The Australian Women's Weekly

TO YOUR FAMILY”

that his recklessne­ss had taken others’ lives as well, almost broke nothing to prevent young people from dying on our roads.

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Melissa McGuinness is petite, but today she looks especially small and vulnerable, standing alone on a vast stage between towering blue curtains that threaten to swallow her up. It’s Ash Wednesday, which feels somehow weighted with significan­ce, as she fronts 400 teenage boys at a Sydney Catholic school and recounts for them the most horrific day of her life.

“It was a Saturday morning, 8 December 2012,” the 50-year-old mother of three begins. “My husband, Peter, and I were sitting, enjoying our morning cup of tea and watching the sun rise, as we did every single morning. Funnily enough, we were talking about how proud we were of my son, Jordan, who had graduated from high school and was four and a half months into a carpentry apprentice­ship.

“As we spoke, our doorbell buzzed and my immediate thought was, ‘Jordan’s home early’.” He was living in Brisbane in a share house during the week but came home to the Gold Coast on weekends to see family and friends, and to surf. “But then I thought, ‘Jordan has a key.’”

Melissa answered the buzzer and two police officers asked if they could have a word with her.

“I did a quick stocktake of my life,” she says, “as I wondered what the police were doing on my doorstep. I had to go down three flights of stairs to get to my front door and as I rounded the last flight, I could see those two forlorn officers through the glass. It was then that my heart sank. My knees gave way. I thought I was going to be sick. I absolutely knew that something was drasticall­y wrong. And I knew that my life was about to shatter.”

Jordan, was just a few months older than the boys in this school assembly when he ran off the road at speed, taking his own life and the lives of four other people. “Five young lives lost in one hit,” the TV news reported.

A group of friends had been travelling south from Brisbane along the M1 when their car had broken down. They’d pulled into a safety lane, called for help and waited. Coming out of the night at 30kph above the speed limit, Jordan’s red Nissan Pulsar had slammed into them and propelled their car 30 metres forward. It burst into flames. When the first responders arrived, they found, lying dead in the burning wreckage: 18-year-old Kody Williams, his 17-year-old girlfriend Tiana Williams, and Natasha Maggs and Allan Sullivan, the 20-year-old parents of a baby girl who was thankfully not in the car that night, but who was orphaned by the crash. Thomas Bayer, the 16-year-old learner driver of the stationary vehicle, crawled out a window and survived, though with serious burns and massive trauma.

Jordan’s Pulsar crumpled like a tin can, he smashed his head on the steering wheel and was pronounced dead at the scene. Later, both alcohol (twice the legal limit) and marijuana were found in his bloodstrea­m.

“That first day still haunts me all these years later,” Melissa tells The Weekly. “Peter and I headed up to the police station, where the responding officers were. One of those officers couldn’t have been more than 20 and he looked as though he was still in shock, given what he’d witnessed. It must have been an horrific sight.”

That day was spent in utter devastatio­n, but also somehow phoning relatives to break the news. Jordan’s younger sisters Montana, 10, and Kitty, just four, had to be told. And grandparen­ts, aunts, uncles and friends.

“Then, as the sun started to set, an overwhelmi­ng panic set in,” Melissa remembers. “I couldn’t bear the idea that the sun would set on Jordan’s last day here on Earth. I knew I would wake up with the knowledge that yesterday my son was breathing, and today he’s not. But that sun did set, and that was that.

“I didn’t sleep at all that night. I couldn’t get the image out of my head of Jordan lying in a morgue surrounded by dead bodies. And I couldn’t get the image out of my head of four other families suffering through what my family was suffering. I would have done anything that night to have sat with Jordan and held his hand, and let him know that he was loved and that he wasn’t alone.”

Now, seven and a half years later, Melissa is on a quest to make young people see that what happened to Jordan was no accident. “What happened to his victims was an accident,” she explains, but her

son made a stupid, lethal, life-shattering choice. His death and the deaths of those four other people were “100 per cent preventabl­e” and she wants other kids to see that and choose differentl­y.

To that end, she travels the length and breadth of the country, talking to school and youth groups. When she gives these talks, like the one she’s invited The Weekly along to today, there are a lot of tears – hers and the audiences’. And the feedback she receives – from teachers, parents, police and kids – suggest they make a difference.

Not long ago, she recalls, “a bunch of kids came up at the end of a presentati­on and they dragged a reluctant boy with them. He was a giant lad. And the girls said to me, ‘Can you please talk to him? This is the kid who needs to hear this talk more than anything.’ It was really heartwarmi­ng to see these kids caring enough to call their mate out. It felt like there was a social movement starting right there. I really believe that boy will never speed again.”

Today, Melissa has Jordan’s school seniors’ jersey draped around her shoulders. It is blue, white and red, and has a I Rugby 11 on the back. She often wears it – or his rugby jersey – to presentati­ons.

“I sometimes think Jordan would be horrified to learn his mother was wearing his jersey because I’m sure that’s super uncool,” she says with a hint of a smile, “but these jerseys are among my most precious possession­s now.”

