LOOKING at the vulnerable seven-year-old dressed in a Harry Potter T-shirt in front of him, it was hard to believe that weeks earlier she’d picked up a knife and severed the finger of her three-year-old half-sibling.
As Duncan Harding tried to gently cajole the primary school pupil into a conversation about JK Rowling’s wizarding world, she shut down “like a rabbit in the headlights”.
Social workers had called in Dr Harding, a leading forensic psychiatrist, in the hope of helping the youngster who had a troubled, abusive background.
“She was emotionally shut down,” says Harding.
“When you speak to someone who has suffered trauma at a young age, they can choose not to speak or just can’t speak, and she was just a traumatised little girl.”
Almost five years later, aged 13, that same innocent-looking girl was charged with stabbing an older friend – almost killing her.
It came almost as no surprise to Harding, who says society can very often be too sympathetic to kids who commit extreme crimes.
He says: “We have a fantasy as a society that if we have a problem child we can fix them, but I’m not always sure we can.
“This young girl was one of those cases that gets under the skin and stays there.
“Her upbringing was very difficult and there was a lot of generational trauma.
“After severing her victim’s finger she was seen by various services and diagnosed with autism. I didn’t necessarily agree with that diagnosis.
“Unfortunately a few years later she attempted to kill a friend. So much damage had been done to her as a little girl that she couldn’t be rescued.
“By the time she hit her teens her personality was developing in a way that she had no empathy for others.
“She was showing psychopathic tendencies.”
‘Child killer epidemic’
Harding says Britain is facing a child crime epidemic amid a growing knife problem – and Government figures reveal he is not wrong.
In the year ending March 2024, 3,200 knife offences were committed by children and 57 young people under the age of 25 were stabbed to death.
Seventeen of them were under the age of 16.
Last July the country was left shocked and sickened by the murders of Alice Aguiar, nine, seven-year-old Elsie Stancombe, and Bebe King, six, who were fatally stabbed by 17-year-old Axel Rudakubana at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport.
Dad-of-one Harding, who works with some of Britain’s most twisted child killers, warns: “We are stuck in an epidemic of child killing. I daren’t look at the news some days.
“It’s scary for our children and I felt so strongly about it, I didn’t know whether or not to bring a child into this world.”
We are stuck in an epidemic of child killing. I daren’t look at the news some days… I didn’t know whether or not to bring a child into this world
Dr Duncan Harding
He fears the UK faces more serial killings like the Southport tragedy because the country doesn’t have measures in place to stop child killers.
Rudakubana was known to police and social services and had been referred to the Government’s Prevent programme three times between 2019 and 2021 due to his interest in terror attacks and school shootings.
The teenager, jailed for 52 years in January, was bounced back and forth between various agencies because Prevent found no evidence of a ‘fixed terrorist ideology’.
Harding says: “Basically what you’ve got is a young person with concerns from family and local authorities, but people didn’t listen.
“The basic problem was that he was referred to Prevent but didn’t fit in their box. By the time he was referred for a third time, Prevent stepped back because mental health services stepped forward.
“What we need is one multi-disciplinary team to deal with troubled children. Sometimes kids with complex needs need a network of professionals
“Unless we get a grip, something like Southport could happen again.”
High risk
While sympathetic to many young criminals he deals with, Harding controversially says many need to be locked up – for their own good.
He says: “When I see someone who has committed a heinous act I try to look at the person behind the noise.
“The social situation might be deprivation and all sorts of things go on in life that can cloud a situation, but under that is a human being.
“I hold on to the idea that children are essentially good when they are naive and new to the world.
“You [believe] you can do the work with them to help, but with many children who kill it’s not as straightforward as that.
You [believe] you can do the work with them to help, but with many children who kill it’s not as straightforward as that. It’s important to be realistic and realise that children can do really terrible things and essentially be bad people
Dr Duncan Harding
“It’s important to be realistic and realise that children can do really terrible things and essentially be bad people.
“Having a bad start in life isn’t an explanation. It’s not enough to say, ‘Well they had a terrible start in life’.
