Too Soon, Too Late: How a Family Turned Its Own Tragedies Into a Remarkable Crusade to Keep All Our Children Safe

by Ralph Kelly, Kathy Kelly

Overview

On a winter's night in July 2012, Kathy and Ralph Kelly received a phone call no parent should ever have to answer. It was the Emergency department of a Sydney hospital, telling them that their eldest son Thomas had been in an altercation and that they were to come at once. Thomas had been coward punched by a total stranger within two minutes of getting out of a taxi in Kings Cross, on his way to a private 18th birthday party of a friend. Two days after that first phone call Kathy and Ralph were told that their son had suffered catastrophic head injuries resulting in brain death. They were advised that there was no other option but to switch off his life support. He was 18 years old.

In the aftermath of their son's death, Kathy and Ralph became the public face of the campaign to end the drunken violence that plagued Sydney's major nightspots. Along with Premiers Barry O'Farrell and Mike Baird they helped institute the lock out laws that have been a major factor in the reduction of alcohol related deaths and injuries in Darling Harbour, Kings Cross and Sydney's CBD. They were also instrumental in creating Take Kare Safe Spaces ('Kare' with a 'K' after Thomas's initials) for young people in key nightspots, which has now registered over 52,000 interventions since December 2014, what the Kellys call "sliding door moments," the difference between a young person's life continuing on as normal or degenerating into something terrible. And they were one of the driving forces behind the introduction of tougher sentencing for 'coward-punch' deaths.

But their campaigning created a huge toll on their family. Online intimidation, death threats, and false news about the mishandling of donations came from those with a stake in the clubs and businesses who were the lock out laws financial losers. When Stuart Kelly, Thomas's younger brother, went for his first night at University of Sydney's St Paul's College, Ralph and Kathy believe the bullying he experienced because of the family's profile was so traumatizing he left university for good the next day, and wouldn't tell his parents exactly what he'd been made to endure. Five months later, on July 25th 2016, Stuart took his own life.

This book is the Kellys' story. How they coped with one unimaginable tragedy, only to find that it had sowed the seed for another. How in the face of these terrible losses they have found the spirit and the drive to campaign first for a safer environment for all our children, and for a greater understanding of young people's self-harm and its drivers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781760636807
Publisher:	Allen & Unwin
Publication date:	05/06/2019
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Ralph Kelly and Kathy Kelly are the founders of the Thomas Kelly Youth Foundation. After losing their son, Thomas, to a cowardly one-punch attack in 2012, and their son Stuart to suicide in 2016, they have proactively campaigned for behavioral change in the community, social support for victims of violence as well as violence protection. This has resulted in the provision of Take Kare Safe Spaces in the Sydney CBD, a Financial Hardship Victim Support program through the Department of Justice and a two year UNSW research study of the Safe Space programs, that commenced in late 2017. As part of the Thomas Kelly Youth Foundation, the Kelly's have also created Stay Kind. Stay Kind is a youth suicide awareness campaign initiated by the Thomas Kelly Youth Foundation in early 2017 encouraging all Australians to care for each another. The campaign aims to raise awareness of and help prevent youth suicide.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

It was 10.25 p.m., 7 July 2012 when the telephone rang. We were getting ready for bed on a normal Saturday night at our home at Burradoo in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales, with Madeleine and Stuart, the younger two of our three children. After eating dinner with us, Madeleine and Stuart had gone to their rooms, leaving us to our Saturday night ritual, watching a movie together. The main character was a sensitive, vulnerable and yet resilient young boy; several times, we remarked to each other how much he reminded us of our eldest, Thomas.

Thomas was much on our minds that night. Just a few months out of school, he was working at an accountancy firm by day and studying part-time at university by night, living in a unit in Sydney. Ralph, who worked between home and the city, just an hour and a half's drive away, often stayed mid-week with Thomas and brought him home for Saturday and Sunday. But Thomas, eighteen years old, was taking his first steps towards adult independence: this weekend, he wanted to stay in the city. He was taking a girl from work out to dinner and then to a party. His first girlfriend, and their first real date. We always missed him and talked about him when he wasn't with us; this weekend we missed him just that little bit more, knowing he was crossing a threshold into his adult life.

Ralph was in the bathroom brushing his teeth when the phone rang. Kathy picked up. A man was on the other end saying he was from St Vincent's Hospital in Darlinghurst, in inner Sydney. When he mentioned Thomas's name, his voice blurred into a low, incomprehensible burble. Kathy didn't cry out or show alarm; she simply could not understand what this fellow was saying. She took the handset to the bathroom and thrust it at Ralph.

