Brianna Ghey killer had instructed dad and mom and GP about voices in her head

One of Brianna Ghey‘s killers told her parents and GP she was hearing ‘unkind’ voices in her head and was put on the waiting list for a mental health assessment only days before she murdered the 16-year-old.

Scarlett Jenkinson’s mother, Emma Sutton, told a review that she was ‘panicked’ by her daughter’s revelation in early February 2023.

But a crisis phone call was arranged with a mental health professional and Mrs Sutton was reassured that her daughter was not a risk to herself or others.

The review also highlighted concerns about Jenkinson’s social media use, use of cannabis at school for ‘up to two years’, and how her parents did not engage fully with her schools.

Jenkinson was 15 when she was moved to Brianna’s school in November 2022 after spiking a younger student from her previous school with a cannabis sweet.

The independent safeguarding review discovered there had been ‘no reason known’ to stop Jenkinson ‘mixing freely’ with other pupils after she was transferred and nothing to suggest she was a ‘serious risk’.

Esther Ghey, Brianna’s mother, said the report ‘clearly found that nobody could have predicted the events that took place’.

She added: ‘We are now focused on looking forward to creating a safer more empathetic and resilient society in Brianna’s legacy’.

Brianna was murdered just after Jenkinson’s revelation, in a frenzied attack on February 11, 2023, having been lured to a park in Culcheth, a village on the edge of Warrington, Cheshire.

She was then horrifically stabbed 28 times by Jenkinson, who she considered a friend, and another teenager, Eddie Ratcliffe.

In February, Jenkinson was jailed for life with a minimum term of 22 years and Ratcliffe life with a minimum of 20 years, after both were found guilty of Brianna’s murder.

The independent safeguarding review into Jenkinson, now 17, found mental health workers had been in contact the troubled teenager since November 2021.

But they and education professionals did not know about her ‘fascination with violent acts’ and had ‘no reason to be concerned’ about their contact.

They were unaware of her two previous attempts to poison Brianna in January 2023 and were also unaware she used the dark web to watch videos of torture and killing.

And officials found Jenkinson’s parents’ careers in education could have ‘made practitioners overestimate their ability to support their daughter’.

And the review highlighted concerns about Jenkinson ‘possibly bringing cannabis into school’ for up to two years before an incident in which she gave another child a cannabis sweet in 2022.

It led to her being moved schools to the one where Brianna was a pupil, ‘to avoid a permanent exclusion’.

Police decided not to prosecute Jenkinson for the incident, in which a 13-year-old child fell ill, to ‘support interventions’ but she ‘declined support for substance misuse’.

There had been no previous action over cannabis due to a lack of ‘conclusive evidence’, although she was given a two-day suspension for two incidents ‘involving alcohol in school’.

The review found Mrs Sutton to be in agreement with Brianna’s mother Esther Ghey, that ‘access to social media should be restricted until at least 16, as it reinforces children’s insecurities’ – but she admitted difficulties controlling her daughter’s social media use.

Ms Ghey is campaigning for a total ban on social media use by under 16s. She believes social media exacerbated crippling anxiety which troubled her daughter – who came out as transgender aged 14 – as well as providing her killers with access to violent material.

Mrs Sutton told how her daughter was also ‘very low in confidence, frequently putting herself down, disliking her appearance’, and feeling she was ‘rubbish’ at certain things’.

The report said: ‘Mother believes her low confidence and insecurity about lack of friends was reinforced by use of social media, for example worrying about not getting many ‘likes’.

The review also quoted one of Jenkinson’s siblings, who reported how ‘they also felt concerned about the impact of social media on Scarlett and other impressionable teenagers’.

Jenkinson had started carrying a mobile phone from primary school age, initially with her mother and father using parent controls on internet use.

But her mother acknowledged she felt ‘hard to resist removing them when told by Scarlett that ‘I need YouTube for my homework’.

Some controls remained, however, including her parents not allowing access to other types of social media until she turned 13.

After that, however, the review found Jenkinson was allowed a phone unrestricted except for when it was briefly confiscated following exclusion from school, ‘which caused Scarlett some distress as she was not able to contact friends’.

The review found: ‘Because modern teenagers are so dependent on their phones for contact with their friends, removal of them as a sanction can have difficult, unintended, consequences.

‘For example, Scarlett told the clinician at the GP surgery that her mother had removed her phone following the exclusion, (which) had caused Scarlett some distress as she was not able to contact friends.

‘In addition, without her phone she was not able to independently access the suggested online support for her emotional health.’

The review also revealed Jenkinson’s parents had not regularly engaged with teachers at either of her secondary schools or accompanied her for a GP appointment.

