Girl ‘groomed by neo-Nazis’ killed herself in care home
Authorities face questions over how teen charged with terror offences was lured into far-Right extremism
THE youngest girl charged with terrorism offences in the UK, who hanged herself in a children’s home, had been groomed and exploited by American neo-Nazis, an investigation by The Sunday Telegraph has discovered.
Rhianan Rudd, who was charged with terror offences at just 14, gouged a swastika onto her forehead at the time of her arrest and had subsequently tried to “scratch it out”, care home staff said.
The schoolgirl had been accused of having written instructions and a video on how to make a bomb, and a guide for the 3-D printing of guns.
She was charged with the “commission, preparation of instigation of an act of terrorism”.
It is alleged a former boyfriend of the girl’s mother had been involved in radicalising her. Dax Mallaburn was described in a US Supreme Court ruling as a member of the neo-Nazi group the Arizona Aryan Brotherhood.
Rhianan, who had grown up in Essex before moving to Bolsover, Derbyshire, was also groomed and exploited sexually online by a second older American male, sources have told The Telegraph.
Her death raises disturbing questions for British authorities on how to tackle the growing numbers of children lured into extreme Right-wing terrorism.
The latest official figures show almost one in seven suspects arrested for terrorism offences were aged under 18. Ken McCallum, the director general of MI5, warned last year of “a high prevalence of teenagers, including young teenagers” involved in extreme Rightwing terrorist activity.
An inquest into Rhianan’s death, opened earlier this month, heard the 16-year-old was found dead by her carer at Bluebell House in New Ollerton, near Newark, Notts, on May 19. A full inquest will take place next year.
Rhianan was arrested in October 2020 and had been due to stand trial in August last year at Nottingham Youth Court on six terrorism charges.
But the case was delayed and charges then dropped after an intervention by the Home Office, which concluded she was a victim of trafficking who had been groomed and sexually exploited.
Under modern slavery laws, a child does not have to be subjected to forced movement to be a trafficking victim.
A Home Office spokesman said: “This is a tragedy and we wish to express our deepest sympathies. Decisions on prosecutions are taken independently by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) on a case-by-case basis. The Government is clear in its goal to identify and support victims of modern slavery who may be at risk of exploitation.”
Emily Carter, Rhianan’s mother, said: “I feel let down and angry and hurt about what happened to my daughter. It’s been devastating.”
Ms Carter, 49, said she was considering legal action against the authorities under the Human Rights Act for failing to take steps to protect her daughter.
She had visited Rhianan on the weekend before she died and had been so concerned that she “rang the care home and I told them something was wrong and please look after her”.
Four days later, she was dead. Ms Carter said as far as she knew, Mallaburn, with whom she had a threeyear relationship, was not involved in her daughter’s radicalisation.
She said: “He [Mallaburn] wasn’t involved to my knowledge. He was involved in that [extremism] in the US, but not while he was with me.”
She said she had since broken all ties with Mallaburn. “I have got nothing to do with him now because anything to do with him brings trouble,” she added.
Care home staff said they believed Mallaburn had been involved in radicalising Rhianan and that this ideology had left her troubled and “conflicted”.
Rhianan was taken into care at Bluebell House in April 2021 and staff noticed a swastika carved into her forehead which she had then tried to eradicate. Pradeep Manaktala, who set up the chain of children’s care homes, said: “Rhianan was a very happy child, but she felt conflicted. She was radicalised by her mother’s American boyfriend, who was a white supremacist and taught her to look at the world that way.
“But at the same time she was being cared for and given unconditional love here by our black and Asian staff. She found it difficult to reconcile this with what she was being told by this white supremacist. She had come with a swastika gouged on her forehead but she had attempted to scratch it out.”
His son, Sandeep Manaktala, the director of operations for Blue Mountain Homes, the parent company of Bluebell House, said: “Rhianan came to us from a radicalised background and we took her to the point where she was taking her GCSEs. She was making great progress and what happened was a tragedy.”
Derbyshire County Council, which had taken Rhianan into care, said in a statement: “We were very sad to learn of Rhianan’s death earlier this year and our thoughts remain with her family and friends.
“We have taken part in a review of Rhianan’s case and will ensure that the key points are shared with colleagues across all agencies involved.”
Writing for The Telegraph online, Jonathan Hall KC, the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, said Rhianan’s death and the growing number of teenage terror suspects showed a need for the Government to beef up its Online Safety Bill to protect children.
He said the “tragic case” of Rhianan adds to the evidence “that children are particularly susceptible to being drawn into terrorist offending through encountering terrorism content online”. Mallaburn has been described by the US authorities as a “armed career criminal”. In a US Supreme Court ruling in 2019, he was described as a member in 2005 of the “Arizona Aryan Brotherhood” who had “circulated a hit list” that had included the name of an undercover federal agent in revenge for infiltrating the Hells Angels.
In 2017, a district court in Arizona refused an appeal to revoke the terms of his supervised release from prison, on the grounds that he had “failed to establish … that he is not likely to flee or pose a danger to the safety of the community if released”. He had been convicted on firearms charges, having already served time in a South Carolina prison in 2005.
Rhianan’s funeral was held at Chesterfield crematorium in July, her body transported by a horse-drawn hearse in memory of her love of the animals. She had helped out at a local stables.
Janette Hallatt, a dental nurse who met Rhianan through the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Chesterfield, said: “It was just so sad.
“A friend rang me one morning to say Rhianan had hung herself and it was devastating. She was an absolutely lovely girl and just didn’t expect that of her. I was devastated.”
She added: “I knew Rhianan had been arrested at one point, but nobody really knew the details. Neither Rhianan nor her mother Emily spoke about it at the church. Something terrible must have happened for her to go into care. She should not have hung herself.”
‘She had come [into care] with a swastika gouged on her forehead but she had tried to scratch it out’