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The Ammanford School Stabbings #2
BLOG PODS #38 - The Ammanford School Stabbings #2 - Musings After the Fact
INTRODUCTION
On 24th April 2024 at about 11am a 13 year old stabbed two teachers and a fellow pupil at Dyffryn Amman School in Ammanford in Carmarthenshire. Mercifully, none of the injuries were life-altering but one teacher who intervened suffered neck injuries which easily could have been life-threatening, if not fatal.
Despite admitting the stabbings, there was a trial because the girl denied intent to kill. The first trial was ‘irretrievably compromised’ and collapsed due to ‘a great irregularity’ with the jury, the Judge said. The girl was subsequently found guilty of all charges and was sentenced to 15 years. She can expect to serve 7.5 years in custody, the rest on licence in the community.
None of what follows here intends to take away one iota from the shock, suffering and fear the folk involved went through, or indeed what they will continue to go through as they strive to recover from these horrific events and get on with their lives.
But there are one or two observations I’d like to make, most notably the narrow, selective and spectacularly unhelpful emphasis the media always place on such tragedies.
Firstly though…
Raw facts
Here’re a few things that seem clear:
A child: As in the case of Axel Rudakubana, who was 17 when he killed three little girls in Southport in July last year, the girl who stabbed three people in Ammanford was a child at the time; just 13 in fact.
Weapons at school: A Freedom of Information request to Ysgol Dyffryn Aman said there were four incidents of weapons being taken on to school premises during the 2023/2024 academic year - the year of the incident - with two pupils permanently excluded (BBC).
Government awareness: A deputy head teacher from the school had written to the Welsh Government a number of times raising the issue of behaviour at the school, including the lack of clarity about powers to search pupils bags; the last of the emails was on the morning of the incident. He resigned following the stabbings (ITV-X).
Context on the day: One of the most frequently aired aspects of this case-aside from the phone footage of the incident itself-is a video from the school CCTV system showing the girl sat alone in a school hall stabbing the wooden floor next to her with a knife (YouTube), clearly something’s not right.
Near tragic outcomes: three people got stabbed, in public, by someone they knew while at work/school. No-one died, but it could so easily have been very different.
Emotional impact: Lots of others witnessed what happened, were fearful then and doubtless still are now; lots of parents waited in terror until the school came out of lockdown and they could be reunited with their children (BBC). The emotional impact will be long-lasting, especially for the three primary victims.
Lost youth: A child who was 13 when this happened will be nearly 30 by the time the custodial and community supervision aspects of her sentence are done.
What we are told about ‘the girl’
I’m a passionate believer in the need to keep such children’s identities out of the public domain; the one downside of this is the almost complete lack of ‘humanising’ information about them in the press and elsewhere.
We hear lots about the offence but next to nothing about the child behind it - except any salacious and incendiary details the media choose to share, thus fuelling the ‘othering’ of the child concerned.
Once an offence of this kind has occurred, the critical, ill- or partially-informed tropes of the press, become the received ‘truth’ about the child and linger long in the public mind.
Here are a few of the things that have appeared in the press about her:
- She’d made notes asking herself why she wanted to stab teachers
- She received a fixed-term exclusion in September 2023 for bringing a knife to school (on instruction from the local authority the school waived their right to exclude her permanently)
- She had interests in war memorabilia, Hitler and weapons (ITV-X) but was not referred to Prevent at that time.
- While still in Primary school (age 10) concerns were raised when she took a BB gun to school
- She’s described as ‘odd.’
Cause & cure: what we don’t know
Reading everything I could find on this case, I’m left with a pile of questions.*
As usual, media outlets focus on the impact on victims, bystanders and the community at large - that’s ‘news’ after all. But we’re not given even a shred of information that de-mystifies what happened, gives insight into ‘why’ or at least what might have been going on behind it all - there’s no vestige of explanatory value in any of it.
On the contrary what we are told is never balanced - it’s almost entirely negative or shocking. Thus the public bay for ‘justice’ without any relevant understanding of cause; without that, the route to any cure is obscured.
Here’s what I’d like to know:
What kind of girl was she?
What did a ‘good day’ look like for her?
Did she have friends; could she fit in or was she isolated?
