The Foundation would like to acknowledge The Courier-Mail for allowing the reproduction of this article published in the QWeekend magazine on February 24, 2007.
Losing Matty
Story Trent Dalton
He was the perfect baby who never made it to adulthood. For families like Matt Stanley’s, the loss of a teenager to youth violence defies understanding.
JANUARY 23, 1991
2.20pm and Matthew Stanley is born, one year and 17 days since Laura, his older sister, died at birth. Paul and Kay Stanley were told they would not have children after Laura. But here’s Matthew, seven pounds and 14 ounces (3.57 kilos) of perfection.
He’ll be a peaceful baby. He’ll sleep through the night. He’ll sleep through his father’s lawn mowing.
He’ll be clever. In primary school, he’ll shoot through his work and help tutor his classmates. In four years’ time, he’ll have a brother, Nicholas, who he will goad and harass and shield like armour. He won’t have one best friend, he’ll have a hundred. He’ll eat like a horse. One day, he will bring eight sandwiches to high school. He’ll play soccer, touch football and golf and steal the sports pages from his father’s newspaper. At 15, he’ll be known for his scruffy blond hair and his untucked shirt. His teachers will call him a “walking uniform violation”. On the surface he’ll look like any other teenager.
But Paul and Kay will know the truth: their Matty is a miracle.
The Stanleys celebrate Nick’s birthday at a Cleveland restaurant, a short drive from their Thornlands home. Matt steals food from Nick’s plate and Nick, 12 years old now, gives as good as he gets. Matt’s got a party to go to, an 18th birthday party in Alexandra Hills. He’ll be sleeping overnight at his friend Dominic’s house. In the morning he’ll go to work at the Trade Secrets fashion outlet in Alexandra Hills.
Outside Dominic’s house, Matt jumps out of the car and farewells the family. Quick as a flash, through the driver’s side window, he squeezes his father on the back of his neck. It’s just something Matt does: a thing, a silly quirk. It drives Paul mad, but he takes it for what it is: a son telling his dad he loves him in a way that doesn’t involve hugging. Matt’s been great lately. He and Paul once fought like cat and dog about school, about chores, about responsibilities – but things changed recently.
Matt’s maturing. He’s becoming a man. He’s seeing the world from points of view other than his own. Driving home, Kay and Paul comment on the evening: “Wasn’t the dinner great. Wasn’t Matty great.
Didn’t he look happy.”
At 10.30pm, Paul watches television. Kay sleeps and Nick plays computer games. The phone rings. Nick answers. It’s a friend of Matt’s. He wants to speak to Paul. He tells Paul that while leaving the birthday party Matt was hurt. He was allegedly assaulted by a 16-year-old boy. He’s unconscious. Paul rushes to the party to find his son surrounded by friends, police and ambulance officers. He rides with Matt in the ambulance to Redlands Community Hospital. The emergency vehicle drives slowly to accommodate Matt’s fragile state. From there he is taken to Princess Alexandra Hospital, Woolloongabba. Paul follows in a car with Kay and Nick.
It’s almost 1am when the Stanleys are ushered into the hospital’s waiting area. At 2am, the head of the Intensive Care Unit tells Paul and Kay their son has horrendous brain injuries. They are irreversible. He is going to die.
The Stanleys enter the ICU to find Matt in a coma. Paul’s eyes fix on the flashing green lines and numbers on a machine by the bed. He doesn’t know what the numbers mean but they are fl uctuating and that, he figures, must mean there’s life left in his son. At 7.30am, Queensland Police Minister Judy Spence receives her daily phone call from Police Commissioner Bob Atkinson. He informs her of all serious incidents occurring across Queensland in the past 24 hours. He tells her what he knows about the alleged bashing of Matthew Stanley. Spence immediately thinks of her 16-year-old son.
At noon, Paul notices the green numbers have stopped fluctuating. They are constant. A thought enters his mind – “Matty’s gone” – but he keeps his thoughts close and his hope closer.
At 6.15pm, Matt is declared brain dead. The life support system sustains his breathing. Kay and Paul are approached by the Princess Alexandra Hospital’s donor co-ordinator. She is in tears but she has to ask the question: “Is Matthew an organ donor?”
