Man who threw boy from Tate Modern sentenced for nurse attack

A British man who is serving a life sentence for pushing a 6-year-old French boy from the balcony of the Tate Modern in London in August 2019 has been sentenced for attacking nurses at the high-security psychiatric hospital where he has been jailed.

Jonty Bravery, 24, attacked two nurses at Broadmoor Hospital in September 2024, leaving one with scratches to her face and the other with a bruised thigh, the Crown Prosecution Service said in a news release Thursday.

“Bravery, who had just been to the bathroom, tried to climb onto a ledge and throw himself from it,” prosecutors said. “Body-worn camera footage played in court showed him kicking and lashing out at the nurses as they tried to restrain him.”

Bravery refused to appear during his trial, which took place at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on November 27, prosecutors said.

In his absence, he was found guilty of two counts of assault by beating and has now been sentenced to 16 weeks in prison for the attack on the nurses, to occur concurrently with his existing life sentence.

“This was a violent and distressing incident for the nurses who were simply doing their jobs. No one should ever face this kind of aggression while providing care,” Jessica Hart from the Crown Prosecution Service said in a statement.

“Our case was supported by body-worn video showing the assault, alongside the nurses’ accounts and images of one nurse’s injuries.”

An archived news release from London’s Metropolitan Police shows that Bravery pleaded guilty to a charge of attempted murder in December 2019.

Police said Bravery, then 17, threw the younger boy from a tenth-floor viewing platform of the Tate Modern. Members of the public and museum security detained Bravery until police arrived.

The boy was found on a fifth-floor roof and treated at the scene before he was taken by helicopter to a local hospital. He spent several weeks in the hospital before he was able to return to France with his family.

“Our son still needs intensive rehabilitation since he hasn’t recovered mobility in all limbs or cognitive capacities. He is constantly awoken by pain and he can’t communicate that pain or call out to hospital staff,” the boy’s family said in December 2019.

“Life stopped for us four months ago. 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. We are exhausted, we don’t know where this all leads, but we go on.”

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