Who liked her?
What was she good at?
Did she have aspirations or plans for the future?
Why was she bullied and what was done to support her?
Why might her father have refused an early help assessment? (having asked for help?)
When were her ‘unusual’ interests first noticed, by whom and what was done?
What aspects of her presentation caused others to think she was ‘odd?’
And, perhaps more importantly:
Had she asked for help? If so, what did she think would help her? Was any attempt made to get this for her?
Who did she trust at school? Were there adults she could speak to? Did she speak to anyone?
Why did she dress like she did? Did this provide any insight into her internal world?
What is her experience of ‘home’ like?
What do we know about why she took a knife to school on this and previous occasions? Has she said why?
Why was she not excluded and things escalated given the repeated nature of the behaviour?
What was the narrative in the school - playground and staffroom - about her as a person, pupil, friend…?
I wouldn’t mind betting…
Having spent the last 30 years dealing with youth crime in one form or another-youth justice social work, sex offending specialism, running interventions in a secure unit and more-I’d be very surprised if there weren’t a whole load of factors helping to fuel the kind of behaviour that exploded on 24th April 2024.
It could be any or a combination of a whole load of things: developmental issues, biological issues, neurodiversity (particularly this), learning disabilities, abuse experiences, social isolation, episodic or serial trauma…and on it goes. You get the idea.
I can count on one hand the occasions I’ve come across where a child has offended in this kind of way for no discernible reason - that number drops again after a thorough assessment and getting to know them a little.
And yet none of this appears in the press. So the pervasive stereotypes of lone, violent, antisocial teenagers continue to build in the public mind without challenge.
Final thoughts
My heart goes out to those affected by this terrible incident - I can only imagine how scary and deeply unsettling this must be for them. Only a fool would downplay the impact.
But there’s learning here for us all, surely?
What I really want to know is - what good the system thinks will come from putting a 13 year old child through two trials on the basis that there was intent, rather than just accepting the guilty plea for the violence and putting in place the right structures to understand her, understand what happened, where it came from and how best to help.
Unlike the current criminal sentence, that would ensure the lessons are learned, that she is treated as someone with needs that can be met and the public would be a LOT less likely to be affected by her behaviour in future.
One thing I’m sure about - if punishment doesn’t work in changing behaviour like this (and we know it doesn’t), doing so by denying a child her entire adolescence certainly won’t work either.
#helpnotpunishment
See you in the next one!
More information:
*Since this post was drafted the review report from the Multi-Agency Professional Forum (MAPF) has been published - a post coming on this very shortly.
MAPF REPORT: MAPF Incident Review – Ysgol Duffryn Aman (link) Blog post on this coming soon…
WEB ARTICLE: Case summary and sentencing - BBC article (link)
BOOK: Children As Risk by Anne-Marie MacAlinden (link) best book I’ve read on risk as it relates to children. It’s about HSB/CSE but the principles speak to ‘child crime’ in general, in my view.
PREVIOUS BLOG: Punishment Doesn’t Work for Troubled Kids - Do This Instead… (link)
PREVIOUS BLOG: The case of Valdo Calocane starkly illustrates the need for treatment rather than punishment (link)
LECTURE: Dr Gwen Adshead - Reith Lecture 2024 #1 (This is brilliant! (link)
BOOK: What Happened to You? Conversations on Trauma, Resilience and Healing by Bruce Perry & Oprah Winfrey (link)
BOOK: Working with Troubled Children and Teenagers by Jonny Matthew (link)
PREVIOUS BLOG: Avoidable Tragedy: What We Can Learn From Axel Rudakubana (and the Southport tragedy) (link)
Subscribe & Follow?
You can join the email list for this blog publication here. Your information is safe and you can unsubscribe anytime very easily.
If you want these posts sent straight to your inbox, click the blue subscribe button below.
You can also “Like” this site on Facebook or connect with me on LinkedIn or Twitter. The voiceovers (though not for this post) are also on YouTube and Spotify. (NB: my Pinterest account was hacked and is now permanently offline).