Jenkinson had ‘frequent contact with pastoral staff’ at Culcheth High school and then after her ‘managed move’ following the cannabis sweets incident to Birchwood Community High, where she met Brianna.

But the review found ‘practitioners did not know much about Scarlett’s parents’ and revealed they only attended one of three parents’ evenings while she was at Culcheth. They did not attend an event to discuss her GCSE options.

The review said that if Jenkinson ‘had serious concerns about any aspect of her homelife then she did not share these worries with staff’ – and that ‘it would have been good practice to have asked Scarlett about her home life to get a more holistic picture of her needs and the family dynamics’.

The review added: ‘There is no evidence anyone did so. One example which could have prompted this was after Mother told the clinician at the GP surgery that mother and father had briefly separated, which was also shared on the referral to CAMHS (child and adolescent mental health services).

‘Parental conflict, however short-lived, can have a serious impact on a child’s emotional state.’

Although Jenkinson’s parents ‘would engage in a crisis’, they were ‘otherwise were difficult to contact, and they did not respond to emails and phone messages’.

In another incident, it appeared Jenkinson was left to see her GP ‘alone’ when she attended ‘worried about a potentially significant physical condition’.

The review said: ‘A small minority of parents nationally don’t attend parent’s evenings for a variety of reasons. The parents’ professional backgrounds may be of relevance. Both worked in education.

‘Practitioners suggested that perhaps their educational backgrounds meant they felt they were already well placed to judge her progress through school reports and had no need therefore to attend.’

The review said education officials ‘might have had a different perspective had they known about the other appointments that were not attended and other agencies’ difficulties engaging with them’.

But Mrs Sutton, who ‘generally took the lead on appointments’, told the review ‘her job meant she could only have her phone with her on a Friday afternoon and only then if she was expecting a call’.

She added she had ‘difficulty monitoring two personal email accounts alongside a lot of work emails’.

The review said: ‘Sometimes, parents’ professional background can be a barrier to effective practice if the parent thinks they know best or uses it to deflect professional curiosity or involvement to the extent of being intimidatory or making complaints.

‘Practitioners did not feel that Mother had tried to use her professional background in any way to deflect practitioners. However, they were aware she was an education professional and knew how schools worked.’

In one example, when Jenkinson was in trouble for bringing edible cannabis sweets to school, her mother’s ‘first question was whether Scarlett would be permanently excluded’.

The review said that professionals who worked with Jenkinson felt ‘that on reflection it was possible the parents’ backgrounds made (them) overestimate their ability to support their daughter’ – such as when mental health services ceased an earlier period of involvement with her in 2022 ‘they assumed that the parents would get in touch again if necessary’.

The review added: ‘When working with parents with a professional background it is important to be alert to whether, when and why practitioners might be treating them any differently to any other parent and to make use of supervision and peer discussion to reflect on this.

‘Had a multi-agency approach been taken in this case then such reflection on inconsistent engagement would have been possible and consideration given as to how to improve it.’

The review also found Jenkinson’s treatment by mental health services was affected by delays in receiving an initial appointment due to staff shortages.

She was told there would be a four-month wait for an initial mental health assessment when referred in October 2022 – double the six-week target waiting time ‘due to a combination of the historical waiting list being exacerbated by a number of vacancies’.

Immediately before the murder, Jenkinson described hearing voices that were ‘saying unkind things and putting her down’.

But the review said mental health services were ‘still in the process of assessing… and formulating a clinical opinion’ when the shocking crime took place.

Jenkinson was later diagnosed with ‘conduct dissocial disorder’.

The review called Jenkinson’s spiking of the younger pupil in September 2022 ‘at best unkind, or worse a deliberate attempt to give someone what could be a frightening experience’, but not could conduct which could ‘reasonably be expected to make practitioners suspect that [she] would go on to commit murder’.

The review recommended changes should be made to how vulnerable children are moved between schools – and better safeguarding of children online.

The review did not cover Ratcliffe, also 17, due to him living in neighbouring Wigan.

A spokesman for Wirral Safeguarding Partnership said: ‘Today, we continue to think about Brianna.

‘This Child Safeguarding Practice Review report examines closely the actions of Scarlett and identifies important learning opportunities for all agencies. Compiling this report for publication has been a thorough process, led by an expert, independent reviewer.

‘While the report acknowledges that nobody could have foreseen the actions of Scarlett, the learning points in the report must, and will be, shared and embraced locally by all partners in Warrington.

‘We know that the report will provide little comfort to those who have been affected by this tragic case, but we equally hope that organisations across the country are able to draw on the report to identify any improvements they can make.

‘The Safeguarding Partnership will continue to work alongside its partners in Warrington to ensure that support is available to those who need it.’