At first, Rhianan Rudd was presented to the public as a frightening symbol of teenage far-Right radicalisation: at 15, she became the youngest girl in Britain to face terrorism charges.
Classmates later recalled seeing her sketch swastikas and images of Adolf Hitler in schoolbooks, deny the Holocaust and repeat antisemitic claims about Jewish control of banks.
Yet the fuller picture of how a vulnerable autistic schoolgirl from Derbyshire was pulled into that extremist world through online grooming would soon raise profound concerns.
Rhianan came under MI5 scrutiny after downloading a bomb-making guide, expressing a desire to blow up a synagogue and carving a swastika into her forehead.
Authorities later accepted that she had been exploited, but the case ended in tragedy: Rhianan died aged 16 in May 2022 at a children’s home, five months after the charges against her were dropped.
Now her mother, Emily Carter, and Rhianan’s friends have spoken in a new documentary about the events behind one of the UK’s most contentious youth counter-terrorism cases.
In Channel 4’s ‘The Schoolgirl Terrorist?’, airing tomorrow at 10pm, Ms Carter says her daughter believed she was chatting online with a school friend who called himself ‘Chris’.
That person was actually Chris Cook, an American neo-Nazi later jailed in 2023 for terrorism offences linked to plans to attack power grids. The white supremacist had encountered Rhianan in an online gaming group and groomed her during the 2020 pandemic lockdown.
Rhianan Rudd died in May 2022, five months after terrorism charges against her were dropped
Rhianan Rudd with her mother Emily Carter, who says she should have been treated as a victim
Ms Carter said: ‘One day she came down and we were just sitting talking. She went “oh, my friend Chris from school, we’ve been doing this history thing on Germany”.
‘And she became obsessed with Germany, but she did speak to this “Chris” a lot. So I checked everything on the computer. She had an attic room, so we had to go, open the door and up a flight of stairs to get to her room.
‘So she would hear me coming, and every time I would get up there she was gaming. She would watch YouTube, or if it was in the morning, it would be her school work.
‘She did chat to her friends from school. And I couldn’t see anything on there that would make your hair stand up on your neck. So I used to think to myself, “you’re just being paranoid, she’s just a teenager”.’
Rhianan’s fixations began with My Little Pony before she became interested in German history and eventually made contact with extremists on the messaging apps Telegram and Discord.
One of Rhianan’s friends told the programme that she rarely spoke to her during lockdown, but noticed her sudden interest in the Nazis when they returned to school after restrictions began to ease.
The friend said: ‘She drew photos in our school books that weren’t like what she used to draw. Drawings of swastikas and Hitler. She played it off as “Oh, it’s nothing serious, I just think he’s so kawaii” – it means cute in Japanese.
‘She would kind of use the voice that you would use for a cat or a dog when talking about Adolf Hitler. And I went “that’s not OK”.’
Rhiannon’s mother Emily Carter has revealed how her daughter became groomed online
Ms Carter said Rhianan was speaking online to someone she thought was a school friend called ‘Chris’. He turned out to be a neo-Nazi called Chris Cook who was later jailed in the US
A second friend said he and Rhianan ‘fell out for a little bit’ when he found out she was talking to an adult online when they were only aged 14.
The friend claimed to have told her: ‘You shouldn’t be talking to that man, that’s dangerous’. But their friendship then began ‘eroding away’ and Rhianan ‘started spiralling quicker and quicker’.
A third friend said he was ‘so bewildered’ when Rhianan told him that the Holocaust ‘didn’t happen’ and claimed: ‘The Jews control all world banks’.
The friend added: ‘What the f*** are you on about? She was so locked into these beliefs that there was no reasoning with her any more.’
The online extremists groomed and allegedly sexually exploited Rhianan, before she was arrested by 19 police officers and two detectives at the family home.
Ms Carter has always insisted that her daughter, who was known to self-harm, was a vulnerable child and should have been treated as a victim who had been brainwashed.
Rhianan – who was 5ft 1in and weighed 7st – was said to have been severely impacted by the police investigation and scared about going to prison as a result of being prosecuted for terrorism.
But chief coroner Judge Alexia Durran concluded during an inquest at Chesterfield Coroner’s Court in June 2025 that it was ‘necessary and appropriate’ to investigate and prosecute Rhianan for terrorism offences.
Rhianan had become Britain’s youngest girl to be charged with terrorism offences aged 15
Ms Carter made contact with Dax Mallaburn (pictured), who had convictions relating to violent organised crime, through a write to prisoners scheme. They then lived together from 2017
The coroner also said there were ‘missed opportunities’ to save her life, although these were ‘not systemic’ – and she could not be certain that Rhianan intended to take her own life.
She additionally found that Ms Carter’s previous partner, who had been in prison and had a swastika tattoo, was a ‘significant radicalising influence’ on Rhianan.
Ms Carter made contact with an American called Dax Mallaburn, who had convictions relating to violent organised crime, through a write-to-prisoners scheme. They then lived together from November 2017.
When detectives from Counter Terrorism Policing East Midland visited Rhianan’s home in Bolsover, Derbyshire, in October 2020, they seized a USB memory stick and a diary.
Police discovered PDF manuals on how to make a bomb and far-Right materials, before passing this onto MI5 which opened an investigation.
In the days that followed, MI5 and the police initially decided not to arrest Rhianan because of concerns she could have tried to kill herself.
But a decision was then made to arrest her after she was admitted to hospital for trying to carve a swastika onto her forehead – given it was felt she now posed a risk to others.
Charges were eventually dropped in December 2021 after the Home Office made a formal finding that Rhianan was a victim of exploitation.
Rhianan was pronounced dead five months later on May 19, 2022 at Bluebell House Residential Home, a children’s home in Nottinghamshire.
‘The Schoolgirl Terrorist?’ airs on Channel 4 tomorrow at 10pm
