A British teen terror suspect who committed suicide last year was groomed and radicalized online by American white supremacists before her arrest in 2020, a new documentary claims.
Rhianan Rudd — who, at age 14, was the youngest woman ever charged with terrorism in the UK — fell under the spell of a pair of American extremists and, according to reports, even exchanged sexually charged messages with one of them.
Despite this, British officials pitched the book to Rudd for downloading bomb-making plans — leading her mother to argue in a new documentary, “Groomed, Radicalized, Gone,” that the autistic youngster was being further abused by the law.
“They should have seen her as a victim rather than a terrorist,” mother Emily Carter complained, according to the TBEN.
“She’s a child, an autistic child. She should have been treated like a child who had been cared for and sexually exploited.”
The charges were dropped in December 2021, but Rudd was so upset by the experience that she committed suicide in a care home in May 2022, her mother said.
Rudd is said to have become radicalized after she started talking online to American neo-Nazi Christopher Cook. The mother said Rudd — who would eventually carve a swastika into her forehead — soaked up the radical message like a sponge.
“[She thought] if you didn’t have blond hair and blue eyes – Aryan as they say – she didn’t want to know you, then you were an inferior race, you shouldn’t have lived,” Carter told the TBEN.
In September 2020, Carter placed Rudd in Prevent, a government deradicalization program.
Later, when questioned by police, Rudd described being emotionally and sexually manipulated by Cook.
The FBI also had the couple’s explicit exchanges extracted from Cook’s devices, which they turned over to MI5, Britain’s homeland security agency.
But while modern slavery laws stipulate that certain public authorities must notify the Home Office of potential cases of exploitation, the TBEN found that no such report had ever been made on Rudd’s behalf until official charges had been brought.
According to the reports, Rudd had also been radicalized by a man named Dax Mallaburn, who was both allegedly a flame of the teen’s mother and a member of the Arizona Aryan Brotherhood, The Sunday Telegraph reported.
While Carter said she and Mallaburn broke up before Rudd’s arrest, the TBEN’s investigation revealed the pair had been in contact, with Mallaburn urging Carter to teach her daughter the “right way”.
Although the Home Office eventually dropped charges against Rudd on the basis of evidence that she had been cared for, Carter told the TBEN that her daughter’s mental health suffered under the weight of her legal woes.
Rudd was banned from school and resorted to self-harm, running away, and suicide attempts. Social Services placed her in care in Nottinghamshire.
During a visit just days before her daughter’s death, Carter said she was so shocked by her appearance that she warned care home staff that Rudd was “going to do something.” Despite assurances that her concerns would be acted upon, Rudd was subsequently found dead by hanging at the age of 16-12 hours after retiring to her room for the night.
MI5 has deferred responsibility for the tragedy in a statement to the TBEN.
“MI5 takes its responsibility towards those at risk very seriously,” a government spokesman said.
“…In the course of work to protect national security, if any person in MI5 obtains information that a person is or may be at risk of death or serious injury, it will be passed on to the relevant authorities.”
An inquest into Rudd’s death will take place, but has not yet been scheduled.
