by Amanda Gearing
“I don’t want to go to Daddy’s house,” were the words that all the adults who knew Bradyn Dillon, should have heard, believed and acted upon.
That no one in authority listened or acted, meant that Bradyn, aged just 9, was brutally tortured over several months and eventually murdered by his father in 2016.
The child told people he was in danger the best way he knew how. And despite Bradyn being clear about what he wanted, qualified social workers who are trained to protect children, did not hear Bradyn.
A support worker who met the boy and his father when Bradyn was six years old, told an inquest in Canberra last week that he thought the father was “an amazing dad.”
The ability of serious violent offenders to appear to be ‘amazing dads’ is a key reason why social workers, court staff and judges need to listen very much more carefully to the children who appear fearful of visiting or living with a parent.
Sadly, Bradyn is a long way from being the only child who has tried to advocate for himself to secure protection from a violent parent in the Family Court. Far too many children feel abandoned by the authorities such as police, child protection workers and Family Court judges who do not act upon their desperate calls for help and protection.
Bradyn’s name is only being published now because he is dead.
Until his death, it was illegal for either of his parents or even for journalists to name him as a child at risk of known violence because his parents were litigants in the Family Court.
Hundreds of other similar cases never reach the media spotlight.
A US study of 1,542 violent and sexual assaults found in 2016 that 23 percent of violent and sexual attacks included strangulation. However, the connection between strangulation and murder was established much earlier.
In 2008 a study of 506 murders and attempted murders found that 43% of murder victims had previously been subjected to non-fatal strangulation. The study also found that victims of strangulation were seven times more likely to later be murdered by their assailant.
Children most likely do not know the research evidence, but they are certainly able to feel the fear.
A girl of 12 in Queensland was last month ordered by a Family Court judge to live with her father despite the man having a long history of committing acts of serious physical violence towards his former partner.
Court workers told the girl after the ruling that the judge had ordered her to live with her father. The court worker saw and heard the child crying inconsolably and screaming in abject terror.
She told the court workers dozens of times that she did not want to live with her father, that she would not live with her father and that she feared for her life.
The court workers continued making arrangements to hand her over to the father without regard to her desperate pleas. After almost half an hour, the child told the workers she was going to kill herself.
Finally, the court workers revised their plans and the girl was taken to a psychiatric unit overnight. I interviewed the child the following day. When I asked her about her suicide threat, she had calmed down enough to clarify that her true fear was that her father would murder her.
Her fear was spine-chillingly tangible. Her fear was not without foundation. Her father had bashed her head into a wall. He had attempted to strangle her.
Her observation of her father was that he was not able to calm himself down when he was angry. The girl was justifiably terrified of him yet at only 12, she was also completely at the mercy of his physical anger and his psychological threats.
Her plight has been notified directly to the Minister for Child Safety, Di Farmer, and her Director-General. Time will tell if they take adequate action to protect her.
Portrait of a Child Murderer
Bradyn had also reported that his father had attempted to strangle him. Unsurprisingly, the boy did not want to go to see, or live with, his father. He had felt the cold-blooded anger in his father’s grip around his neck.
Bradyn, at just 9 years old, instinctively knew that he would be in danger if he was forced to live with his father. Bradyn’s mother had alerted police, child protection workers, courts and several government departments to the abuse being suffered by her son. No one listened.
Documents presented to the inquest have shown that Bradyn screamed in the past as he was handed over to his father.
On at least one of these occasions, the father signaled to the mother that he would slit her throat as he took Bradyn away.
It is not difficult to imagine the terror this child – and so many others like him – feel when they report abuse but are not protected from the offender by authorities whose duty it is to protect them.
Bradyn’s father, who I shall not name, is serving a 41-year jail term for murder and other offences. The father hit his son’s head so hard that the boy sustained a fatal subdural haemorrhage. The father had also broken his son’s bones and teeth and left the boy with extensive injuries including multiple bruises, cuts and scars. Bradyn died on 15 February 2016.
The question that confounds the Australian public is, why are authorities still failing to listen to children? Why have they not learned to believe the voices of children even after five years of a grueling Royal Commission into child sexual abuse that showed that children overwhelmingly tell the truth when they report offending against them.
Adults, if anyone, are those who lie to protect themselves, their reputation, their relationships, their assets and their self-esteem.
The question must be firmly asked, answered and acted upon: when will our police force, our child protection authorities and our family court staff and officers of the law realise that children should not be placed in the ‘care’ of violent or abusive adults?
