MADDIE KELLY TELLS ‘I BLAMED MYSELF’
NEW IDEA I EXCLUSIVE THE SISTER OF THOMAS AND STUART KELLY SHARES HER GRIEF
t was 10pm when the phone rang. Maddie Kelly was at home with her brother, Stuart, and parents, Ralph and Kathy. Meanwhile, Maddie and Stuart’s brother, Thomas – a university student in Sydney – had headed to the city’s infamous Kings Cross neighbourhood for a night out.
‘Thomas was shy and didn’t go out much so that night was his first time in Kings Cross,’ Maddie recalls. ‘The rest of us were at home when the phone rang, and I heard Mum rushing to tell Dad... Thomas had been assaulted.’
It was July 7, 2012, and the Kelly family was about to endure the start of an almost unimaginable ordeal.
Not only would Thomas lose his life after the horrific one-punch assault he suffered that night, but four years later his tormented brother Stuart would commit suicide – leaving Maddie as her parents’ only surviving child.
‘It’s difficult for me to talk about it. I just keep it inside,’ 22-year-old Maddie tells New Idea, exclusively. ‘I miss my brothers a lot.’
Maddie – the middle child sandwiched between Thomas and Stuart – smiles as she remembers the childhood she shared with her brothers in the NSW Southern Highlands.
‘We were always outside,’ she recalls. ‘We biked and the boys built huts and trenches.
‘We had dogs and cats, and Stuart was obsessed with fish, so we were surrounded by animals.
‘I was the little princess of the group, but I still wanted to keep up with the boys. We looked out for each other.’
As the trio grew up, 18-yearold Thomas went off to uni.
But that fateful phone call the Kelly family received on July 7 would alter the family’s future irrevocably.
With Thomas taken to St Vincent’s hospital after a vicious attack, Maddie’s parents jumped in the car – not knowing how serious things were.
‘I stayed up late, but they didn’t call, so I assumed he was OK,’ Maddie remembers.
‘Then Mum called in the morning to say Stuart and I needed to join them. I was studying for my HSC, so I packed all my books – thinking I’d revise there – I was a bit annoyed.
‘I didn’t know what we were going to be told.’
The teenager had been in surgery all night after the attack.
The news was devastating.
Thomas wasn’t going to make it.
The family then had to make the crushing decision to turn off Thomas’ life support.
‘It didn’t register at first,’ Maddie says. ‘We were just some quiet family from Bowral. This stuff doesn’t happen. And then I was just desperate to see him.’
Seeing her brother lying in a hospital bed, with a bandage across the part of his skull that was missing after surgery, was a traumatic experience for Maddie.
‘He’d got quite muscly at the gym, so seeing this big, strong guy breathing on a machine was horrible,’ she sobs.
‘We had to discuss donating his organs – which we did – and then on the ninth of July we had to turn the machines off.
‘Stuart didn’t want to be there but I stayed with Mum and Dad.
‘We’d all taken it in turns to be brave or fall apart, but there was so many tears then.’
Maddie describes the days that followed as a blur.
A 19-year-old stranger, Kieran Loveridge, was charged with the attack on Thomas.
As a result, Ralph and Kathy were in constant police interviews while the family home was flooded with bouquets of flowers.
‘I missed my HSC trials,’ Maddie says. ‘But as things calmed down, I knew that’s where I had to focus my energy.
‘Stuart threw himself into school too.
‘We both needed something
‘SEEING THIS BIG, STRONG GUY BREATHING ON A MACHINE WAS HORRIBLE...’
that wasn’t the court case. I never saw Stuart cry again. We all dealt with Thomas’ death in our own way.’
In November 2013, Loveridge was sentenced to five years and two months in jail for a string of attacks he carried out on that July night, including the savage blow that killed Thomas.
‘It was a joke,’ Maddie says. ‘Everyone was very angry after the sentencing. Mum and Dad had fought so hard to get justice for Thomas.’
It meant further months of heartache as the case was taken to appeal, and in July the following year, Loveridge’s sentence was eventually doubled to a minimum of 10 years and two months.
‘Seeing the system in action was what sparked my interest in law,’ Maddie says. ‘I saw what ATAR I needed to get in and that’s what I worked for.
‘It became my drive in life to make other families’ lives easier after what we’d experienced.’
But horrifically, that’s not where Maddie’s story ends...
Tragedy struck again four
years later, after an event the family still cannot explain.
‘Stuart was due to start at St Paul’s College in Sydney,’ Maddie remembers.
‘He was different to Thomas and thrived at school, surrounded by friends. He was excited about starting uni.’
But after a single night at the college, he called his parents, desperate for them to come and get him. ‘He was bawling his eyes out,’ Maddie says.
‘We’d not seen him cry in the three years since Thomas’ death, so something was very wrong. When he got home, he locked himself in his bedroom.
‘I tried again and again, but he didn’t want to talk,’ Maddie says. ‘We thought someone had bullied him about Thomas, but we never got any answers.’
Five months later, on July 25, 2016, history tragically began to repeat itself.
‘Stuart wasn’t in his bed when Dad went to wake him for work,’ Maddie remembers. ‘I thought he’d gone to the gym, but then the police were involved. They’d got a signal off his phone in the Northern Beaches, so I started driving round looking for him.’
Maddie was parked in her car when she saw her dad.
‘He had the same look on his face as he did with Thomas,’ she sobs. ‘It was an immediate flashback. They’d found Stuart’s body... and I just broke.’
Stuart, who was 18 just like Thomas had been, had taken his own life. ‘I locked myself in my room for weeks,’ Maddie says. ‘I felt like the worst big sister. I completely blamed myself. Why didn’t I make him talk to me? We were all so angry with ourselves.’
Close friends propped Maddie up, but she says many had no idea what to say. ‘People would cross the street when they saw me coming. They thought I didn’t want to talk, but it was then I needed people the most.’
The family are now pushing for a coronial inquest. They believe something terrible happened to Stuart at university, which ultimately led to his death.
Two years on, Ralph and Kathy have set up The Thomas Kelly Youth Foundation and staykind.org.au to raise awareness of suicide and to drive change in Australia’s violent drinking culture.
As for Maddie, she recently graduated with a law degree. ‘I live with my parents. It’s the three of us now,’ she smiles sadly. ‘If I get upset for a second it’s a big deal. I don’t want them to see me break. They’ve been through enough.
‘It’s hard though, and we feel trapped and haunted by the past all around us.’
Maddie admits she’d like to move overseas – to the UK perhaps – and says her parents would support her decision. ‘I guess I want to try and start life again,’ she concludes.
‘IT WAS AN IMMEDIATE FLASHBACK. THEY’D FOUND STUART’S BODY... AND I JUST BROKE’