Parents of murdered Bridgette Porter say they’re struggling with PTSD

The parents of a 10-year-old girl who was brutally murdered by a teenager have said they’re suffering from PTSD after learning the gruesome details of their daughter’s death.

Rebekah and Dominic Porter opened up about the tragic killing of their child Bridgette, who was fatally attacked at a farmhouse in Gunnedah, New South Wales, Australia, in July 2020.

Speaking in a 7NEWS documentary, the grieving couple revealed they have been diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder – and neither have been able to work since the horrific incident.

Their young daughter, who went by the nickname Biddy, had travelled 350 km from her home in Orange to stay with relatives during the school holidays.

There, she was stabbed to death by the teenage girl, who was 14 at the time.

It is believed the girl’s injuries had been so bad that her father revealed a forensic social worker said ‘we’re just in the process of putting Bridget back together’ to him at the murder scene.

‘At the funeral I was specifically told I was only allowed to touch her foot because if I touched any other part of her, she would fall apart,’ Dominic recounted.

Speaking of the circumstances which led to Biddy going to the farm in 2020, Rebekah said: ‘About four days beforehand, I dropped Bridget to my mom and dad’s, and she was actually meant to stay with them. But my parents had an appointment, so it was decided she’d go to the farm.

‘She was meant to stay there for a week, and then go back to mom and dad’s. My kids have gone there their whole lives, it was a happy place, a fun place, it’s the farm, it’s the country, there’s animals.’

However unbeknownst to Biddy’s mother, well before the 10-year-old arrived at the farm there had been some disturbing behaviour from the 14-year-old girl.

A few weeks previously, the killer told her mother how she often thought about killing her and her father.

The teenager’s mother asked for psychiatric help on a GP phone consultation but was still waiting for a call back when Biddy was murdered.

On the run up to the brutal attack, the 14-year-old had killed six of her mother’s chickens on the farm because she ‘felt like it’, weeks before Biddy arrived to stay.

She had a fascination with sharp weapons, and had a collection of four knives, a small axe and a Tomahawk – which her father had given her as a gift – in her room.

In her diary she wrote: ‘I fantasise about killing people all the time, it’s not sometimes, it’s all the time, every moment I have spare is planning and thinking about killing someone. I’ll kill my mom; I’ll kill her by stabbing her in the back and slicing her throat, but the fun only starts when I get to my sister.’

Dominic said: ‘I quite often give the analogy: “You’ve left my child with a dangerous animal alone, like a lion, and put her in a room and expected nothing to happen”. If I had a child in my care, I would have a duty of care to ensure they were safe and that was definitely not done.’

In police interviews, the killer claimed she became frustrated with Biddy when she called her ‘creepy’ and said she should be in ‘a mental hospital’.

The following day, as they were playing ‘hide and seek’ on the farm, Biddy revealed to her relatives that she fell into prickles and cried because the teenager was chasing her with a knife.

According to her diary, the 14-year-old had planned to attack her father with her knife later that night, but it is unknown why she never carried out that attack.

The following morning her parents left the family home to milk a cow on the farm, leaving their niece home alone with their murderous daughter.

According to police reports, she ended up going into Biddy’s room, slit her throat and carved words into her body.

Rebekah, who was diagnosed with delayed onset PTSD 18 months after her daughter’s murder, said she was given three months paid leave off work, but she couldn’t go back due to her trauma.

She said: ‘I was just in utter shock to a point where I couldn’t dress myself, feed myself, my partner would have to dress me, prompt me to eat.

‘When the detectives came and I asked them what had happened, it felt like a horror movie. I couldn’t believe it, it was so horrific, and I couldn’t fathom it, it felt evil, it felt like I was living in the script of a horror movie.

‘I just prayed, I wished any other death for my daughter, I thought that if she died in any other way rather than this, if she had to die, why can’t it be in a car accident or drowning or of an illness rather than having to have her life ended in such a brutal way, that most adults wouldn’t be able to cope with and endure, and she had to endure that as a little girl.’

Meanwhile Biddy’s father, also spoke about his PTSD from the murder of his daughter.

He said: ‘I met plenty of veterans… and they all say that you know my story is far more traumatic than theirs, and my response always the same, everyone’s trauma is their own trauma.’

The teenager was arrested and taken to Gunnedah Police Station where she spent the day with medical experts and local detectives. She was found guilty of murder but not criminally responsible in 2021.

She is now being treated in a forensic health facility and their identity cannot be revealed for legal reasons.

Under NSW law, the name of a child murder victim cannot be published or broadcast without the consent of their senior next of kin.

The Porters have given the ABC permission to use Bridgette’s name and image, but they want legislative change to ensure a victim’s identity is not automatically suppressed.

Rebekah told ABC: ‘Bridgette’s memory needs to be honoured, her legacy needs to be honoured. I think it’s really disrespectful to suppress any victims of serious crimes.’