Martin Bryant Birthday Series, Part 3: Where’s Mum?

Carleen Bryant describes son’s innocence to 60 Minutes

by Mary W Maxwell, LLB

This coming Sunday, 7^th May 2017, is Martin Bryant’s fiftieth birthday. We’re making a “card” with pictures of cakes, to be sent as a laminated poster, rolled up. Surely they will let him see it. Surely he will be pleased. No doubt his Mum will bring him a real cake.

This article is about Carleen. Recently, I googled for “Port Arthur anniversary” and was shocked to see a headline “Martin Bryant’s mother now believes he is guilty.” I am not shocked that she said it. I am shocked because surely she did not say it – it is a lie.

Indeed all you need to do is check the text that went with that headline and you’ll see that the headline is unsupported. Channel 9 printed it on April 16, 2016. A full year ago, but I hadn’t noticed it.

Myself and 32,000 other viewers have happily watched a video that was uploaded to Youtube on August 6, 2011 (by FreeMartinBryant), in which Carleen clearly proclaims her son’s innocence. So let’s sort this out. Lies get on my nerves!

First I will print the nice “Innocence” transcript of 2011. Then the lie-ful Channel 9 article of April 16, 2016. Finally I’ll “take it to court” – I mean I will take it to Carleen’s autobiography My Story for adjudication. OK?

The Youtube Video in Which Carleen Yells “Innocent!”

(I believe it is from Sixty Minutes)

First the show’s narrator says “Martin Bryant’s lawyer encouraged him to plead guilty to alleviate enormous amounts of public pain, but in her recently [2010] published book [Mrs Bryant] now claims, beyond belief, that her son isn’t guilty and the evidence against him was never tested at a trial.

But are you really saying that you think if he’d had a trial were you convinced to plead guilty he might have got off?

CARLEEN: Well yes, because Martin always, when he was questioned, probably four weeks after before I saw him again, he always said he was never in Port Arthur at Broad Arrow.

And you believed him?

CARLEEN: Yes there’s no evidence.

But none of that was needed because Martin said in court “Yes, I did it” and you went along with it.

CARLEEN: Exactly.

And now you wish you hadn’t?

CARLEEN: Of course I’ll regret it for the rest of my life. A lot of people on that day came forward after and people who knew Martin, had known Martin for years, and they said as far as they were concerned they didn’t recognize the gunman as being Martin Bryant.

So many people would be very upset to hear you deny that this happened as people understand that it happened. What do you say to them?

CARLEEN: But there’s also a lot of people that realize that Martin didn’t have a trial and that there was no evidence proven, whether he was the gunman.

But did you ever get the chance to ask him “Did you do it, son?” Did you ask him that?

CARLEEN: I did, but I didn’t get any answer.

And then after that he doesn’t want to see you now.

CARLEEN: That’s right because he’s frightened I’m going to ask questions.

Whatever people say about it, you’re a loyal mother.

CARLEEN: I know there’ll be a lot of people out there that’ll be condemning me for even coming on this program, but I want to be able to help Martin, too.

Dear Reader, was that clear enough? Perhaps crystal clear? Good, then we now turn to the April 16, 2016 article, timed to be read during the build-up to the all-sing, all-dancing 20^th anniversary. (That is all singing “no guns” and all dancing “lovely how the community comes together like this.’) It’s from Channel 9 News online. I quote in full, except at the one 3-dot elision. I will use bolding to emphasize the deceit.

Title: “Martin Bryant’s mother now believes he is guilty”

Martin Bryant’s mother now believes her son was responsible for the Port Arthur massacre that left 35 people dead despite previously suggesting [suggesting???] he may not have even been there, her biographer and friend says.

Carleen Bryant has rarely spoken publicly about the 1996 rampage, apart from her biography My Story released in 2010 and an interview with 60 Minutes, shortly after the book’s release [As we saw above].

In the 2011 interview she appeared to cast doubt on her son’s guilt, saying there was “no evidence” he was at Port Arthur and some witnesses “didn’t recognise the gunman as being Martin Bryant”. [Of course that is true, you should have come to my Fringe show!]

Michael Ludeke, who edited and co-wrote Carleen Bryant’s book, said no one can blame a mother for expressing disbelief about what her son was capable of. [True]

“She has entertained all aspects (of the massacre), and if you put yourself in her situation and it was your child it’s difficult to believe we also wouldn’t look at all aspects,” Mr Ludeke told 9 Stories. [Oh, is that a clue? The show is called ‘stories.]

“But she also said, ‘If his father was alive it wouldn’t have happened’.” [meaning the press would not have been able to dump all on Martin?]

Mr Ludeke said he has never given any credence to the “silly” conspiracy theories that Martin Bryant was not the gunman, or was “a patsy” used by the federal government to push through anti-gun laws. “Not in the slightest do I believe them. From time to time people have rabbited on to me about them but I don’t entertain it,” he said.

[Naturally, he is entitled to his opinion. And who cares what his opinion is — the headline is about Carleen.]

