TATE PUSHER’S HISTORY OF VIOLENCE
He attacked carers... but was left free to throw child from balcony
A LAUGHING teenager who threw a six-year- old off a tenth floor balcony at the Tate Modern had been allowed out alone – despite a history of violence and being on anti-psychotic drugs.
Autistic Jonty Bravery was in council care but ‘ frequently assaulted’ his carers and had been arrested for attacking them, the Old Bailey heard yesterday.
Yet he was considered safe to go out by himself on a day trip to London, where he hurled the French schoolboy off a 100ft balcony and then smirked to the youngster’s distraught father: ‘I’m mad.’
The boy nearly died and remains crippled and brain damaged.
Yesterday the court heard how the warped 17-year-old had plotted to kill – and laughed afterwards, asking staff at London’s Tate gallery ‘Am I a murderer?’, and even checking if he would be on TV for the ‘fame and notoriety’. Bravery, now 18 – appearing via
a video link from Broadmoor Hospital – sat twitching in a chair as the court heard his ‘unspeakable act’ had wrecked the lives of the boy and his family.
Dressed in shorts and a white t-shirt – sometimes pulled over his head – at one point he curled himself into a ball on the floor as he heard the parents say in a statement: ‘Our life is in ruins.’
The couple said that their son would forever see ‘every stranger as a villain who will cause him immense pain and suffering’. They added: ‘He told a nurse he would like to slap the man who did this to him.’
The Old Bailey was told about a ‘shocking, prophetic’ audio recording of Bravery confessing his murderous plans.
The chilling recording – in which Bravery vowed to his carers almost a year in advance that he would ‘push somebody off’ a tall building – was revealed by the Daily Mail in February.
This newspaper’s shocking investigation into the Tate incident discovered that the private care company hired by Hammersmith and Fulham council to look after Bravery at his flat had disastrously relaxed his ‘one-on-one’ supervision.
Yesterday the Old Bailey was told by prosecutor Deanna Heer: ‘He frequently assaulted staff. He lashed out every six weeks or so.’
In 2017 he was cautioned for common assault when he hit a carer in the chest with a cutlery knife and slapped her face, she said.
Then, four months before the Tate incident, he was arrested for punching another care worker on a trip to Burger King. By August, he ‘ was on a low dose of anti-psychotic medication’ yet ‘was allowed out unaccompanied for four-hour periods’, said Miss Heer.
Bravery – who the court heard laughed in his police interview when shown CCTV video of the little boy plunging head- first – has pleaded guilty to attempted murder. Yesterday’s sentencing hearing will conclude today.
Philippa McAtasney QC, for Bravery, said nothing would detract from the ‘appalling nature of this crime’. She said his ‘callous remarks, lacking remorse’ in the aftermath of the incident should be viewed as part of his mental health disorder.
Of her client, she added: ‘The
‘Immense pain and suffering’
likelihood is this young man is unlikely ever to be released.’
Dr Joanna Dow, a senior consultant forensic psychiatrist at Broadmoor Hospital, recommended Bravery be detained in hospital, rather than handed a prison sentence.
But another psychiatrist, Dr Nigel Blackwood, said he favoured a prison sentence – with a transfer to hospital if jail did ‘not appear to be working’. Mrs Justice McGowan will hand down her sentence today. She said: ‘Whatever happens, it will be for a very long time.’