Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
By Ralph and Kathy Kelly, Allen & Unwin, $32.99.
An inspiring, yet heart-wrenching story of how the Kelly family turned its own tragedies into a remarkable crusade to keep all our children safe.
How they coped with one unimaginable tragedy, only to find that it had sowed the seed for another. 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.
The Kellys’ story is one of perseverance, commitment, heartache, sorrow and a dedication to a personal cause, a goal — if you will.
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.
Only 18 years old, he had been coward punched by a total stranger within two minutes of getting out of a taxi in Kings Cross. He was on his way to an 18th birthday party. 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.
Following 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. However, their campaigning created a huge toll on their family, with online intimidation, death threats and false news about the mishandling of donations.
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 one of the driving forces behind the introduction of tougher sentencing for ‘coward-punch’ deaths.
The death of Thomas was but one tragedy. When Thomas’s younger brother, Stuart, 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 traumatising 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 25 July 2016, Stuart took his own life.
Ralph and Kathy Kelly are the founders of the Thomas Kelly Youth Foundation. They have pro-actively campaigned for behavioural change in the community, social support for victims of violence as well as violence protection.
