Groomed terror suspect not treated as a ‘vulnerable child', says her mother
The mother of an autistic teenager who was groomed and 'brainwashed' by right-wing extremists says she was not treated as a vulnerable child before she took her own life.
Rhianan Rudd, who died aged 16, had an 'obsession with Hitler', downloaded a bomb-making manual, and threatened to 'blow up' a synagogue after she was radicalised online by an American neo-Nazi.
In the 18 months before she died, Rhianan was diagnosed with autism, investigated by counter-terrorism policing and MI5, and prosecuted over terrorism charges after she had been groomed and allegedly sexually exploited by extremists.
Senior coroner Judge Alexia Durran concluded that she was not satisfied that Rhianan intended to end her own life at Chesterfield Coroner's Court on Monday.
She said that 'missed opportunities' in Rhianan's case were 'not systemic' and she will not make a prevention of future deaths report.
In an interview, Rhianan's mother, Emily Carter, said she believes the teenager's death was preventable and the agencies involved in her case need to be held accountable.
Ms Carter said: 'They need to recognise that the way they dealt with things was not the correct way, because she's dead.
'I don't ever want this to happen to another family. This has been devastating.
'If I could save just one child from these people making all their changes and making sure they follow through with everything, there's justice in my eyes – my daughter didn't kill herself for no reason.
'It was just one thing after another basically, but all of them should learn from Rhianan's death, all of them.'
Ms Carter said Rhianan was not treated as a vulnerable child, despite her autism diagnosis, and she does not believe her daughter was ever a threat to other people.
The mother said: 'She was five foot one, weighed seven stone. She was tiny.
'I don't know what people thought she could do, but I don't believe that she was ever a threat. It was just what people would put in her head – brainwashed her, basically.
'They (the agencies) treated her as a child, but I don't believe they treated her as a vulnerable child.
'If you've got vulnerable children, you take extra steps to watch them, to look after them, to make sure they feel safe, even from themselves, and they didn't. Obviously, she's dead.'
The mother said the moment 19 police officers and two detectives came to arrest her daughter at their family home was 'mind-numbing' and she felt 'violated' when officers turned her house 'upside down'.
She said: 'It hurt … the fact that they thought that my daughter was some sort of massive terrorist.
'They were going to put her in handcuffs, but the handcuffs didn't go small enough. Even on the smallest ones, they just fell off her hands. That's how small she was.'
The inquest heard that the police did not refer Rhianan to the National Referral Mechanism (NRM), which identifies victims of human trafficking or modern slavery, when they began investigating her in 2020, but the referral was made by Derbyshire County Council in April 2021.
Her mother says the NRM referral should have been done 'at the very beginning' because 'they could see that she was vulnerable'.
Ms Carter added that she thinks Rhianan should not have been charged, and said: 'She was a child, a vulnerable child. A child with mental health issues.
'She should have been treated as a victim more than anything.'
The mother also said it 'angered' her that Rhianan was investigated by MI5 before her death and added: 'If they knew that my daughter was being groomed and sexually exploited online, and then you're investigating at that time, why did nobody come and stop it?
'Why watch a child be completely humiliated, sexualised, trafficked, brainwashed?'
Speaking about her daughter's autism diagnosis, Ms Carter said Rhianan would get fixated and 'sucked into' something until it was the 'be all and end all of everything'.
She said Rhianan's fixations began with My Little Pony before she became interested in German history, wanted '1940s German furniture in her bedroom', and eventually made contact with extremists on the messaging apps Telegram and Discord.
Ms Carter said: 'Finding out that she'd been groomed, and the way these people talked to her … it really changed her wholeness as a person, the way she thinks, the way she feels, everything.'
She said that Rhianan was a 'bubbly' girl but she became withdrawn after she was radicalised, and added that the extremists 'took away an innocent child' and 'took away her substance as a person'.
She said: 'After she started talking to her so-called friend online – I thought she was talking to gamer friends and friends from school – she started withdrawing.
'She stopped talking about normal things. She wasn't very bubbly, and I'd literally have to drag her out the house.'
Ms Carter said she believes Rhianan's death could have been prevented if she was placed in a mental health unit, rather than the children's home, to 'deal with her mood swings, her brain going mad'.
She said: 'They don't know a child like a mother does. Even when she was at home, I would wake up two or three times throughout the night and go and check her. These houses aren't guaranteed to do that.'