Paul recalls a conversation he had with his son only weeks ago. They were discussing Matt getting his Learner’s Permit on his 16th birthday in January. “Are you going to be an organ donor?” Paul asked. “I will,” Matt said. “If you’re dead, you’re dead. You might as well be doing somebody some good.”
Kay and Paul discuss the possibility of donating Matt’s organs. Nick offers a thought: “If it means other people won’t have to go through what we’re going through, then it’s a good idea.”
Matt is left on life support. Kay and Paul farewell their second child. Walking out the door of the hospital room, Paul takes one final look at his son. Matty is still breathing.
SEPTEMBER 25, 2006
In Gympie, 16-year-old Andrew McNaught fi ghts for his life in hospital after allegedly being assaulted at a weekend party that erupted in violence. Five men aged from 17 to 27 face charges of assault occasioning bodily harm. Despite claims that he was not involved in the violence, McNaught was allegedly struck on the back of the head, sustaining a fractured skull and bleeding on the brain.
SEPTEMBER 27, 2006
Paul Stanley meets Pastor David Groenenboom at Redlands Christian Reformed Church. He needs a place to hold Matt’s funeral. Paul’s eyes scan the cavernous church. “But it might be a bit big here,” he says. “A bit big?” says Groenenboom. “Do you have any idea how popular Matt was?”
Three days later, almost 1000 people attend Matt’s funeral. Paul considers the number of friends he has made while running a modest fl oor-coating business, playing the odd game of touch football and building a family. He’s struck by a thought: “I’d have to die 250 times to have this many people at my funeral.”
Then Kay speaks publicly for the first time: “My heart has broken. It will never mend until I’m back with you.” Paul vows: “I am not going to let this tragedy continue. We as parents, we as citizens, we as children, we have got to stop this rubbish from happening.”
NOVEMBER 20, 2006
On the third day of Schoolies Week, Cavill Mall in Surfers Paradise is alive with school leavers. Friends Terrence Yeoh, 18, and James Collea, 19, are in a 50strong queue to enter a nightclub. “Last night, some guy got bashed in front of our apartment,” says Yeoh. “He was walking along and he just got jumped. I been jumped. Some wogs called me a f..kin’ Asian. I turned around and said, ‘F..k off’.
Then it was, like, bang. We punched on. They all jumped me. I walked away, got heaps of mates, came back, f..ked ’em up. That’s how it is, man.”
Collea interjects: “Here’s the three things that will cause a fight: alcohol, girls and cockiness. If they’re drunk and looking for a fight, they’ll fight. You’ve got to watch yourself. You don’t know if you can fight until you’re in a fight. But you’ll soon find out. And if you can’t fight, you’re f..ked.”
The Schoolies crowd shuffles to the beach, where a DJ works a mixing desk and a rave is under way.
From the balcony of a high-rise apartment, a group of teens crump (dance) to rapper 50 Cent’s Back Down: “It’s easy to see when you look at me, if you look closely, 50 don’t back down / Everywhere I go both coast wit’ toast, eastside, westside, I hold that Mack down / Every little nigger you see around me, hold a gun big enough to hold Shaq down / Next time you in the ’hood and see an ol’ G, you ask about me, the young boy don’t back down.”
On a bench by the beach showers, 17-year-old Jayel from Toowoomba takes a breather on his own. “My mate was in a blue last night,” he says. “Some bloke came up to him and started wiping his bum on him. He told him he was a poofter and [my mate] turned Matty’s shrine … The spot outside the party house at Alexandra Hills where 15-year-old Matthew Stanley was fatally injured. around and hit him. The bloke was drunk. “I remember my after-formal party. We had to get an ambulance. About ten people got put in hospital. Someone threw a bottle at someone else, then two groups of mates jumped in for each person.”
In the mall, the City Beach fashion store is having a “shoe crackdown”. Inside, two teenage males browse the T-shirts on offer. They linger over a black shirt with white block letters reading: “LET THE ASSKICKING COMMENCE”. The rack opposite has Lonsdale boxing-themed shirts reading: “Title Fighting Champion” and “Raging Bulls”.