©️ Jonny Matthew 2025
Get full access to Jonny Matthew’s Substack at jonnyvm.substack.com/subscribe
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By Information & inspiration for working with troubled kids - with Jonny MatthewBLOG PODS #38 - The Ammanford School Stabbings #2 - Musings After the Fact
INTRODUCTION
On 24th April 2024 at about 11am a 13 year old stabbed two teachers and a fellow pupil at Dyffryn Amman School in Ammanford in Carmarthenshire. Mercifully, none of the injuries were life-altering but one teacher who intervened suffered neck injuries which easily could have been life-threatening, if not fatal.
Despite admitting the stabbings, there was a trial because the girl denied intent to kill. The first trial was ‘irretrievably compromised’ and collapsed due to ‘a great irregularity’ with the jury, the Judge said. The girl was subsequently found guilty of all charges and was sentenced to 15 years. She can expect to serve 7.5 years in custody, the rest on licence in the community.
None of what follows here intends to take away one iota from the shock, suffering and fear the folk involved went through, or indeed what they will continue to go through as they strive to recover from these horrific events and get on with their lives.
But there are one or two observations I’d like to make, most notably the narrow, selective and spectacularly unhelpful emphasis the media always place on such tragedies.
Firstly though…
Raw facts
Here’re a few things that seem clear:
A child: As in the case of Axel Rudakubana, who was 17 when he killed three little girls in Southport in July last year, the girl who stabbed three people in Ammanford was a child at the time; just 13 in fact.
Weapons at school: A Freedom of Information request to Ysgol Dyffryn Aman said there were four incidents of weapons being taken on to school premises during the 2023/2024 academic year - the year of the incident - with two pupils permanently excluded (BBC).
Government awareness: A deputy head teacher from the school had written to the Welsh Government a number of times raising the issue of behaviour at the school, including the lack of clarity about powers to search pupils bags; the last of the emails was on the morning of the incident. He resigned following the stabbings (ITV-X).
Context on the day: One of the most frequently aired aspects of this case-aside from the phone footage of the incident itself-is a video from the school CCTV system showing the girl sat alone in a school hall stabbing the wooden floor next to her with a knife (YouTube), clearly something’s not right.
Near tragic outcomes: three people got stabbed, in public, by someone they knew while at work/school. No-one died, but it could so easily have been very different.
Emotional impact: Lots of others witnessed what happened, were fearful then and doubtless still are now; lots of parents waited in terror until the school came out of lockdown and they could be reunited with their children (BBC). The emotional impact will be long-lasting, especially for the three primary victims.
Lost youth: A child who was 13 when this happened will be nearly 30 by the time the custodial and community supervision aspects of her sentence are done.
What we are told about ‘the girl’
I’m a passionate believer in the need to keep such children’s identities out of the public domain; the one downside of this is the almost complete lack of ‘humanising’ information about them in the press and elsewhere.
We hear lots about the offence but next to nothing about the child behind it - except any salacious and incendiary details the media choose to share, thus fuelling the ‘othering’ of the child concerned.
Once an offence of this kind has occurred, the critical, ill- or partially-informed tropes of the press, become the received ‘truth’ about the child and linger long in the public mind.
Here are a few of the things that have appeared in the press about her:
- She’d made notes asking herself why she wanted to stab teachers
- She received a fixed-term exclusion in September 2023 for bringing a knife to school (on instruction from the local authority the school waived their right to exclude her permanently)
- She had interests in war memorabilia, Hitler and weapons (ITV-X) but was not referred to Prevent at that time.
- While still in Primary school (age 10) concerns were raised when she took a BB gun to school
- She’s described as ‘odd.’
Cause & cure: what we don’t know
Reading everything I could find on this case, I’m left with a pile of questions.*
As usual, media outlets focus on the impact on victims, bystanders and the community at large - that’s ‘news’ after all. But we’re not given even a shred of information that de-mystifies what happened, gives insight into ‘why’ or at least what might have been going on behind it all - there’s no vestige of explanatory value in any of it.
On the contrary what we are told is never balanced - it’s almost entirely negative or shocking. Thus the public bay for ‘justice’ without any relevant understanding of cause; without that, the route to any cure is obscured.
Here’s what I’d like to know:
What kind of girl was she?
What did a ‘good day’ look like for her?