The mother added that it was 'scary' when she referred her daughter to Prevent but she 'knew it had to be done'.
She said: 'I was hoping that it was just going to take her two or three times a week to work on her mind, unpick her head, and turn her back into Rhianan.
'Not end up with all these police officers turning up arresting her and pulling my house apart. You don't expect that at all.'
The inquest heard that Rhianan took an overdose of her mother's medication after being encouraged to by the 'two competing individuals' in her mind a week before she was charged and moved to the children's home.
Recalling that moment, Ms Carter said: 'I go down the stairs and Rhianan was laying on my living room floor. And I actually thought she was dead, but she wasn't.
'She basically called them (an ambulance) when she decided that she changed her mind and didn't want to die.'
Ms Carter continued: 'I've made mistakes, and I want the organisations to put their hands up and admit they've made mistakes and to rectify their mistakes so it doesn't happen again.
'And then that way everybody can be happy, except me, because I've already lost my daughter.'
Ms Carter described Rhianan as 'loving, kind' and a 'really beautiful soul'.
She added: 'Her brother, Brandon, and Rhianan were like two peas in a pod, and he just feels completely lost without her.'
Following the inquest, Ms Carter said the family's anguish was increased by hearing that Rhianan was 'let down by the police, the Prevent anti-terror programme, Derbyshire County Council and the mental health bodies'.
In a statement read outside Chesterfield Coroner's Court on behalf of Ms Carter by Anna Moore of Leigh Day Solicitors, she added: 'The chief coroner has found that Rhianan was denied access to services which should have supported and protected her and, I believe, could have saved her life.
'Looking at the number of missed opportunities recognised by the coroner, it's hard to see how they cannot have had an impact on Rhianan's state of mind.'
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Sky News
3 hours ago
- Sky News
Rhianan Rudd: How mother's boyfriend played 'significant' role in radicalising youngest UK girl to face terror charges
Rhianan Rudd, who took her own life at the age of 16, was the youngest girl in the UK to be charged with terrorist offences. The inquest into her death, which concluded today, revealed shocking details about her radicalisation by two American white supremacists, one of whom was her mother's boyfriend, who the coroner said "played a material role in her radicalisation". Rhianan gouged a swastika into her forehead, downloaded a bomb-making manual and told her mother she planned to blow up a synagogue. Investigated by anti-terrorism police and MI5, charges against her were later dropped, but five month later on 19 May 2022, she was found dead in her shower in a children's home in Nottinghamshire. Hours earlier she had posted on Instagram: "I'm delving into madness." The evidence heard in Chesterfield Coroner's Court from police, social services and even an MI5 operative, raised questions over the state's part in her death - and whether, despite her obvious radicalisation, this vulnerable, autistic girl should have been treated with more care by the authorities. Judge Alexia Durran said: "I'm not satisfied, on the balance of probabilities, Rhianan intended to take her own life. Rhianan's death... was the result of a self-inflicted act but it is not possible to ascertain her intention. "Rhianan was known, to family and professionals, to be vulnerable, to have autistic traits and have a history of self-harm." The coroner added: "I find she was highly affected by her arrest and was concerned about being sent to prison." It was not known what Rhianan was told by her legal team when the charges were dropped but this may have had a "psychological impact" on her, the coroner said. In an interview released at the verdict, Rhianan's mother Emily Carter said her daughter "should never have been charged", that she was failed by those investigating her, including MI5 and counter terrorism police, as well as being let down by mental health services and those caring for her at the home. This was the most complex of cases, set at a time when our security services are seeing a growing number of children being arrested and charged for terrorist offences, while parents often seem oblivious to the radicalising material they are consuming online in their bedrooms. Ms Durham's ruling reflected this complexity, finding that while there were some failings the actions of the police and MI5 were "reasonable and proportionate". The coroner concluded today that she was satisfied that missed opportunities in her case were "not systemic". Judge Alexia Durran said: "In the circumstances I do not consider I should make a prevention of future deaths report." At the same she was unequivocal about the "significant" role played by two extremists in radicalising her. It was her mother's former boyfriend, an American she'd befriended though a US pen-pal prison scheme, who first introduced Rhianan to far-right ideology. Dax Mallaburn had been part of a white supremacist prison gang in the US and subsequently came to the UK to live with Rhianan's mother in September 2017, a year after she'd been to visit him in the US. In the autumn of 2019, Rhianan alleged that he had touched her inappropriately but later withdrew the allegation and, after a social services assessment, Mr Mallaburn returned to the family home. Ms Carter says: "In hindsight, he was a bad person but I never saw him talking Nazi stuff with her." Before Rhianan was arrested, Mr Mallaburn's relationship with her mother had broken down and he returned to the US and then Mexico. However, during COVID, Rhianan appeared to contact another far-right extremist, Christopher Cook, and began an online relationship with him. Cook, who was roughly 18 and living in Ohio, shared far-right texts with Rhianan along with a bomb-making manual, and during this time she became fixated with Adolf Hitler. Cook's lawyer, Peter Scranton, says he too was radicalised online, and he came