Outside McDonald’s, 17-year-old Tim from Oxley is concerned about a friend who has been drinking too much. “He’s normally great, but he acts like a dickhead when he’s drunk. He just starts shit for no reason. People get drunk and get angry. The idea of fighting is in the back of their heads. They go to the party knowing they want to have a fight: ‘I’m angry, so I’ll take it out on somebody else’.”
Standing in the centre of the mall, 17-year-old mates “Baby Boy” and “Big Boy” don’t want to make public which Brisbane youth gang they belong to – despite the gang’s initials being tattooed on Baby’s inside wrist. They are, they confess, in one of three rising youth gangs on the city’s west side: UFN (United Family of Nesians), FGS (F..king Goodna Style) or GMF (Goodna Mother F..kers). “Pride, bro’,”
says Baby Boy. “That’s what it is. We can’t run away from it. We cannot let anyone step up to us. If we step down, we’re girls. That’s our culture. No-one steps down to anyone.
“It comes from my parents. My dad would hit me. But that was discipline. That’s the way we were brought up. My dad came up fighting. I have that thing inside me. My dad came up fighting, I want to be a fi ghter too.”
NOVEMBER 23, 2006
Kelvin Grove High School student Julian Henkes, 17, is in a coma in Gold Coast Hospital after allegedly being punched by a 17-year-old labourer in Surfers Paradise when he asked him for a cigarette. Henkes’ parents, Theresa and Stephen, hadn’t wanted their son to go to the Gold Coast during Schoolies Week. They will eventually release a statement saying Julian has “some permanent and irreversible brain damage”.
In Gympie, Andrew McNaught has recovered. He returns to work as an apprentice mechanic.
NOVEMBER 28, 2006
Police Minister Judy Spence prepares for the second meeting of the Youth Violence Taskforce, an initiative announced by Premier Peter Beattie one week after Matthew Stanley’s death. Paul Stanley has been asked to join the taskforce, along with representatives from the departments of Premier and Cabinet, Communities, Health, Justice and Education, as well as victims and their families, youth groups and
teachers. At its first meeting, the taskforce was asked to nominate the top five factors contributing to youth violence. “They’ve identified alcohol as the number one priority,” Spence says, “followed by drugs, peer influences, family dysfunction and anger management. “I was a high school teacher in the ’70s and ’80s I’m sure the level of testosterone hasn’t changed in young males. But we seem to have a generation of young people who are drinking to excess. A lot of that behaviour is to blame for violence.”
But Spence has other questions. Why are victims and perpetrators alike often aged between 15 and 19? Why do offenders often have poor grades at school? If testosterone levels haven’t changed since the ’70s when she was teaching, why are so many altercations leading to serious injury? And what influence can the taskforce have on Liquor Licensing Minister Margaret Keech when she reviews the Liquor Licensing Act in mid-2007?
Across town, Police Commissioner Bob Atkinson asks the same questions. “I’ve been a police offi cer for 38 years,” he says. “From the day I started I have been called out to incidents involving violence. I remember being called out to parties where one bloke has smacked another bloke in the mouth. Now those altercations are leading to people being stabbed.”
He recognises the influence of alcohol and begs parents to monitor their children’s alcohol intake. “There’s misunderstandings [over] the law on alcohol. The law is that you can’t drink in a public place,
no matter what your age is. You can’t drink on licensed premises if you’re under 18. But it is not illegal to drink on private premises if you’re under 18. What we ask for is responsible parental supervision.
“We’re not naive enough to think people under 18 won’t drink alcohol. If parents wish to introduce their kids to alcohol in a progressive and modest and sensible way at, say, 17 years old, then that’s probably a sensible thing. But to have a party with a large group of young people and to have quantities of spirits and full-strength beers readily available, I think, is significant in terms of the consequences that come from that. And the responsibility is not just in the hands of the parents hosting the party. It’s with the parents of the children going to the party.”
Atkinson has other questions. What role do movies play? What about music? Video games? “What bothers me is the idea that gratuitous violence is somehow an appropriate solution to a problem,” he says. “Why has violence, perhaps more so than in the past, been more appropriate than a frank discussion? With much of the violence we see, the origins of it are very minimal. It’s a perceived insult, a perceived slight. It’s the pointlessness of it.”