Did she have friends; could she fit in or was she isolated?
Who liked her?
What was she good at?
Did she have aspirations or plans for the future?
Why was she bullied and what was done to support her?
Why might her father have refused an early help assessment? (having asked for help?)
When were her ‘unusual’ interests first noticed, by whom and what was done?
What aspects of her presentation caused others to think she was ‘odd?’
And, perhaps more importantly:
Had she asked for help? If so, what did she think would help her? Was any attempt made to get this for her?
Who did she trust at school? Were there adults she could speak to? Did she speak to anyone?
Why did she dress like she did? Did this provide any insight into her internal world?
What is her experience of ‘home’ like?
What do we know about why she took a knife to school on this and previous occasions? Has she said why?
Why was she not excluded and things escalated given the repeated nature of the behaviour?
What was the narrative in the school - playground and staffroom - about her as a person, pupil, friend…?
I wouldn’t mind betting…
Having spent the last 30 years dealing with youth crime in one form or another-youth justice social work, sex offending specialism, running interventions in a secure unit and more-I’d be very surprised if there weren’t a whole load of factors helping to fuel the kind of behaviour that exploded on 24th April 2024.
It could be any or a combination of a whole load of things: developmental issues, biological issues, neurodiversity (particularly this), learning disabilities, abuse experiences, social isolation, episodic or serial trauma…and on it goes. You get the idea.
I can count on one hand the occasions I’ve come across where a child has offended in this kind of way for no discernible reason - that number drops again after a thorough assessment and getting to know them a little.
And yet none of this appears in the press. So the pervasive stereotypes of lone, violent, antisocial teenagers continue to build in the public mind without challenge.
Final thoughts
My heart goes out to those affected by this terrible incident - I can only imagine how scary and deeply unsettling this must be for them. Only a fool would downplay the impact.
But there’s learning here for us all, surely?
What I really want to know is - what good the system thinks will come from putting a 13 year old child through two trials on the basis that there was intent, rather than just accepting the guilty plea for the violence and putting in place the right structures to understand her, understand what happened, where it came from and how best to help.
Unlike the current criminal sentence, that would ensure the lessons are learned, that she is treated as someone with needs that can be met and the public would be a LOT less likely to be affected by her behaviour in future.
One thing I’m sure about - if punishment doesn’t work in changing behaviour like this (and we know it doesn’t), doing so by denying a child her entire adolescence certainly won’t work either.
#helpnotpunishment
See you in the next one!
More information:
*Since this post was drafted the review report from the Multi-Agency Professional Forum (MAPF) has been published - a post coming on this very shortly.
MAPF REPORT: MAPF Incident Review – Ysgol Duffryn Aman (link) Blog post on this coming soon…
WEB ARTICLE: Case summary and sentencing - BBC article (link)
BOOK: Children As Risk by Anne-Marie MacAlinden (link) best book I’ve read on risk as it relates to children. It’s about HSB/CSE but the principles speak to ‘child crime’ in general, in my view.
PREVIOUS BLOG: Punishment Doesn’t Work for Troubled Kids - Do This Instead… (link)
PREVIOUS BLOG: The case of Valdo Calocane starkly illustrates the need for treatment rather than punishment (link)
LECTURE: Dr Gwen Adshead - Reith Lecture 2024 #1 (This is brilliant! (link)
BOOK: What Happened to You? Conversations on Trauma, Resilience and Healing by Bruce Perry & Oprah Winfrey (link)
BOOK: Working with Troubled Children and Teenagers by Jonny Matthew (link)
PREVIOUS BLOG: Avoidable Tragedy: What We Can Learn From Axel Rudakubana (and the Southport tragedy) (link)
Subscribe & Follow?
You can join the email list for this blog publication here. Your information is safe and you can unsubscribe anytime very easily.
If you want these posts sent straight to your inbox, click the blue subscribe button below.
You can also “Like” this site on Facebook or connect with me on LinkedIn or Twitter. The voiceovers (though not for this post) are also on YouTube and Spotify. (NB: my Pinterest account was hacked and is now permanently offline).
©️ Jonny Matthew 2025
Get full access to Jonny Matthew’s Substack at jonnyvm.substack.com/subscribe