“The truth is that, in some cases, young people just need to be in custody, and that might be a terrible thing to say in some people’s opinions.
“Some say children shouldn’t be incarcerated but they are sometimes so high risk they need to be.”
No boundaries
He believes today’s parents struggle to set firm boundaries for their kids – and gives an example of a middle class boy who killed his aunt in a “temper tantrum” over his mobile phone.
The 17-year-old’s defence argued he was psychotic – something Harding disagreed with.
The case is featured in a new book by the psychiatrist which outlines some of his most serious cases.
Harding, who has to anonymise his most high profile cases in his book, says: “In modern society, the boundaries have kind of been eroded.
“An extreme version of this surrounds identification. If a child at school can identify as a cat, where are we as a society?
“Childhood is complex enough without having boundaries. We need to realise there’s a consequence to our behaviours.
“Liam was basically throwing a tantrum after his mobile phone was taken away. He was from a nice background, had a good upbringing, but the boundaries just weren’t there.
If a child at school can identify as a cat, where are we as a society?
Dr Duncan Harding
“Add to that a sense of entitlement and the risk can start to escalate, especially when you go down the path of experimenting with drugs as this teenager had.”
While adolescent psychiatry, which featured prominently in the disturbing Netflix hit Adolescence, generally stays away from labels like psychopath or sociopath for kids – preferring ‘conduct disorder’ – Harding strongly believes that some children show signs at an early age.
He believes that Britain’s most notorious child killers Mary Bell and Jamie Bulger murderer Jon Venables are natural psychopaths, showing no remorse or guilt for their savagery.
Bell was just 10 when she strangled Martin Brown, four, and three-year-old Brian Howe to death before mutilating them in Scotswood, Newcastle in 1968.
Venables was the same age as Bell when he and Robert Thompson, also 10, abducted, tortured and murdered two-year-old Jamie Bulger after leading him away from a shopping centre in Bootle, Liverpool in 1993.
The pair served eight years in secure children’s units and were given lifelong anonymity in 2001.
But Venables has re-offended four times. He has twice been jailed for possession of child abuse images and also received cautions for affray and possession of cocaine.
Harding says: “There was sadism involved in these cases and if we want an indication of what children can be capable of, there we have it.
“We wouldn’t diagnose a child with a personality disorder but I’ve come across young kids in which you can see the signs of psychopathy, killing animals at an early age in a very sadistic way for example.”
Britain's worst killer kids
Sarah Davey
Teenager Sarah Davey, from Failsworth in Manchester, was just 14 when she and a friend sadistically tortured grandmother Lily Lilley, 71, before killing her in 1998.
They battered her body and hit her so hard her false teeth were forced down her throat, then shoved her lifeless body in a wheelie bin and dragged it to a nearby canal to dump it.
Davey was locked up indefinitely in 1999, but released in March 2024 after going up before the parole board.
She has been freed eight times since 2013 but each time has broken her parole conditions.
Scarlett Jenkinson and Eddie Ratcliffe
Twisted Jenkinson and Ratcliffe, both 15, lured Brianna Ghey to a park near Warrington before they murdered her in a frenzied attack.
Tragic Brianna was stabbed 28 times with a hunting knife and the cruel pair both blamed each other for the attack.
Jenkinson, who was obssessed with serial killers and knives, was caged for a minimum of 22 years and Ratcliffe, a loner but model student before the killing, for a minimum of 20 years.
Kim Edwards and Lucas Markham
Teen sweethearts Edward and Markham, both aged 14 at the time, stabbed Kim’s mum Elizabeth Edwards, 49, and her younger sister Katie, 13, as they slept.
The pair were dubbed the ‘Twilight Killers’ after it emerged they ate tea cakes and ice cream and watched the vampire movie after the murders.
Markham became one of the youngest ever double murderers after admitting two counts of murder at Nottingham Crown Court.
Edwards admitted manslaughter but denied murdering the church-going dinner lady and her daughter due to her mental condition.
But the court heard she was the “driver” behind a “cold and brutal” plot to kill Elizabeth and Katie.
