the government told: “MI5 takes its obligations regarding persons who may be in danger of harm extremely seriously.
MI5 cannot confirm or deny involvement in particular cases by a longstanding government policy.
MI5 proof adolescent terror
“More generally, if, in the process of protecting national security, an MI5 agent obtains the information that a person is or may become at risk of death or serious injury, this information will be shared with the appropriate authorities.”
Cook, the American who exploited Rhianan, pled guilty in the United States to participate in a neo-Nazi terrorism conspiracy to destroy a power grid. Before his sentencing, he was on bail.
The Ohio court only recently became aware of Cook’s predatory behavior targeting Rhianan, which was not part of the original case against him despite the FBI’s long-standing awareness of his abuse. Cook was placed in custody in December, before his sentencing, after the court learned of his conduct.
Rhianan elected to remain in her Nottinghamshire children’s home and began to participate in the Prevent program when the prosecution against her was dropped.
There were indicators that everything was not well.
Rhianan requested her mother’s assistance in contacting a neo-Nazi extremist in the United States in the weeks before her death. Her mother reported the incident to the Blue Mountain Homes-operated children’s home. She says she was then informed by social services and police that contact would be permitted. Uncertain if it occurred.
Her mother had notified Derbyshire County Council about Rhianan’s potential for suicide. In 2021, she stated in emails to a social worker, “I pray she doesn’t try to kill herself in her room when she’s alone.”
She indicated via email that Rhianan had access to ligatures.
Ms. Carter claims she saw Rhianan days before her death and was so alarmed by her appearance that she contacted the facility.
She claims that she alerted the staff that her daughter was “about to do something” and requested that they keep an eye on her. She reports that the manager told her not to worry since they would “find out what’s going on.”
Three police officers stood in her living room later that week and informed her that her daughter had committed herself by hanging herself.
Due to the risk of self-harm and suicide, access to objects that may be used as ligatures was prohibited in Rhianan’s room at the children’s home. However, she acquired access to one.
In May, a 16-year-old teenager was discovered dead 12 hours after retiring to her bed the previous evening.
Her death will be the subject of an inquiry. No date has been set.
