CPS charged girl with terrorism despite knowing she was suspected grooming victim, court hears
The CPS charged a vulnerable teenager with terror offences despite being aware she was a suspected victim of online grooming and radicalisation, an inquest has heard.
It was only eight months later, after an official Home Office report confirmed that Rhianan Rudd had been groomed by a US white supremacist from the age of 14, that the charges were dropped.
By that point, Rhianan had suffered extreme anxiety about the prospect of a trial and possible prison sentence, the inquest heard.
She was found dead at Bluebell House care home, where she lived five months after the charges were dropped.
Chesterfield coroner's court heard on Thursday that Rhianan, who was the youngest girl to be charged with terror offences in the UK, downloaded bomb-making instructions from the internet at the age of 15 after being groomed and radicalised by American white supremacists.
Counter-terrorism police found that she had expressed the desire to 'blow up a synagogue' and kill as many people as she could.
The inquest heard that Rhianan began to show signs of far-Right radicalisation after being groomed by her mother's boyfriend Dax Mallaburn, a US neo-Nazi with convictions in America for violence.
He was also found by a US Supreme Court ruling to be a member of the neo-Nazi group the Arizona Aryan Brotherhood.
Rhianan later claimed that Mallaburn had touched her inappropriately, the hearing heard.
The inquest has also been told that Mallaburn's influence on Rhianan was 'not known' to her mother, Emily Carter.
At the same time, the teenager was in contact online with another US white supremacist, named Chris Cook, who supplied her with instructions for making homemade bombs and weapons. Cook was later jailed in the US for his part in a white supremacist plot to sabotage the electricity grid.
Rhianan became 'obsessed' with Adolf Hitler and Nazi politics, and at one point carved a swastika on her forehead.
Counter-terrorism police began investigating the teenager in September 2020 after her mother reported her concerns about her daughter's fascination with far-Right violence to Prevent, the anti-radicalisation programme.
The inquest heard prosecutors came to regard the decision to charge Rhianan as being 'urgent' after she ran away from home in Bolsover, Derbyshire, in April 2021, and was found and arrested by police officers in Sheffield shortly after.
On Friday, Nick Price, the CPS's head of the counter-terrorism division during the Rhianan investigation, told the inquest that prosecutors were aware in the months that preceded the decision to charge the teenager in April 2021 that she was a vulnerable child with a history of self-harm.
Asked by Jesse Nicholls, counsel for Rhianan's family, if the CPS was at that stage aware that there was concern among social services and other agencies over 'evidence of grooming by adults online', Mr Price said: 'At that stage we were aware there was an assertion made by [Rhianan] herself and that had been received by various agencies.'
Mr Price also said the CPS had been aware of child welfare services reports that Cook had allegedly put pressure on Rhianan to send him images of herself.
However, he told the inquest that he did not believe at that stage that the case against Rhianan should have been dropped because of her status as a vulnerable child.
'From our perspective, we were still trying to understand what the full evidential picture was,' said Mr Price.
The inquest heard that this assessment only began to change after the charges were brought, when Derbyshire county council (DCC) social services triggered a Home Office national referral mechanism (NRM) for Rhianan, which identified her as a victim of human trafficking and modern slavery, including grooming.
After the NRM report, the charges against Rhianan were dropped in December of that year.
The inquest heard that a psychiatric report on the impact of the police investigation on Rhianan found that she 'fixated' on the idea of going to prison and suffered severe anxiety from the 'uncertainty and limbo' of her situation.
The report found that this would have been 'unbearable and anxiety-provoking,' even after the charges had been dropped.
Asked by Mr Nicholls if the CPS was aware of the negative impact suffered by Rhianan during the period between charges being brought and the case being discontinued, Mr Price replied: 'In general terms, absolutely.'
Rhianan was found dead by her carer at Bluebell House, near Newark, Notts, on 19 May 2022, aged 16.
The inquest also heard from Mary Lees, DCC's head of children's services, who told chief coroner judge Alexia Durran that Rhianan's childhood had been troubled from an early age, as a result of growing up amid bouts of violence allegedly inflicted on her mother by her father.
The inquest is examining evidence from MI5, the CPS, police and social services about what steps the authorities took to protect Rhianan after her radicalisation and subsequent arrest.
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