On Macleay Island, off Victoria Point, 69-year-old Roy Markham has just one question: “Why has it taken the government this long to do something?” His son, Paul Markham, a 23-year-old Gold Coast concreter, was punched on February 13, 2005, after passing out on a bench outside Brisbane’s Embassy Hotel. Moses Katia, a then 18-year-old graduate of St Joseph’s, Gregory Terrace, and a promising member of the school’s first XV rugby team, had drunk up to 15 rum and colas before he and a friend, Matthew La-Chiusa, came upon Markham. After the pair stole Markham’s mobile phone and shoes, Katia was captured on security cameras going back to Markham, who was, by then, urinating against a row of bins. Katia followed Markham to a seat, punched him and stole his watch. Markham died in hospital the following day from severe head injuries.
In April last year, Katia was sentenced to eight years’ jail for manslaughter, with parole recommended after three years. In August, Court of Appeal president Margaret McMurdo dismissed an appeal by then attorney-general Linda Lavarch, who wanted to increase the sentence to ten years. McMurdo laid blame on a culture of binge-drinking that made “pleasant and amiable people” behave aggressively.
Outside court, Roy Markham blamed the judicial system. “The system is rotten,” he said. “Rotten to the core.” “There are hundreds of parents who have lost their kids,” Markham says today. “It’s been going on for years. The good kids are dying and they’re leaving the ratbags behind.”
NOVEMBER 30, 2006
Paul Stanley fights what his doctor deems a bout of pneumonia. Grief has run him down. He orders a Coke from the bar at the Jubilee Hotel in Bowen Hills. He rubs the bags under his eyes. “Kay’s not doing well,” he says. “Neither am I. I feel there’s a light at the end of the tunnel but right now there’s a bloody big train running through the tunnel.”
Paul’s been busy. He’s created the Matthew Stanley Foundation to help improve safety for young people in Queensland. He’s been liaising with police on the Party Safe program, an initiative that encourages parents to register youth parties with police. Paul’s spent the morning recording a government-sponsored radio commercial for the program. He’s kept himself busy because grief thrives in an idle mind. “The whole thing was so surreal,” he recalls. “That sort of thing doesn’t happen to your child. Even seeing Matthew on life support, I knew he was going to wake up. I was even organising for Kay to go home that night. I thought I could stay the night with Matty and she could come back in the morning when Matty’s woken up.”
Paul’s eyes scan the beer garden. People laugh, friends clink glasses, a young couples play pool. “He was such a good kid. There’s nothing I would have changed about him. Well, there is one thing.” Paul tenses his face to halt the rush of tears.
DECEMBER 8, 2006
Kelvin Grove student Julian Henkes emerges from his coma to communicate with doctors. He doesn’t remember the assault that put him in hospital. “Did I miss Schoolies?” he asks his parents.
DECEMBER 23, 2006
At 7pm, there is a knock on the Stanleys’ door. Paul opens the door to find Pastor David Groenenboom standing there with a six-pack. “Thought you might need a beer,” he says.
CHRISTMAS DAY, 2006
Nick, playing with a lighter he found lying around the house, walks into the loungeroom past an arrangement of dried native flowers dedicated to Matthew. He flicks the flint and an unexpectedly tall flame catches a dried leaf. Kay enters the room in time to throw the burning arrangement outside.
Outside, Nick trembles. “Matty’s flowers,” he says. “They’re Matty’s flowers.” That afternoon, Nick knocks on his father’s bedroom. “Dad, I found another lighter in my room. I don’t think I should have these.” Father and son go to the loungeroom and construct a new floral arrangement for Matty.
JANUARY 15, 2007
The 16-year-old charged over Matthew Stanley’s death Guard of honour is appearing in the Cleveland Children’s Court. Kay is at work in an office furniture store in Fortitude Valley. “Work helps because work isn’t an area Matt had been involved in,” she says. “He’d never been there. You don’t think about anything else but work.”
