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23 Jan 2025

Southport sentencing day ‘very painful’, says priest

Chief Correspondent

In Southport people have been taking in the news from Liverpool Crown Court that Axel Rudakubana is likely to die in jail after being given a minimum term of 52 years for murdering three girls here last July.

We speak to Father John Heneghan from Southport’s Saint Patrick’s Catholic Church.

Alex Thomson: It’s curious, but sometimes the people at the epicentre, the parents, the families, can be forgotten. You’re close, very close indeed, to Alice’s family. What possible hope can you offer? This is as bad as it gets.

John Heneghan: Absolutely horrendous day. And the whole of the last six months have been so painful in so many ways. But today is very painful, as we’ve heard so much on the news today and the reports of what really happened. But you’re right, the families are at the very, very centre and the foremost of our minds in Southport. I’m sure so many people are watching now. That’s how they are. And if they’re like me, when I heard those reports and read them, I teared up, my eyes filled with tears and I could feel tightness in my throat. And even now I can feel it in myself. Many people will be feeling that way because we feel for the parents and the families. The parents of the three girls, Alice and Bebe and Elsie, who died, and the families, and also the other children who were hurt so terribly, and their parents, their families and the adults who were hurt, and so many other people who knew them and were attached to them, all of those people. That’s the centre of where we are today.

Alex Thomson: These impact statements, I was reading one today, a woman who worked at where this happened, still unable to walk down the street. Someone walks past, she turns around and wonders if they’re going to stab her.

John Heneghan: It’s just so sad. I can understand how she would be feeling that way after the trauma she has been through. But it’s heartbreaking to hear that she would be so, that anyone could be so frightened. But we can understand how they will be. This is going to take such a long time. Six months is very, very early days. And we’ve just got to be here. How we feel in Southport is, we’ll be here with them, as long as they need us, we’ll walk alongside them and help them always be available to them.

Alex Thomson: Of course. Is there anything in particular the families want? They’ve got a public inquiry, but goodness me, that’s years, years of work. And the parents, the families cry out for something to change now, I wonder.

John Heneghan: I’m not aware of anything, particularly at the moment. I think they’re so much in the grief at the moment is my impression. Certainly it’s Alice’s family that I would know mostly. I’ve only met the parents of Bebe and Elsie once. Lovely family, beautiful families that they are. For Alice’s family, the grief is just so profound. I’m feeling that, I’m sure many of us are. And it’s difficult to think beyond that. Because the grief is so profound.

Alex Thomson: And of course that goes for the wider community.

John Heneghan: Yeah, definitely. We certainly, I think everybody’s affected in Southport, but it goes with the help of the media. It goes way beyond Southport. Who hasn’t been feeling this? I’ve got a sister down in London who’s heartbroken about this. I have a brother up in Yorkshire, and the nieces, who are heartbroken. So the boundaries are not so important now, do you know?