up with a plan to blow up power stations in the US, for which he was eventually arrested in August 2020, and in February 2022 he pleaded guilty to terrorism offences. Cook, who was a misfit at school, suffering from "severe depression" according to his lawyer and was "essentially lashing out" as he tried to form a group to carry out his plan. Mr Scranton told Sky News, "It was white nationalism, and they had this idea, and I don't know why anyone would feel this way or how they thought it would work, that if they tore down the government and started over they could create a new United States of America that could look like the image that they would want - a white nationalist image." Downtown LA a scene of 'pandemonium' Day Of The Jackal author dead Mr Scranton says Cook told him he didn't radicalise Rhianan, and it was the former boyfriend, Dax Mallaburn, who'd initially got her into neo-Nazi ideology. However, the coroner found Cook was "a significant radicaliser of Rhianan" at a time when she was "isolated and unsupervised". Ms Carter says Rhianan was interested in German history because she was doing it at school and Cook was able to "pull her in", to racial hatred and antisemitism. She says she didn't know what was happening, despite having parental controls on Rhianan's devices. She said: "I could hear her talking to people on there and I'd say who are you talking to and she'd say - just someone from school - and in fact I found out it wasn't at all. "When this person she was talking to disappeared, that's when she sat down on my lap like a baby and cried. She told me this guy Chris had left her, and she was totally in love with him - then she came down and told me she had downloaded a bomb manual and I was like 'Oh my god, what have you been doing'." Ms Carter decided to contact Prevent - a national program in the UK designed to stop individuals from becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism She says: "I thought putting her in a deradicalisation programme would be a fairly easy undo 'brain pick', But it wasn't until the police turned up that I thought 'hang on a minute this is a lot deeper than I actually thought it was at first'." Ms Carter and her lawyers have argued that the police were heavy-handed, that there should have been a psychological assessment before she was even questioned over terrorism offences. "There were 19 police officers to arrest a 5ft 1, 14-year-old girl who weighs seven stone. It was over the top," says Ms Carter. Once Rhianan was charged, the deradicalisation work under Prevent was put on hold. Ms Carter thinks this was a mistake. She says: "Leaving her with her own thoughts throughout the entire time of going through the police interviews and everything else - the deradicalisation would have changed the way she was seeing things - I believe she would have been able to handle it all so much better." The coroner described the police arrest and interview as "necessary and conducted appropriately" and that, while ceasing the Prevent intervention was an "unfortunate consequence" of the police investigation, it was "an appropriate step". During police interviews, Rhianan described being coerced and groomed, including sexually, and having sent explicit images of herself to Cook. Lawyers representing the family say police and MI5 knew she was the victim of child sexual exploitation but failed to refer her to the relevant body - the National Referral Mechanism. It was only after a social worker made the referral, that she was identified as a child victim and then the charges were dropped, by which time she had been subject to investigation and prosecution for 15 months. The coroner agreed that there was a "systems failure" due to a lack of training both within the police and the Derbyshire council who both had had "significant information" that she was a potential victim of modern slavery. However, she also said it "was impossible to know" whether this would have led to the CPS dropping their charges sooner, "nor that if had more than minimal impact on Rhianan's death". Ms Carter says if she'd been treated differently "she'd be troubled, but I do think she'd still be alive". Rhianan's family say the security services knew her vulnerabilities and that she had a tendency to self-harm, but they failed to take this into account. Ms Carter said: "I admit my mistakes and I want the organisations to admit their mistakes. There were failings and they need to admit them." This ruling however found that the state did not play a role in Rhianan's death under article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights. For the most part, her vulnerabilities were known and taken into consideration. It does however show how extremists will exploit children with mental health problems, young people who are struggling with life who may be a danger to society, but also a risk to themselves. Counter Terrorism Policing said it offered "sincere condolences to Rhianan's family and loved ones for their terrible loss". Assistant Chief Constable Di Coulson, speaking on behalf of Counter Terrorism Policing in the East Midlands (CTPEM) and Derbyshire Constabulary, said: "This was a complex case involving a very vulnerable young person, who had been subjected to radicalisation. "Rhianan's tragic death was clearly devastating for her family. It was felt profoundly by the officers directly involved, but also across Counter Terrorism Policing as a whole. "Rhianan's case was a stark moment for our management of the growing numbers of children and young people in our casework - so often presenting vulnerability as well as risk and threat to the public. "Since Rhianan's death, we continue to work alongside our partners to evolve the way we approach cases involving children and, where feasible, attempt to rehabilitate and deradicalise, rather than investigate and convict. "We welcome the findings of the Chief Coroner today, and while we have already made substantial improvements to the way we manage these cases, we will carefully review the findings and make any further changes in order to improve our protection of the public against terrorism."