A lifelong Tasmanian resident, Michael Ludeke knows more than most about the horror of the massacre. Aged just 21, he was working as a mortuary assistant at Royal Hobart Hospital when Bryant walked into the Seascape Cottage and opened fire on April 28, 1996. [Excuse me, Bryant didn’t walk into Broad Arrow, just ask Mumsie.]

“To see 35 bodies come in was overwhelming. It is not something you would ever think you would see in Australia, and it’s not something you ever forget,” he said. [I agree. I saw one dead body once and almost fainted.]

Mr Ludeke said he and Carleen Bryant have formed a strong friendship through the emotional catharsis of helping her write her story. [Which person was having the catharsis?]

Despite the close connection, he says he has never met Martin Bryant and only would “if it was for the right purpose.” [???] He revealed Mrs Bryant visits her son in Tasmania’s Risdon Prison every few weeks, along with another unnamed family friend.

[Maybe need double quotes around the word “friend’ there?]

“Going by all reports he is up and down, as he doesn’t have a lot of motivations,” he said. [Well you wouldn’t would you. My spouse used to go nuts when on holiday because he didn’t have work to do.]

“She sometimes says she’s taking him clothes because of the weight he has put on. [Let him who is without stone cast the first comment.]

“It will always be a battle and she deals with it the best she can, she’s a tough person.” He said it took bravery by Mrs Bryant to face up to the massacre, as she has been “a forgotten victim.”

“She’s done nothing wrong and I feel terribly sorry for her. She has had to deal with what I call ‘the redneck attitude’, that he did it so it’s her fault.  “It’s unfair.”

Unfair is the word for it, all right. I mean unfair is the word for Channel 9’s article. How can the headline say Martin Bryant’s mother now believes he is guilty.” Let me know if I missed something.

Now then. When I was in Sydney last year I skulked over to the Library of the University of Technology to take notes from Carleen Bryant’s book, My Story. I don’t own the book so cannot whip it out now and will instead quote my review of it (from Gumshoe, on Bastille Day, 2016).

Carleen Bryant’s book, My Story, mentions many of the heart-rending experiences she has had…

One day on the radio she heard that her son had attempted suicide. Can you imagine that on top of all the worry that this would bring, there was the anger that she had not been phoned by the authorities to inform her, the nearest of kin?

But as she later found out, Martin, when first imprisoned, had been asked “Do you want the family notified if you have a major difficulty?”  He had ticked the box “No.” Most likely he did this out of consideration for his loved ones. That is, he would not want them to learn of sad things.

Mum wrote:

It was a shock to note how much weight he had lost. He seemed happy that I was there, and asked about family and friends. He showed me the wounds on his neck.

…Martin phoned and spoke with his sister. This was the first time they had spoken in over 10 years. It was very reassuring for me that they told one-another that they loved each other. After every telephone call to me he says the same. (p 156)

As each prisoner is somehow reckoned to be a Bad Member of Society (unlike, say, the cabal men who are apparently Good Members of Society), it seems natural in the prison setting that family members are also part of the bad set. They must not “interfere” with the staff.

Mum wrote:

Martin spent a couple of days at the Royal Hobart Hospital being treated for burns before being taken to the Risdon prison hospital. When I was finally allowed to see him, I saw my son, badly burned and still in great pain, bound to his wheelchair by leather straps.

Martin told me that he had asked to have the restraints removed, but this was refused.  When I asked Martin who refused, one of the prison officers leaned towards me and told me “You cannot discuss the staff.” (p 132).

It is likely that families of prisoners become depressed. This could be simply out of empathy: one hates to see one’s relative in trouble or in pain or belittled. But it may just as well be that the family member, who has more freedom than the prisoner, is frustrated at every turn.

In her 2010 autobiography, My Story, Mrs Bryant briefly alludes to the fact that she has heard of various theories of the Port Arthur massacre and is aware of books by Andrew MacGregor and Stewart Beattie.

She knows there are conspiracy theories saying the government did the whole thing — and that maybe the baddies exited Seascape “on the water.” She knows that Ted Serong, OBE, expressed disbelief that Martin could wield a gun so expertly.

Carleen then drops that subject to go on to say she tries her best, especially with the help of her parish, to go about her life. The reader does not know if she has ever become aware of efforts being made to exonerate her son. Does Carleen know of the 2016 book Port Arthur: Enough Is Enough that clearly outlines his innocence?

Mrs Bryant says that her son often refuses a visit from her (although he often accepts one). During the visit there is not much conversation. If she asks How are you? The answer is “just average.’  If she asks “How is the food? The answer is “Just average.”

Carleen has described her son as extremely depressed, and admits to almost continual depression herself following the 1996 event (not to mention her having been widowed in 1993).

At one point a few years ago Carleen became so depressed that she tried to end her life (for which she is now very sorry). She wrote, in 2010:

I took 35 sleeping pills and cut my arms. I needed 40 stitches and the paracetamol in the pills harmed my liver.

On recovery, her thought was:

I figured that the Lord had kept me alive for a reason, to “set the record straight” and correct the many lies told about my family in the media.

Right-he-ho, Mother Bryant. And congratulations on raising a boy to the age of 50.

— Mary W Maxwell is on the warpath.