Home is a minefield of emotional triggers. Songs on the radio, family photos, certain TV shows remind her of Matty. Certain foods. She’s stopped making sandwiches for Nick’s lunch: Matty loved his sandwiches. For now, she gives Nick tuckshop money.
Paul’s not working today. He’s pacing the house thinking of ways to occupy his mind, trying to avoid the triggers: the photos on the wall; Matty’s bedroom, which has remained untouched since his death. He phones Senior Constable Brad Given, the police liaison officer appointed to mediate with the Stanleys. He needs to talk to someone. It’s Given’s rostered day off but he meets Paul at a Cleveland cafe, where the two men chat for four hours.
JANUARY 19, 2007
An 18-year-old is allegedly stabbed by a 15-year-old while waiting for a train at Birkdale Railway Station. He’s rushed to Princess Alexandra Hospital. Two days later, his condition is stable. In Gympie, Andrew McNaught has picked up his daily routines once more, though he is suffering regular headaches. On Thursday, February 8, while waiting for his mother to pick him up from work, he will be assaulted again, this time by two men.
In Kelvin Grove, Julian Henkes is more anxious than ever to complete a sheet-metal apprenticeship.
“God kept me here for a reason,” he tells his mother. “We were lucky,” Theresa Henkes says later. “We were so lucky.”
JANUARY 23, 2007
Matthew Stanley’s birthday. Paul drives to the florist. He takes a detour, calling on David Groenenboom. “Don’t turn today into a day of unhappiness,” stresses Groenenboom. The two men hug. “You do know I’m not religious, David?” says Paul. “I know,” David laughs.
Paul, Kay and Nick drive to the Great Southern Garden of Remembrance on Mt Cotton Road, Carbrook, to be by Matthew’s grave. They leave flowers with him.
The Stanleys have been invited to a birthday party tonight. Friends of Matt’s, twin boys, were also born on this day and they want to share their birthday with Matthew. “I haven’t been looking forward to the party,” Kay says. “They really want me to go, but I’m in two minds about going. I said I would go, but I don’t know now. Paul wants me to go, but if it was left up to me, I wouldn’t go.”
In the afternoon, Paul sits under a palm tree in his back yard sipping a glass of water. The whole world is still. “Kay’s been a basket case most of the day,” he says. “There’s this thing with grief, I’ve read the books about it, they say it can hide away for ten years and just erupt one day or it can be with you forever.
“Every time I hear the gate bang closed I expect it’s going to be Matty. We still haven’t done anything with his room. I’ve decided to turn it into my offi ce. It will be my hideaway. But I don’t know when I will make the decision to go in there and move things. Because it’s Matty’s room … and he might be back. What will I do with his clothes? His books? It’s like that will be the end. I don’t know. All I know is that every day I keep putting it off.” Kay wanders down to the table. She puts her hand on Paul’s shoulder. He smiles, asks Kay if she’s decided to go to the party tonight. She’s undecided. Since this morning, one memory has been playing through Kay’s mind. Not once in the four months since Matthew’s death had the memory
come to her. She didn’t see it coming. It just arrived: 2.20pm, January 23, 1991, and Matthew Stanley is born, seven pounds and 14 ounces of perfection. It plays back, over and over. Play, rewind, play.
“I remember it like it was yesterday,” Kay says. “Sixteen years and that memory is as clear as day. It hit me when I woke up this morning and I wasn’t ready for it. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, crying about it.
“People think I’m getting over it, but it’s been the opposite. I’m feeling everything a lot more than back at the beginning. Before, it felt like I wasn’t in my body. I was over here and that was someone else over there crying. I kept thinking he’d be back. But he hasn’t come back. I’ve started to realise that. He’s not going to be here to smile at anymore.
“I know that now.”
Kay and Paul meander back into the house. On the dining room table they lay out pictures of Matt. They talk about their miracle. Kay pours herself a wine. “I’ll go to the party,” she says. “But I’m not staying long.”
The Stanleys are welcomed into the party with open arms. It is one of 50 teenage parties in the Redlands area – and more than 200 in Brisbane – to be registered with police in the past two months.
Matt’s friends have baked him a birthday cake. There’s music and dancing and balloons and a photograph of Matt surrounded by flowers.
Kay stays for three hours.
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