Jordan and his mum were close. As close as mums and teenage sons get. Six days before the crash, they went Christmas shopping together. They bought a bunch of clothes and sunglasses for Jordan. Melissa also bought a dress.

“In one shop,” she recalls, “I tried on a black dress and he said, ‘Mum, you look really pretty in that.’ I remember thinking, ‘Oh my goodness, did I just get a compliment from my son?’ It was such a sweet and heartfelt comment. So naturally I bought that dress. That day, we shopped, we laughed, we had lunch together. At about 3.30, I dropped him off at his car, which was parked at a mate’s place. I gave him a kiss and told him to drive safely. I said, ‘I love you,’ and he said, ‘I love you

“That first day still haunts me all these years later.”

too, Mum,’ and neither of us thought anything of it.”

“Eleven days later,” Melissa says, “I was walking to Jordan’s funeral, feeling completely nauseated and wearing that black dress.” She cried all through the service. She remembers thinking: “I just want to get up, rip that box open, get my boy and get the heck out of here. How could this be happening to my baby? It made no sense at all.”

Jordon made a string of appalling decisions that night but he was not, his mum insists, a bad kid.

“He was a fantastic rugby player,” she says. “In all likelihood he could have gone on to play profession­ally. He was a hardworkin­g apprentice and an entreprene­urial thinker, and we all knew he would have turned his trade into a bright future. He’d worked hard, saved his money and independen­tly bought his own car, which he was really proud of. Jordan was smart and funny and popular, and the people who knew him respected him.

“I still love Jordan and I miss him terribly. I know the kind of person he was, but none of that matters now. He defined himself forever by the choices he made that night. That is the brutal reality. He behaved irresponsi­bly and he was entirely to blame for the horrors that unfolded. There is no getting around that.

“Peter and I did not raise him to think that reckless driving was acceptable, yet here I am, the mother of a son who drank, took drugs and sped. And this wasn’t a one-off thing. We learnt that he had a history of reckless driving. Like it or not, it’s a reflection on me, it’s a reflection on Peter and it is absolutely a reflection on our parenting. And we all have to live with that.”

Three years after the crash, there was an inquest. “I didn’t attend the inquest,” Melissa admits, “though in hindsight I wish I had. At the time it was just too daunting. Instead, I asked the coroner to send me the report. I read it cover to cover – all 238 pages – and I cried and cried and cried.”

But gradually she grew stronger, and two years later she began to speak publicly, first at a road safety day on the Gold Coast and then, as word spread, she was invited to travel further afield. She doesn’t find public speaking easy and she still can’t get all the way through a presentati­on without tears, but she says, “I feel I owe this to those four kids and their families, and to that orphaned little girl, on Jordan’s behalf ... We think about them every single day. I think about those kids and their families all the time.”

Like anyone who sticks her head above the parapet, Melissa pays a price. “We receive our share of hate,” Peter says.

They’ve been accused of currying sympathy that should rightly be focused on Jordan’s victims. “But the last thing we seek is sympathy,” Peter says. “I already feel like a failure for not having protected my son from himself, and I feel like I failed those victims. Believe me, I want to wrap Melissa and the girls up in bubble wrap and never let them leave the front door, but I know I can’t do that. So what we’re doing is a very high-risk, vulnerable thing.”

“I feel sometimes I have a giant target on my back,” Melissa explains, “and it gives me loads of anxiety doing this. I know I can’t right Jordan’s wrongs.

I’ll never be able to do that. But this is possibly the next best thing I can do. I’m working my guts out to try to get this movement up and running so that no other Jordans do this to any other victims. That’s what’s at the bottom of it for us. It’s the reaction of the kids you saw today in this school. That’s what makes me continue to put one foot in front of the other.”

After the presentati­on, 400 teenage boys stay back to shake Peter’s hand, to give Melissa a hug, and one by one, to say thank you. “At the end of my presentati­on, it’s normally the biggest, gnarliest boy who is the first to come up and give me a hug,” she grins.

And it’s the troublesom­e boys who write the best letters. Melissa gets a lot of letters from kids at the schools she visits, and she keeps them all. Like this one from Samson Nicholl, who was in Year 12 at Knox Grammar in Sydney:

“I just wanted to say, on behalf of my group and the Knox boys in my year, thank you so much for your presentati­on today. It is one of the first times I have ever seen any of my mates cry and I’m sure it has made a major impact on all of us – being known as the irresponsi­ble group at school. I’ll give my mum that hug for you when I get home.”

Melissa and Peter’s mission is to inspire an authentic, active social movement among young people to change driving behaviour. What began as a one-day-aweek commitment has become a registered charity, called You Choose. Last year, 230 young Australian­s died on the roads and Melissa knows that means 230 families were shattered, just like theirs was.

Melissa’s parting words are simple. “Please don’t do this to your mother,” she says to the boys. “Please don’t do this to anyone else’s mother.” AWW

“I still love Jordan and I miss him terribly.”

To learn more, visit youchoosey­rs.org.au

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