Tate pusher Jonty Bravery who threw boy, six, off 100ft-high balcony refuses to attend courtroom as he is handed further 16-week sentence for attacking two nurses at Broadmoor

The teenage thug who threw a boy from the Tate Modern viewing platform refused to appear in court to be sentenced for attacking staff at Broadmoor Hospital today.

Powerfully built Jonty Bravery was handed a 16-week term in his absence after he refused to leave his room at the specialist psychiatric facility and attend court, either in person or by videolink.

He was found guilty at Westminster Magistrates’ Court in November of assaulting Linda McKinlay and Kate Mastalerz after trying to harm himself at the maximum security hospital in Berkshire on September 30, 2024.

Bravery, 23, is already serving life with a minimum term of 15 years before he can be considered for parole after hurling the six-year-old French tourist from the London attraction in front of horrified onlookers in August 2019.

The victim, who has never been named, endured years of painstaking therapy and rehabilitation but has recently learned to run again.

Bravery, who has autism, will serve the new sentence concurrently with his existing life term. He will also pay £350 in compensation to his victims.

The judge, Chief Magistrate Paul Goldspring, acknowledged Bravery’s ‘significant and acute’ mental health difficulties and history of assaults.

He said: ‘Sadly it appears those who care for him in Broadmoor are the targets of these assaults of varying seriousness.’

He added: ‘He is not even due for consideration for release for many, many years and on the current medical analysis … it is very unlikely – unless anything significant changes – he will be deemed safe to be released.’

The trial heard how Bravery, 23, attacked the women after attempting to jump from a window ledge to the floor of his Broadmoor room – which is sparsely furnished for his own protection, containing only a mattress on the floor and an adjoining bathroom.

He is required to be supervised by three members of staff at all times of the day and night, due to his mental health needs.

Prosecutor Tom Heslop said Bravery asked to use the toilet and, upon returning to his bedroom, attempted to climb up to the window ledge before being restrained by Ms McKinlay and Ms Mastalerz.

He said: ‘He finally calmed down. Ms Mastalerz took his other arm in the restraint.

‘At this point Mr Bravery kicked out towards Ms Mastalerz in the groin area, and then turned his attention to Ms McKinlay to her leg and clawed across her face with his fingernails.’

The nurses described how Bravery – who was only wearing boxer shorts at the time – repeatedly struck out at them after saying he wanted to harm himself.

Ms McKinlay told the court: ‘He was just kicking, he managed to get his legs up, he attacked my face by clawing at my face. My face and my eye was all scratched and bleeding.

‘At the time it was just a case of dealing with the situation but afterwards I was very shaky and couldn’t believe it happened.

‘In all my years of being in Broadmoor I had never been attacked before so it was a real shock.

‘(I was) very, very shook up, upset, could not believe it.’

The experienced nurse was taken to hospital and discharged the following morning.

She said she was now ‘very, very cautious’ at work as a result.

‘(I’m) just nervous sometimes when I’m approaching an incident,’ she said.

‘My main thing is my family and grandkids seeing me like that.’

Her colleague Ms Mastalerz described how she could see ‘droplets of blood’ on Ms McKinlay’s face before Bravery then attacked her, she said.

‘He started kicking us from both sides and he made contact with me,’ she told the court.

She said the incident had more of an impact on her mentally rather than physically.

She said: ‘It was a very stressful situation for myself and for my colleague and for Jonty, and it was not very pleasant.’

The judge said the staff members had used reasonable force to restrain Bravery who ‘went too far’ and was ‘under no physical threat at the time’.

Bravery was in Broadmoor after admitting attempted murder over the Tate Modern incident.

His young victim suffered life-changing injuries, including a bleed to the brain, fractures to his spine and broken arms and legs.

Bravery, who also has a personality disorder, was 17 at the time and has been detained ever since.

He told police he was motivated to attack the young boy because he had to prove a point ‘to every idiot’ who said he had no mental health problems, and asked if the incident was going to be on the news.

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 also said he wanted to highlight his apparent discontent with his treatment for a host of issues, telling horrified onlookers that social services were to blame for the atrocity.

A serious case review published in 2021 found Bravery was not considered a risk to others at the time of the Tate incident, despite previously assaulting police and a restaurant worker, and hitting support staff with a brick.

It highlighted a series of violent incidents in the two years before he struck, as well as other examples of troubling behaviour including putting faeces in his mother’s make-up brushes and threatening to kill members of the public.

But it also concluded that Bravery’s violent behaviour had reduced at the time of the Tate Modern attack, while he was living in a bespoke placement with two-to-one care funded by Hammersmith and Fulham Borough Council and the clinical commissioning group.

The report stated: ‘There was no recent evidence that he (Bravery) presented a risk to other children or adults unknown to him.

‘It was in this context that he was progressively given more freedoms, which saw him able to visit central London unaccompanied on the day of the incident.’

Plans to give judges extra powers to force defendants to attend court – or risk being in contempt and facing further punishment – are currently working their way through Parliament.