A 16-year-old boy downloaded bomb-making manuals and threatened to target a synagogue after he began playing Fortnite.
The autistic teenager, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was pictured wearing a mask with swastikas on, making a white power symbol and doing a Nazi salute. He was arrested at his home in Bootle, on May 28 last year after authorities in the US were alerted to a post on Twitter which said: "I am a domestic terror threat. I will bomb a synagogue."
Liverpool Youth Court heard on Wednesday, April 27, that the boy also searched Google for "nearest synagogue to me". Prosecutor Diana Wilson said when the boy, then 15, was arrested he told his mum: "It was a joke."
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Chief magistrate Paul Goldspring said it was some of the "most appalling behaviour by a young person" he had seen during his 23 years working in the criminal justice system. However, he said "a non-custodial sentence would be in the public interest" and handed the boy a 12-month intensive referral order.
The court heard that downloads were also found on the teenager's devices for weapons handbooks. Ms Wilson, prosecuting, said: "In essence, all of these documents are lengthy, difficult to obtain, detailed descriptions of how to make bombs."
She also described numerous social media posts which were antisemitic, racist, transphobic, homophobic and reflected an incel ideology. Gerard Pitt, defending, said the boy was introduced to a far-right community online after he began playing video game Fortnite, where he could speak to fellow gamers in virtual "hangouts".
Mr Pitt said: "He found it much easier to form relationships with people in these Fortnite hangouts and subsequently on Twitter than he did in real life, because of his autism."
He said the boy also followed some online personalities who were "professional trolls" and would have conversations involving "appalling abuse" on secretive online forums. Mr Pitt told the court: "They were trying to outdo one another, to be the most offensive they could be."
Mr Pitt said the boy began "making his own content" in 2020 and would screenshot messages, documents and Google searches. But, he said there was no evidence the boy had actually tried to build a bomb or search for the ingredients to do so.
The court heard the boy pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to possessing a document containing information useful to terrorism, two counts of racial hatred - distributing a visual/sound recording, three counts of publishing material to stir up racial hatred and one count of sending by a public communication network an offensive/indecent/obscene/menacing message.
Mr Pitt told the court the boy, who had possessed a "very large library" of far-right material, said he no longer held the same views after time away from the online community. Sentencing, chief magistrate Paul Goldspring said: "Virtually every minority group that exists you had something derogatory to say about.
"I have been doing this job as a judge for 12 years and I have been involved in the criminal justice system for 23 years and this is some of the most appalling behaviour by a young person I have seen in terms of the comments you made, the views you expressed. They are, and should rightly be, abhorred by everyone."
Mr Goldspring told the boy: "It is the scale, scope and nature of your hatred for fellow men and women. In fact my heart sank when I read the case papers for the first time."
However, Mr Goldspring said he believed imposing a custodial term would be inappropriate and could undo rehabilitative steps which had been made. Handing him a 12-month referral order, he said: "I'm of the view, albeit I struggled greatly with making the decision, that a non-custodial sentence would be in the public interest."
