Ralph & Kathy Kelly - Too Soon, Too Late

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 unprovoked attack and that they were to come at once. Thomas has been coward-punched by a total stranger in Kings Cross, and suffered a fatal head injury. He was just eighteen years old.

In the aftermath of their son’s death, Kathy and Ralph became the public face of the campaign to end the violence that plagued Sydney’s major nightspots. Working with the state government, they helped amend judicial laws and were one of the driving forces behind the introduction of tougher sentencing for ‘coward-punches’ that has been a major factor in reducing deaths and injuries in the city. They were also instrumental in creating Take Kare Safe Spaces for young people in key nightspots.

But their campaigning created a huge toll other family. When Stuart Kelly, Thomas’s younger brother, had his first night at the University of Sydney’s St Paul’s College, Ralph and Kathy believe the bullying he experience because of the family’s profile was so traumatising he left university for good the next day. Five months later, on 25 July, 2016, Stuart took his own life. He too was just eighteen years old.