The only member of the family not killed was Edwards’ older half-sister Mary Cottingham, who lived in Derby with her husband and children.
Jon Venables and Robert Thompson
Their horrifying crime, in 1993, shocked the nation when two-year-old Jamie Bulger was abducted, tortured and murdered by the evil boys before being dumped on railway tracks.
Both were eventually released from prison under new identities, however Venables is now back inside for possession of indecent images of children.
Venables’ latest bid to be paroled was denied.
Snapchat Killers
In December 2014 two teenagers – known later in court as Girl A and Girl B – tortured and murdered loner Angela Wrightson, filming the attack on their phones.
The teens, who were aged 13 and 14 years old at the time, successfully won a bid to have lifelong anonymity, like the Venables and Thompson, in 2021.
Dubbed the Snapchat killers the youngsters sent a selfie from inside a police van after killing tragic Angela, 39, during a horrific five-hour-long attack.
They were convicted of Angela’s murder and jailed for a minimum of 15 years.
Will Cornick
Schoolboy Will murdered his teacher Ann Maguire, 61, stabbing her seven times as she taught a class at Corpus Christi Catholic College in Leeds when he was 15.
After stabbing the teacher to death, he callously boasted: “I couldn’t give a s***” .
Cornick said he had a “sense of pride” after the classroom murder, and added: “Everything I’ve done is fine and dandy.”
He won’t be eligible for parole before 2034.
Daniel Bartlam
Daniel Bartlam was just 14 when he beat his mum to death in a hammer attack copied from Coronation Street.
The teen repeatedly battered Jacqueline’s face and head before setting her body alight.
Schoolboy Bartlam was obsessed with TV soap murder plots and grisly horror movies.
Sharon Carr
Carr was aged just 12 when she stabbed 18-year-old hairdresser Katie Rackliff 32 times.
The murder went unsolved for several years, as cops were looking for an adult assailant rather than a child.
Some of the knife thrusts went clean through Katie’s body and diaries seized by police were full of sickening boasts about the murder.
Carr was dubbed the “devils daughter” for her lack of remorse in the attack.
She was convicted of the murder in 1997 and handed a sentence of at least 12 years.
Her last bid for freedom in 2023 was turned down because she was “still violent”.
Society ‘too soft’
Harding says that society is often too soft on kids who offend.
He says: “I once went to see a kid about 14 who had murdered another child by cornering him with a gang.
“The kid was drinking milkshake and, in a case of mistaken identity, the offender stabbed him in the heart with a flick knife.
“The CCTV footage was so clear that his co-defendants weren’t charged as they tried to pull the perpetrator back from his victim.
“He was found guilty of murder and when I went to assess him, for the first time in his life he had started reading… crime novels, which probably weren’t the best, but he was reading at least.
“There was a handwritten note to me from the youth offending service, asking me to take trauma into account.
“When I looked at the case, this teenager’s violence had been escalating yet he was put back into the community each time.
“Before the murder he had a section 18 offence for wounding.
Childhood is complex enough without having boundaries. We need to realise there’s a consequence to our behaviours
Dr Duncan Harding
“He told me that, even with his GPS police tag on, he would still deal drugs in the stairwell of his council estate.
“If he had gone back into his original environment, back into his gang, he wouldn’t get any help.
“What he would actually benefit from was a period in custody, and that’s why we have to sometimes lock kids up.
“There is some argument that the age of criminal responsibility should be moved from 10 to 12, but I’d urge people to consider what would have happened in cases like Jamie Bulger if this is moved?
“We have to have a starting point that children are good but, in order for that to be true, we have to also face the fact that some kids can, maybe through no fault of their own, be sadistic and want to hurt other children.
“I have gone into every case with neutrality but the truth is I’ve come across situations where we’ve just got to be realistic with what we’re faced with.”
The Criminal Mind: From Broadmoor to the Old Bailey. True Stories from a Forensic Psychiatrist’s Handbook by Dr Duncan Harding is published by Penguin Michael Joseph, paperback £10.99.