South Wales Argus
4 hours ago
- South Wales Argus
Opportunities were missed to save teenage terror suspect, says coroner
Chesterfield Coroner's Court heard that Rhianan Rudd, who died aged 16, was charged with terrorism offences and investigated by MI5 after she downloaded a bomb-making manual, said she wanted to 'blow up' a synagogue and carved a swastika onto her forehead. It emerged that Rhianan was a victim of exploitation by a right-wing extremist, but she was pronounced dead on the morning of May 19 2022 at a children's home five months after her charges were discontinued. Concluding the inquest on Monday, chief coroner Judge Alexia Durran said the missed opportunities were 'not systemic', adding she could not be certain that Rhianan intended to take her own life. Rhianan Rudd died at a children's home (Family handout/Leigh Day Solicitors/PA) 'I'm satisfied the missed opportunities in this case are not systemic,' Ms Durran said. 'I'm not satisfied, on the balance of probabilities, Rhianan intended to take her own life. Rhianan's death … was the result of a self-inflicted act but it is not possible to ascertain her intention. 'In the circumstances, I do not consider I should make a prevention of future deaths report. 'Rhianan was known, to family and professionals, to be vulnerable, to have autistic traits and have a history of self-harm.' The coroner recorded Rhianan's cause of death as compression of the neck. She added that agencies involved with her had already made changes since she died. Rhianan's inquest, which heard evidence over four weeks in February and March, focused around the involvement of MI5, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), the police, social services, NHS trusts responsible for her mental health care and the children's home where she was living. Speaking before the conclusion of the inquest, Rhianan's mother, Emily Carter, said the teenager, who was known to self harm, was a 'vulnerable child' and 'should have been treated as a victim more than anything'. Rhianan, left, was a victim of grooming by a neo-Nazi (Family handout/Leigh Day Solicitors/PA) Ms Carter said: 'I don't know what people thought she could do, but I don't believe that she was ever a threat. It was just what people would put in her head – brainwashed her, basically.' The teenager was 'severely impacted' by the police investigation and 'deeply scared' about going to prison as a result of being prosecuted for terrorism, and 'locked away her thoughts and feelings' about the criminal trial. Judge Durran concluded that it was 'necessary and appropriate' to investigate and prosecute Rhianan for terrorism offences. She said: 'While vulnerability is a relevant factor, a difficult balance must be struck between that vulnerability and protecting the public.' The coroner added: 'I find she was highly affected by her arrest and was concerned about being sent to prison.' It was not known what Rhianan was told by her legal team when the charges were dropped but this may have had a 'psychological impact' on her, the coroner said. Judge Durran decided that Article 2 of the European Convention of Human Rights was not engaged in the inquest, a decision she delayed until after she had heard all the evidence, meaning no breaches of the state's duty to protect life were identified. The inquest conclusion heard that there were missed opportunities by counter terrorism policing East Midlands (CTPEM) and Derbyshire County Council to refer Rhianan to the National Referral Mechanism (NRM), which identifies victims of modern slavery, earlier. Judge Durran said: 'I find, even at this early stage around November 2020, sufficient information existed for CTPEM or Derbyshire County Council to make an NRM referral.' She said the 'combination of information available' would create a 'sufficient basis' on which to identify Rhianan as a victim of modern slavery. The coroner added that it was not possible to say if Rhianan's charges would have been discontinued earlier or if it would have a 'more than minimal impact on Rhianan's death' if the NRM referral was made sooner. The coroner also found there was a missed opportunity to refer Rhianan to Nottinghamshire Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) when she moved to a children's home in the county. Judge Durran said: 'Derbyshire County Council was responsible for this missed opportunity to refer Rhianan to Nottinghamshire CAMHS. As a result, Rhianan was without CAMHS support for a considerable time – effectively from May 2021 to May 2022. 