'You really need to take this, I don't understand,' Kathy said. 'The person on the phone is saying Tom is in trouble, but I can't work out what he's trying to say to me.'

The man repeated to Ralph what he had told Kathy. 'Your son has been in an altercation. You both need to come up immediately.'

His mouth turning dry, Ralph was able to ask a question. 'Can you tell me what's happened?'

'No, we just need you here.'

We looked at each other, thinking the same thing: What do we do with Madeleine and Stuart? Ralph said to the man, 'It's very difficult. We have two younger children and we live 120 kilometres out from the city. Are you saying we both need to be there, or is one of us enough?'

'You both need to get in the car and come to Emergency.'

That was all he would say. At the end of the call, which lasted barely three minutes, Ralph said to Kathy, 'We need to go there, Tom's been injured in some way.'

'What else did he say?'

'Nothing.'

Within fifteen minutes we had grabbed some essentials and told the kids we had to go to Sydney because Thomas had been hurt and was in hospital. They were both getting ready for bed anyway. Stuart was fourteen years old, home from boarding school for his mid-year holidays, while Madeleine was seventeen and preoccupied with studying for her Higher School Certificate. Ralph said to Madeleine, 'Can you look after Stuart? We'll be back later tonight but we don't know what time.'

Madeleine was mature for her age and accepted this without question. She had her own car and licence, and if there was an emergency she could call Kathy's mother, who lived a short distance away. There were also neighbours to call. We didn't want to make things sound too dramatic for Madeleine or Stuart. We didn't know what to think ourselves.

Our hearts raced with worry as we got into the car and set off for Sydney. We had nothing but questions. We kept on asking each other useless things, with no idea how to respond. When we got to Mittagong, about fifteen minutes into the drive, we decided to phone the closest medical doctor we knew, Ralph's brother-in-law, Gavin Barr. Although he is a gastroenterologist, as happens in many families Gavin is the one who gets a call during medical emergencies. He had just come in from dinner. After Ralph repeated what we had been told over the phone, Gavin said he would call the hospital. He happened to have trained some of the people who now worked in the Emergency department at St Vincent's, so he expected to be able to get through.

'I doubt they'll tell me anything,' he said, 'but I'll try.'

Sensing how worried we were, Gavin added, 'These sorts of things happen all the time. He'll be okay. If I can't find anything out, let me know when you get there if I can help. I don't care what time it is, just call me.'

A few minutes later, Gavin called us back in the car.

'I'll meet you at the hospital,' he said in a direct but compassionate voice.

'What's going on?' Kathy asked.

'Just concentrate on getting to St Vincent's. I'm going there right now.'

He hung up before we could ask what he had found out. We sensed he already knew but wasn't telling us.

As we drove, we were silent for much of the time, lost in our own thoughts. Kathy will never forget the grim purpose of Ralph's driving. His stony profile of unexpressed fear. The headlights of the cars on the opposite side of the road reflected in his eyes. We were still living in the emotional overhang of life as we knew it, a normal family with three beautiful children. Surely, we would get to the hospital and Thomas would be fine, lighting us up with his smile, telling us we shouldn't have bothered coming all the way up. There were a few moments when our minds wandered into speculation that something worse could await us, but during the trip we mostly hung on to the belief that Thomas would be fine. Anything else, anything more, was inconceivable.

Kathy had last seen Thomas two Sundays before, when we drove him to Sydney on our way to see Lady Gaga in concert at Olympic Park in Homebush. We dropped him off at the unit where he and Ralph were living through the working week, above the John Azzi hairdressing salon in Avenue Road, Mosman. To get inside, we had to go through the salon and up a set of awkward rattly stairs at the back. Kathy asked Thomas if he minded saying goodbye at the car, as the stairs might be a bit dangerous for her in high heels. Thomas gave her a kiss goodbye before heading inside.

Thomas was staying in Sydney the following weekend, just before Kathy's 51st birthday on 3 July. He'd been quite cranky with us both that week, because of the car we had just bought Madeleine, which he saw as preferential treatment for his sister. Ralph spoke with Tom about it, letting him know Maddie needed a car to get to school and around the Southern Highlands, whereas he was working in the city and Ralph picked him up at night from his course at Macquarie University.

