Charities say the case of a UK teenager who became the youngest girl to be charged with terror offenses after being groomed online by right-wing extremists should be a “ton of attention’ on children’s online vulnerability.
Rhianan Rudd, who was 15 when she was accused, took her own life at a nursery in Nottinghamshire in May last year when she was 16.
Charges against her were then dropped after evidence showed she had been a victim of online grooming.
Nigel Bromage, the founder of the charity Exit Hate, which supports people to turn away from extremism, said he was seeing an increasing number of children fall victim to online grooming by extremists the right.
“The youngest we’ve worked with is a nine-year-old boy who was being influenced by video games,” he said.
“Hearing Rhianan’s story, we are seeing this journey play out over and over again. Our hearts go out to the affected family and it is certainly a wake-up call to how vulnerable our young people are in line”.
And he added: “Teachers, families, we all need to be able to talk to our young people about this, even if it’s difficult and makes us feel uncomfortable. Otherwise, we’re just opening the door to extremists.”
Nick Lowles, the chief executive of Hope Not Hate, said Rhianan’s story was “sadly another case of how far-right extremism ruins lives”.
“In recent years, we’ve heard stories from parents of their children changing before their eyes after viewing extreme content online,” he said.
“It is vital that there is more joined-up thinking between schools, parents and the police about how to support children who are exposed to extreme content online and ensure that our counter-extremism strategy is not seen only from a law and order lens.”
Rhianan’s mother, Emily Carter, told the BBC this week that her daughter should have been treated “as a victim rather than a terrorist”, describing how her daughter held extreme views “like a sponge “.
“It’s a child, an autistic child. She should have been treated like a child who had been groomed and sexually exploited,” he said, adding that police should have handled the case “completely differently.”
At the age of 14, Rhianan, who lived in Derbyshire, was charged with having instructions to make firearms and explosives, and at the time of her arrest she had a swastika stuck to her forehead, which she later tried to erase.
He had been talking online with Christopher Cook, an American neo-Nazi who previously pleaded guilty to planning a terrorist attack on a US power grid.
Evidence also showed that she had been influenced by Dax Mallaburn, a former boyfriend of Rhianan’s mother and a member of the neo-Nazi group the Arizona Arian Brotherhood.
Bromage said tech companies should step up, citing an example of a current project with Facebook that redirects people to the Exit Hate page when they search for the name of certain right-wing extremists.
But he added that there needed to be more awareness of some of the underlying causes that make young people feel “lost” and more likely to fall prey to online hairdressers.
“A lot of the young people we talk to at the moment are struggling with identity and how they can identify as white and English, or male,” he said.
“We try to teach them to protect and celebrate their identity in a way that’s multicultural, in a way that they don’t have to worry about being called racist because it’s inclusive.
“We need to help educate people about what we can actually celebrate and what might offend.”
Derbyshire Police were contacted for comment but declined while inquest proceedings into Rhianan’s death continue.