I’m as tough as they come but I held back tears over Southport details – no parent should have to endure those horrors
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“HE took our daughter, her life, her future, and everything she could have been. “There is no greater loss and no greater pain. His actions have left us with a lifetime of grief and it is only right that he faces the same.”. Those are the heart-wrenching words of Jenni Stancombe, the mother of murdered seven-year-old Elsie Dot, addressing the court at the sentencing of Axel Rudakubana.
![[Mugshot of Axel Rudakubana.]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/undated-handout-photo-issued-merseyside-965245126_c1e716.jpg?strip=all&w=720)
It is a genuine mystery to me how any of the parents of the child victims of the Southport attack were able to so bravely sit through the harrowing evidence and to so eloquently speak out on behalf of their children. Even as a hard-bitten old hack who has covered many a criminal trial, I struggled to hold back the tears as I read the gruesome details out loud on my radio show.
![[Prime Minister Keir Starmer and others carrying floral tributes.]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/seen-carrying-floral-tribute-near-965227503_a6dfe7.jpg?strip=all&w=960)
Some of the cold, hard facts hit you like a punch in the stomach: Little girls screaming and running for the door as their classmates were stabbed dozens of times. And the killer, just hours after the attack, telling police that he was “so glad” and “happy” that he’d killed the children; smiling when he was told that his youngest murder victim, Bebe King, was just six years old.
![[Photo of Elsie Dot Stancombe.]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/handout-photo-elsie-dot-stancombe-965228106_795d7a.jpg?strip=all&w=768)
I remember being told before I became a mother myself that, when I was a parent, I would feel the full horror of these crimes so much more. I didn’t believe them at the time. But they were right. Every parent, just like me, will have had to confront the thought that it could have been THEIR child among the three little girls who died in Southport on that terrible summer’s day last year — or among the other eight children who were stabbed and the many others who managed to escape with only mental, rather than physical, scars.
![[Girl in white dress standing next to a lighted cross.]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/handout-photo-alice-da-silva-965228142_508546.jpg?strip=all&w=723)
