The families of the three girls murdered in the Southport stabbings have launched a scathing attack on the killer’s parents – accusing them of "knowingly allowing evil to exist unchecked under their own roof".
In statements released following the conclusion of evidence by the killer’s parents, the families of Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, Bebe King, six, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, said there had been a "failure to take responsibility" both before and after their daughter’s deaths.
The strongly worded statements also marked the end of Phase One of the Southport Inquiry, which has spent nine weeks looking into what could have been done to prevent the murders.
There is no doubting just how shocked the country was by the murders of those three girls at that Taylor Swift summer-holiday dance class.
It is one of the reasons that the number of referrals of young people to the government’s anti terrorism Prevent programme has hit a new record.
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