Man who threw boy, 6, off Tate Modern ‘clawed’ face of Broadmoor nurse

An autistic man who threw a six-year-old boy off the Tate Modern has attacked nurses at his high-security psychiatric hospital.

Jonty Bravery, 24, left a nurse bleeding from the face after he clawed at her eye with his fingers in Broadmoor hospital.

He kicked another female nurse in the thigh at the institution where he is serving a life sentence for hurling a French boy from Tate Modern’s 10th-storey balcony.

The boy miraculously survived the 100ft (30m) fall, but suffered life-changing injuries, including a bleed on the brain and multiple broken bones.

Bodyworn camera footage played at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Thursday showed the moment Bravery fought with nurses on the floor after trying to jump off a windowsill.

As nurses tried to restrain him panicked staff members shout ‘Jesus Christ do something’.

He chose not to attend his trial at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Thursday, where he was found guilty of assaulting nurses Linda McKinlay and Kate Mastalerz in September 2024.

Prosecutor Tom Heslop said Bravery has to be monitored by three members of staff ‘24 hours a day, seven days a week’, and is kept in a room with only a mattress in it.

‘At around 9.30 at night, Mr Bravery asked to go to the toilet,’ he said.

‘After he used the bathroom, he attempted to climb a ledge and throw himself from it.’

The nurses tried to restrain him, putting him on his mattress before turning him onto his back, Mr Heslop said.

Body-worn footage played to the court showed the nurses struggling on the floor with Bravery before other staff rush into the room to help.

Ms McKinlay told the court it was the first time she had been attacked at Broadmoor in her long career.

‘Jonty climbed up trying to get on to the windowsill,’ she said.

She told the court Bravery had done the same thing before to try and harm himself.

‘We were trying to coax Jonty down. We didn’t want him to hurt himself,’ she continued.

‘He was screaming and shouting and kicking. We shouted for assistance.’

Asked about her injuries, the grandmother said: ‘He attacked my face, he was clawing at my face.

‘My eye and my face were all scratched.

‘In the aftermath I was very shaken. In all my years of being in Broadmoor I’ve never been attacked.’

Ms McKinlay was taken to hospital for treatment.

Fellow nurse Ms Mastalerz said she started ‘shouting for help’ when Bravery began kicking and scratching.

She was left with a bruised thigh, and said it had been a ‘very stressful situation’.

Finding him guilty of both charges, Chief Magistrate Paul Goldspring said Bravery ‘went too far’.

He adjourned sentencing until January 8, and asked for an update on Bravery’s current mental health condition.

In 2020, Bravery was jailed for another 14 weeks after admitting attacking Broadmoor Hospital staff.

He punched nursing assistant Sarah Edwards in the head and face before pulling her hair, and bit Maxwell King, a rehabilitation therapist assistant, on his finger after he came to his colleague’s aid.

A GoFundMe page set up for the French boy’s family has raised more than £470,000 — more than double its original target.

In a recent update on the page, the little boy’s family said: ‘Back home, he was also able to practice on his tricycle, always with his dad for his safety.

‘Our son also continues to gain cognitive endurance. His memory skills are still very limited, but they are functional and still improving, so he is acquiring a general knowledge at his own pace, which increasingly allows him to be included with other children.

‘Today, our pre-teen (we have to face the facts, he’s not a little boy anymore) has understood that he needs to give himself breaks; we need to remind him less.’

‘Finally, our little knight had long set himself the goal of being able to run, jump, and swim again. He can’t do it like other children his age, of course, but we can no longer describe what he does in any other way than by saying it’s running, jumping, and swimming.’

They also shared that in early 2026, he will have another surgery to help him progress further and reduce the pain he experiences.