'I find it was a result of individual decisions or missed opportunities to make a referral in an otherwise functioning system.' The coroner said Rhianan did not have mental health support during a 'particularly challenging and difficult period', including her charges being dropped and the sessions with the deradicalisation programme Prevent. But she said it was 'too speculative' to say whether CAMHS support would have made any difference. The coroner found that Ms Carter's previous partner, who had been in prison and had a swastika tattoo, was a 'significant radicalising influence' on Rhianan. The hearing was told that Rhianan's mother made contact with an American, Dax Mallaburn, who had convictions relating to 'violent organised crime', through a write to prisoners scheme. Mr Mallaburn lived with Ms Carter from November 2017 and had 'links to white supremacist groups', the coroner said. Judge Durran said: 'I'm satisfied it's more likely than not that he played a material role in introducing and encouraging Rhianan's interest in extreme, right-wing materials.' Speaking before the conclusion of the inquest, Ms Carter said: '(Mr Mallaburn) did a lot of work in prison to be deradicalised, if you like. And so when he came out and I met him, he never showed any views.' An American neo-Nazi, whom Rhianan spoke to online and allegedly made her send explicit photos, was also a 'significant radicalising influence', the coroner found. The inquest heard that the CPS charged Rhianan without the 'full evidential picture' of her exploitation in April 2021 after she broke her bail conditions by running away from home to Sheffield. The coroner said Rhianan's placement at Bluebell House Residential Home, after she was charged, was a 'positive development' in her life and the staff 'appropriately met' her needs. Judge Durran said: 'I'm satisfied that professionals working with Rhianan were aware of her autism diagnosis. I'm entirely satisfied (staff at the children's home) were able to communicate with and support Rhianan effectively.' The inquest heard that an MI5 investigation was 'the only way to further understand the threat she might pose to national security'. MI5 investigated the girl from October 2020 until her death but had 'no indication' from intelligence gathered that she had intended to end her own life, an MI5 officer told the inquest. Judge Durran said: 'Rhianan was a talented, funny and complex young person who made a lasting impression on those around her and will be deeply missed.'
South Wales Argus
4 hours ago
- South Wales Argus
Groomed terror suspect not treated as a ‘vulnerable child', says her mother
Rhianan Rudd, who died aged 16, had an 'obsession with Hitler', downloaded a bomb-making manual, and threatened to 'blow up' a synagogue after she was radicalised online by an American neo-Nazi. In the 18 months before she died, Rhianan was diagnosed with autism, investigated by counter-terrorism policing and MI5, and prosecuted over terrorism charges after she had been groomed and allegedly sexually exploited by extremists. Senior coroner Judge Alexia Durran concluded that she was not satisfied that Rhianan intended to end her own life at Chesterfield Coroner's Court on Monday. She said that 'missed opportunities' in Rhianan's case were 'not systemic' and she will not make a prevention of future deaths report. Rhianan was charged with terrorism offences (Family handout/Leigh Day Solicitors) In an interview, Rhianan's mother, Emily Carter, said she believes the teenager's death was preventable and the agencies involved in her case need to be held accountable. Ms Carter said: 'They need to recognise that the way they dealt with things was not the correct way, because she's dead. 'I don't ever want this to happen to another family. This has been devastating. 'If I could save just one child from these people making all their changes and making sure they follow through with everything, there's justice in my eyes – my daughter didn't kill herself for no reason. 'It was just one thing after another basically, but all of them should learn from Rhianan's death, all of them.' Ms Carter said Rhianan was not treated as a vulnerable child, despite her autism diagnosis, and she does not believe her daughter was ever a threat to other people. The mother said: 'She was five foot one, weighed seven stone. She was tiny. 'I don't know what people thought she could do, but I don't believe that she was ever a threat. It was just what people would put in her head – brainwashed her, basically. 'They (the agencies) treated her as a child, but I don't believe they treated her as a vulnerable child. 'If you've got vulnerable children, you take extra steps to watch them, to look after them, to make sure they feel safe, even from themselves, and they didn't. Obviously, she's dead.' Rhianan Rudd was found dead at a children's home (Family handout/Leigh Day Solicitors) The mother said the moment 19 police officers and two detectives came to arrest her daughter at their family home was 'mind-numbing' and she felt 'violated' when officers turned her house 'upside down'. She said: 'It hurt … the fact that they thought that my daughter was some sort of massive terrorist. 