It was normal sibling rivalry, nothing unusual, but looking back on the circumstances — Kathy not actually seeing Thomas to celebrate her birthday, one of those brief family tiffs that mean absolutely nothing — gave her the shudders. She watched the night fly past on the approach to Sydney. The journey wasn't going fast enough.

During those last days, Ralph had been lucky enough to see more of Thomas. He spent part of the week at home inBurradoo with Kathy for her birthday, but then had to travel to Sydney to see a client and stayed overnight in Mosman with Thomas. This had been their routine for the first half of that year, with Thomas working during the week at the accounting firm Hall Chadwick, where he had a first-year cadetship, and attending evening classes at Macquarie University, before coming home with Ralph to Burradoo each weekend. If those weekends were during the school term, Thomas would go with Ralph to watch Stuart play sport at The King's School, North Parramatta on Saturday morning, and the three of them would come home in the afternoon. Thomas would get his laundry done, eat well, and hang out on PlayStation with his little brother. Then, on Sunday nights, Ralph would drive Stuart back to school in North Parramatta and continue on to the unit in Mosman. Most weeks, Ralph would stay on to do his work in Sydney before driving back to Burradoo when he was finished. It was a lot of driving, but we didn't begrudge a minute of it.

We had been concerned that Thomas wasn't making a lot of friends in Sydney, and had researched him moving into student accommodation at Macquarie. Early in the year, Ralph had taken him there, but Thomas refused to go in, saying he wanted to live in Mosman with his dad. Once he started university, things seemed to settle. In one of his first university lectures, some boys who had gone to The King's School with him had called out, 'Come on, Kelly, come and sit with us!' It was a nice change, spending time with them outside school. After going through school as a boarder, Thomas now preferred the independence through the week, with the comforts of home and family on weekends. Ralph and Thomas enjoyed each other's company mid-week.

Of course, your children never tell you half of what they're up to. On the Thursday night of that first week in July, two days after Kathy's birthday, Thomas broke some interesting news to Ralph. It was bucketing down and Ralph, who was on his way to see a client north of Sydney, dropped off an umbrella to Thomas at the Fitness First gym in Mosman. Outside the gym, Thomas told Ralph he wouldn't be making his usual trip home that weekend.

'I've met someone!' he said.

'Oh? Who's that?'

'She's this unbelievable girl at Hall Chadwick. Her name is Shaneez. We've been kind of an item for a couple of weeks, and we're going to a party on the weekend. She's very special.'

'Where's the party?' Ralph asked.

'It's at Kings Cross, it's an eighteenth birthday for one of the boys at work.'

'I'm not too sure about the Cross, Tom.'

'It's fine,' Thomas laughed. 'Don't be worried, they've got a private room for the party.'

Ralph, overcome by this defining moment, hugged Thomas, gave him a kiss on the forehead, and said, 'I'm so glad you're happy.'

On the Friday, passing through Sydney on his way back to Burradoo, Ralph phoned Thomas.

'Are you sure you want to stay up here tonight?'

'Yes, it's all good, Shaneez is coming to the party,' Thomas said. 'It'll be fine, Dad.'

As always, Ralph and Thomas ended the conversation with an exchange of the most important three words: 'I love you.'

The next afternoon, the Saturday, Kathy called Thomas to wish him well for the night. She woke him from a nap. Half-asleep, he was a little abrupt at first, but by the end of the conversation their last words to each other were 'I love you' and 'Take care.'

'I love you.' Those were the last words Thomas said to the both of us. For those final but beautiful words of love, we are grateful.

* * *

The drive from Burradoo to Sydney, late on a Saturday night, took an hour and a half with Ralph keeping the pedal close to the floor. It was a quiet trip, our silence punctuated by brief exchanges, Kathy wondering aloud what might have happened and Ralph concentrating on getting to Darlinghurst. Kathy sensed Ralph's need for silence, but the questions kept circling like dark underwater shapes in both of our heads: Why wouldn't Gavin have told us anything? Why had they told Gavin to go to the hospital? Why had they insisted that we both come?

When we came off the motorway and turned onto William Street, heading up towards the old Coca-Cola sign at Kings Cross, the quiet of the late-night trip turned on its head. There were literally thousands of young people walking up the hill into the Cross — and it was just past midnight. It's true that we hadn't been out there for a long time, but it was quite shocking to see how many people were converging on the nightlife district so late in the evening. A couple of hours earlier, our son had been one of them.