Anyone who fails to listen to children’s disclosures of violence or who fails to believe children’s disclosures of their fear of harm, may be consigning the child to a traumatic existence at best and murder at worst.
Bradyn’s death should not have happened. He should have been heard, believed and protected.
“The question that confounds the Australian public is, why are authorities still failing to listen to children? Why have they not learned to believe the voices of children even after five years of a grueling Royal Commission into child sexual abuse that showed that children overwhelmingly tell the truth when they report offending against them.”
Amanda, I think we are all beginning to understand the answer to these punishingly obvious questions.
“We are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy” JFK.
Or heaven forbid, this quote from a serial pedophile, .Edgar Hoover,
“The individual is handicapped by coming face-to-face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists. The American (Australian) mind simply has not come to a realization of the evil which has been introduced into our midst. It rejects even the assumption that human creatures could espouse a philosophy which must ultimately destroy all that is good and decent.”
Good versus Evil. Simple as that.
And more on sex trafficking. This is going to compound Prince Andrew’s problems.Seriously!
I think Epsteingate has only scratched the surface.
There is another factor in this. In 1969 Dr Day spoke about “Families to diminish in importance.” Families would be limited in size… . and he spoke about factors that “create instability in the families.”
He also spoke about: “Sex and violence inculcated through entertainment.” That “Violence would be made more graphic. This was intended to desensitise people to violence. There might need to be a time when people would witness real violence and be a part of it. Later on it will become clear where this is headed. So there would be more realistic violence in entertainment which would make it easier for people to adjust.”
https://gumshoenews.com/2014/12/27/everything-is-in-place-and-nobody-can-stop-us-now-dr-day-1969-lecture/
We failed Bradyn, I’m so sorry but we just are not strong enough yet.
The court is in hiding as usual. The court is being held in contempt by more and more.The court is an accessory here.The court will need more extreme draconian laws, as they always need more because the push back is stronger everyday.
Amanda, I am guessing that the 12-year-old’s guardian can sue on her behalf, for their aggressive attempt to take her where she did not want to go. Kidnap is a tort.
No suing is possible…there is still a legal document in place that the 12 year old’s father can come and “collect” (or repossess, in this case) his daughter. The court’s have done nothing, the State has done nothing, even the QPS has their hands tied if they are asked to take this girl to her father. By law, they must, despite her pleas and threats of harm towards herself if this were to happen…Our system is not doing what it claims, which is in keeping “the child’s best interests” at heart. Shame.
Mary, Suing someone (for fiat currency) is not going to help Bradyn, but it might make ((them)) think twice next time.After all, ((they)) seem to love their money more than their kids.
The so-called “authorities” and the courts are hopeless! They don’t seem to have a conscience, some may be over-worked, some don’t seem to listen intently and we have child after child in these abnormal parental situations with the father being a monster and abusing the child in different ways. Where are the stiff penalties against the perpetrator who is the father? It just displays the immoral conditions of the world with the ever increasing problem of abusing innocent children.
Poor Jessica being drugged and raped for years….:-( The US government is nothing more than a vast criminal consortium involved in many types of criminal activity.
It just goes to prove that the state is above the individual and does not genuinely protect the rights of the child or of the collective. Call it whatever you wish (Fascism/Communism) but it is state control over the ‘implied ‘rights, entitlements and privileges of the individual.
The Individual, the State as and Ethic Political Theory
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2010001?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
Liberal political theory and contemporary expositions of human rights focus largely on the individual. Some liberal theorists even deny that ethnic communities and other groups, as collective entities, can have moral rights at all. The outlook is narrow and unfortunate. It reflects a preoccupation with domestic politics and a model of domestic politics that neglects the common fact of heterogeneity. It ignores widespread practices and urgent problems, for in many countries groups identified by race, language, or religion make moral claims, and their claims are sometimes conceded. It ignores the common view that nations or “peoples” have a (moral) right of self-determination, and it even leaves the state itself without justification. If theory is to give adequate guidance, it focus must be broadened. The question of group rights needs to be explored, and interrelationships between the rights of individuals, of groups, and of the state need to be clarified.
John Locke on “perfect freedom” in the state of nature (1689)
https://oll.libertyfund.org/quotes/317
An honest lawyer (if there is such a thing) needs to be found to start a legal action or class action against courts individual police and child protection for their refusal to take action agaisnt the known child abusers before more children are harmed or murdered. Children murdered and serioulsy assaulted by their mothers and fathers are ususally always known to F&CS / child protection.