'They were going to put her in handcuffs, but the handcuffs didn't go small enough. Even on the smallest ones, they just fell off her hands. That's how small she was.' The inquest heard that the police did not refer Rhianan to the National Referral Mechanism (NRM), which identifies victims of human trafficking or modern slavery, when they began investigating her in 2020, but the referral was made by Derbyshire County Council in April 2021. Her mother says the NRM referral should have been done 'at the very beginning' because 'they could see that she was vulnerable'. Ms Carter added that she thinks Rhianan should not have been charged, and said: 'She was a child, a vulnerable child. A child with mental health issues. 'She should have been treated as a victim more than anything.' The mother also said it 'angered' her that Rhianan was investigated by MI5 before her death and added: 'If they knew that my daughter was being groomed and sexually exploited online, and then you're investigating at that time, why did nobody come and stop it? 'Why watch a child be completely humiliated, sexualised, trafficked, brainwashed?' Speaking about her daughter's autism diagnosis, Ms Carter said Rhianan would get fixated and 'sucked into' something until it was the 'be all and end all of everything'. She said Rhianan's fixations began with My Little Pony before she became interested in German history, wanted '1940s German furniture in her bedroom', and eventually made contact with extremists on the messaging apps Telegram and Discord. Ms Carter said: 'Finding out that she'd been groomed, and the way these people talked to her … it really changed her wholeness as a person, the way she thinks, the way she feels, everything.' She said that Rhianan was a 'bubbly' girl but she became withdrawn after she was radicalised, and added that the extremists 'took away an innocent child' and 'took away her substance as a person'. She said: 'After she started talking to her so-called friend online – I thought she was talking to gamer friends and friends from school – she started withdrawing. 'She stopped talking about normal things. She wasn't very bubbly, and I'd literally have to drag her out the house.' Rhianan Rudd (left) was aged 16 when she died (Family handout/Leigh Day Solicitors/PA) Ms Carter said she believes Rhianan's death could have been prevented if she was placed in a mental health unit, rather than the children's home, to 'deal with her mood swings, her brain going mad'. She said: 'They don't know a child like a mother does. Even when she was at home, I would wake up two or three times throughout the night and go and check her. These houses aren't guaranteed to do that.' The mother added that it was 'scary' when she referred her daughter to Prevent but she 'knew it had to be done'. She said: 'I was hoping that it was just going to take her two or three times a week to work on her mind, unpick her head, and turn her back into Rhianan. 'Not end up with all these police officers turning up arresting her and pulling my house apart. You don't expect that at all.' The inquest heard that Rhianan took an overdose of her mother's medication after being encouraged to by the 'two competing individuals' in her mind a week before she was charged and moved to the children's home. Recalling that moment, Ms Carter said: 'I go down the stairs and Rhianan was laying on my living room floor. And I actually thought she was dead, but she wasn't. 'She basically called them (an ambulance) when she decided that she changed her mind and didn't want to die.' Ms Carter continued: 'I've made mistakes, and I want the organisations to put their hands up and admit they've made mistakes and to rectify their mistakes so it doesn't happen again. 'And then that way everybody can be happy, except me, because I've already lost my daughter.' Ms Carter described Rhianan as 'loving, kind' and a 'really beautiful soul'. She added: 'Her brother, Brandon, and Rhianan were like two peas in a pod, and he just feels completely lost without her.' Following the inquest, Ms Carter said the family's anguish was increased by hearing that Rhianan was 'let down by the police, the Prevent anti-terror programme, Derbyshire County Council and the mental health bodies'. In a statement read outside Chesterfield Coroner's Court on behalf of Ms Carter by Anna Moore of Leigh Day Solicitors, she added: 'The chief coroner has found that Rhianan was denied access to services which should have supported and protected her and, I believe, could have saved her life. 'Looking at the number of missed opportunities recognised by the coroner, it's hard to see how they cannot have had an impact on Rhianan's state of mind.'
