On August 4, a French child visiting London with his family was found on Tate Modern’s fifth-floor roof after being pushed from the museum’s tenth-floor viewing platform. Soon after, British teenager John Bravery was charged with attempted murder, and today he plead guilty.
BBC reports that Bravery’s lawyer informed the court that his client is on the autism spectrum, has been diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder, and that he possibly has a personality disorder. Bravery told police he planned in advance to hurt someone at the South Bank gallery that day to prove “to every idiot” that he was affected by struggles with mental health, hoping it would be broadcast on television. He said, “I wanted to be on the news, who I am and why I did it, so when it is official no-one can say anything else.” Bravery will be sentenced in February.
While the child survived, his family says that, “He is constantly awoken by pain and he can’t communicate that pain or call out to hospital staff […] We don’t know when, or even if, we will be able to return to work, or return to our home, which is not adapted for a wheelchair.”
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Six-Year-Old Boy In Critical Condition After Being Thrown From Tate Modern’s Balcony
Bravery to be confined to a cell for not less than 10 years. If he doesn’t survive, no harm done.