"Southport Killer: A Manipulative Monster, Not a Victim – It's Time to End Lenient Sentencing Tactics"

NEXT week marks two years since a man walked into a Southport dance class and murdered three children.

Forgive me for not mentioning this person by name. He is simply not entitled to that privilege.

The MOJ insists his 52-year sentence is unchanged Credit: PA As that anniversary looms, we learn the person responsible has been moved from Belmarsh to Broadmoor Credit: Alamy

Because of him, three beautiful young girls were taken with their whole lives ahead of them: Bebe King, 6, Elsie Dot Stancombe, 7, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, 9.

Meanwhile, eight other children and two adults were left fighting for their lives.

For the families of those affected nothing can bear the full impact of this tragedy.

Now, as that anniversary looms, we learn the person responsible has been moved from to Broadmoor.

Some crimes are so monstrous that the perpetrator forfeits any claim on society’s compassion Credit: PA This monster has played the system Credit: PA

Make no mistake, he is not being transferred to a tougher regime.

Not to solitary confinement, where the Officers’ Association rightly says he belongs.

But to a psychiatric hospital, where he will be treated as a so-called ‘patient.’

Let’s call this what it is. This monster has played the system. And the system has let him.

Well, frankly, the system stinks.

The insists his 52-year sentence is unchanged and that he’ll be sent back to prison once ‘treatment’ is complete.

That is cold comfort to the families of those victims.

Bebe. Elsie. Alice. Those girls, those daughters, will never come home.

Yet the man who took them from them gets a transfer to a hospital where the average bed costs upwards of £300,000 a year – several times what it costs to keep him in a Category A prison, where he rightfully belongs.

That is millions more of taxpayers’ , over the years ahead, spent on comfort and care for a man who carried out a premeditated attempt at mass murder.

Well, Im sorry but some crimes are so monstrous that the perpetrator forfeits any claim on society’s compassion.

This man was assessed fit to stand trial. He knew exactly what he was doing.

He is a murderer, not a patient, and he should serve every one of his 52 years behind bars in the harshest, most restrictive conditions the allows.

We are told the Justice Secretary had no choice under the Mental Act but to accept clinicians’ advice. That is precisely the problem.

When the rule of law designed to protect genuinely mentally ill offenders can be invoked by one of the most calculating killers in modern British , it is the rule that has failed. And failed catastrophically.

As families across Southport and the country prepare to mark two years of this dreadful tragedy, they deserve to know their government will not let this killer, or any killer’s, sentence be softened by the back door.

So today demands an immediate of transfer decisions in cases involving mass-casualty terrorists and murder convictions plus a guarantee that no one convicted of crimes on this scale ever serves a day outside the prison estate unless it is to a harsher unit, not a softer one.

Lock this barbaric man up. Throw away the key. And never let this happen again.