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A major inquiry into the stabbing of three girls in the UK has detailed how a British teenager likely viewed footage of the Wakeley stabbing in Sydney before committing the attack, and criticised X for its unwillingness to remove the graphic clip.

Axel Rudakubana was jailed for life for murdering Bebe King, six, Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport in July 2024 and the attempted murder of 10 others.

Just six minutes before Rudakubana left his home, he searched on X for footage of the April 2024 church attack in which bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was allegedly stabbed by a 16-year-old boy while livestreaming a sermon at the Assyrian Christ the Good Shepherd church in Wakeley. The matter is still before the children’s court.

In a report on Monday that made headlines across the UK, the Southport attack inquiry found that Rudakubana likely “viewed the actual footage of the stabbing” before carrying out his attack.

“It is both sobering and concerning that almost the last thing that [the perpetrator] did before committing these dreadful crimes was to search for and probably view material on X in relation to a stabbing carried out by another boy aged under 18,” inquiry chair Sir Adrian Fulford wrote.

According to the report, Rudakubana, then 17, was able to circumvent age restrictions on X because in mid-2024, the platform only asked users to enter a date of birth without further age checks.

On X, the video was marked “sensitive” – a label that meant it could only be viewed by users who indicated they were over the age of 18.

The report noted that “X has shown no signs of any self-critical reflection” for how easily the perpetrator was able to bypass its age restrictions, and criticised the company for its late disclosure of data and for not showing “the same ready willingness to co-operate with the Inquiry as almost all other organisations”.

After the Wakeley attack, Australia’s eSafety Commissioner issued a takedown notice to X to remove tweets with videos of the attack. The company made the posts inaccessible in Australia, but decided to continue hosting the footage in other parts of the world.

X later said it was “heartened to see that freedom of speech has prevailed”, after eSafety dropped its case over the matter in federal court about one month before the Southport attack.

In the inquiry report, Fulford concluded that X’s unwillingness to remove posts that included video of “the most graphic part” of the 2024 stabbing, while not illegal in the UK, was “deeply regrettable”.

“X maintained this position once they knew that the material had been searched for by AR [Axel Rudakubana] minutes before he left to murder Elsie, Alice and Bebe,” he wrote.

“For most people, this would have caused – at the very least – a significant concern that the footage may have fortified AR’s motivation to go ahead and carry out his murderous attack.”

On Monday, the Southport inquiry found that Rudakubana was able to carry out the atrocity because of “catastrophic” failures by multiple agencies and the “misguided and irresponsible” actions of his parents.

It also said that the “degrading, violent and misogynistic material” he was viewing online fed Rudakubana’s fascination with violence, and that the lack of engagement with his online life by authorities meant they were unable to fully identify the risk he posed to others.

According to the British home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, a second phase of the inquiry will make recommendations on measures to tackle the “rising numbers of young men who are fascinated by extreme violence”.

Australia is also grappling with how to address the spread of violent extremist material online, and its access by young people. Of those charged with a new federal offence that criminalised the intentional possession of such material since 2023, 60% were children.

X did not respond to a request for comment.