The traffic was gridlocked, so instead of crawling up the hill Ralph took the underpass towards the Eastern Suburbs and turned right into the bottom of Paddington, before approaching St Vincent's Hospital from the east side. The hospital car park was locked so we found a space around the corner and walked up. Outside the St Vincent's Emergency entrance, Ralph noticed a police paddy wagon.

'Oh, I hope this has nothing to do with Tom,' Kathy said.

'It's Saturday night, there's probably police here all the time,' Ralph replied.

At the front door two police officers, one male and one female, stood waiting.

'Are you Mr and Mrs Kelly?'

Without hearing anything more, we knew that what had happened was more serious than we could possibly imagine. Our descent into nightmare happened in a series of moments; and this, being met by those two police officers, was one of them. The life we had known was over.

We were taken past Emergency, where the first person we saw was Gavin. He was silent and serious. We were shuffled around a corner and down a corridor into a little waiting room, where we were introduced to a nurse and a social worker. Both of us were caught in a thought loop: Why are we being sent here and not to see Thomas in Emergency?

There was no time for questions before the registrar from Emergency came in.

'Thomas is in surgery,' he said. 'They're trying to relieve the pressure on his brain. He's been in an altercation. You need to prepare for the worst. It will take a miracle for him to survive.' His words were like bullets; some flew straight into our hearts and others over our shoulders. We were mute.

Kathy was the first of us to be able to speak.

'What kind of miracle are you talking about?' Thinking back, it was a strange thing to say.

'He's really fit, he's healthy and strong. We have seen people survive like this before.'

No. We would not prepare for the worst. We were his parents. This was our gorgeous little boy. With his cheeky smile and stubborn grit, he would be one of those people who survived. We both prayed he would get through this. But then we looked at Gavin for reassurance, and our hearts stopped again. His grave face was more terrible than the Emergency doctor's curt message. We didn't know this at the time, but Gavin had seen scans of Thomas's brain.

Why was Thomas here in the first place? What had happened? There was no chance for us to find out any more details. Gavin knew almost nothing. Thomas had been with Shaneez and another young woman, we were told, but the two of them were being interviewed by the police. We were not able to see them that night.

We waited, thinking over and over, What are we doing in St Vincent's? until the staff took us into the building next door, then up to the level four waiting room for the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). A neurosurgeon came in, Dr Rebecca Webb-Myers, who looked so young she could still be in school. We weren't able to take in a lot of what she was saying, until she looked at us both with a kind of gentle but profound certainty.

'You need to understand he has very little chance of surviving.'

This was the second moment. It wasn't until she said those words that the new reality finally hit us. We had heard the truth from several people now, in words and looks, but didn't know how to accept it. Dr Webb-Myers was leaving us no room to run away, no escape back into the past as it existed at ten o'clock that Saturday night, that normal winter's night for our family. That same night; just a few hours ago.

But yet again, we couldn't really grasp the alternative reality that everyone was painting. For us, there could be no other way. Thomas would be okay. He might survive! We retreated back into that world we knew, where we thought we could make such decisions. We would overcome any obstacle with pure determination and the love we felt for our children. Surely, that strong, unyielding parental love overcomes everything? It always had in the past. That fierce love that we have for all our kids. It would heal Thomas, fix him, save him.

'You should be able to see him in about twenty minutes,' Dr Webb-Myers said. 'He's come out of the surgical unit now, and he's being settled into Intensive Care.'

Twenty minutes turned into hours. Kathy's face was pinched with exhaustion. Ralph's mouth was hard with stress and confusion. During those impotent hours of waiting, all we could do was cling to hope. It was somewhere between three and four in the morning before we were taken in to see him. Up until then, Gavin had been focusing on practicalities, saying that he and his partner Margie would drive down to the Southern Highlands to pick up Madeleine and Stuart.

'You can't do that, you'll have been awake all night,' Kathy said. 'Why on earth would you wake them up in the middle of the night?'

Gavin, as a medical practitioner, knew more than us. But his knowledge, which was lurking at the edges of the conversation, was something we wanted to keep at arm's length, and Gavin was sensitive to that. It was much easier to distract ourselves into a difference of opinion over a car trip. Kathy overrode Gavin and said, 'I'll ring my sister Kerrie first thing and ask her to go down.'

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Too Soon, Too Late"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Ralph and Kathy Kelly.
Excerpted by permission of Allen & Unwin.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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