What should have been Brendon Stevenson’s 25th birthday celebration was instead a grey and gloomy day for his family who marked the occasion as the one-month anniversary of his suicide and his “first heavenly birthday”.
It was a sad day for his mom Lana Maartens, who said Brendon had been troubled for much of his life, and despite being her much-loved son he held a deep conviction that he was unloved and unlovable.
“The fact remains that there are things that you just can never get over,” she said.
Brendon’s traumatic journey started when he was just five years old and caught up in a home invasion in Douglasdale in October 2003. He was at home with his mother and her younger brother, who was eight years old. Maartens’ father was on his way home when the attack happened.
One of the suspects climbed in through the bathroom window while Brendon was sitting on the toilet. He grabbed the child and shot him. Maartens and her brother were “roughed up”, and the attack was thwarted when her father Phil arrived home. The suspects fled with only a DVD player.
The bullet struck Brendon just below his right arm and exited his lower back, cracking several ribs along the way but missing his vital organs.
His mother never left him during his hospitalisation.
“I was very protective before the attack, but after that I was even more so,” Maartens said, describing how Brendon grew up as a child who would push boundaries, rebel and tend to make friends with “the bad crowds”.
“He became manic depressive, but he didn’t want any kind of medical help,” she said.
When he turned 16, he decided to go to live with his grandmother.
“He absolutely adored her,” Maartens said.
He appeared to be getting better. He found work and was renting a cottage in Centurion and had a girlfriend.
“But it has always been a difficult journey, and I was always scared for him. On two occasions we knew he was having suicidal thoughts and we managed to catch him in time during lockdown when he was struggling. But this time he acted fast when nobody was around.”
A month before his birthday, after being accused by his girlfriend of cheating on her, Brandon went home. He messaged his boss to say goodbye and then hanged himself. Maartens was nearby and rushed to his home, and was unfortunately the first person to find his body.
“It has been so hard to deal with all of it. It has been difficult since the funeral. But I can only hope he did find some peace,” said his heartbroken mother.
Childline head Joan van Niekerk said Brandon’s case was an illustration of how serious trauma in early life, when a person is not equipped with adult understanding, could affect their ability to cope and deal well with later trauma.
'Therapy through different life stages after trauma'
This, she said, was particularly compounded in families where there was a predisposition to depression or even suicide. It was also an unfortunate reality for many children who have been targeted or affected by violent crime.
“Though there is sometimes a genetic component in cases of suicide, what we see most often is a very mixed bag of contributing factors. You generally cannot say that one particular event — even if it is something that had a huge impact — is the only cause,” Van Niekerk said.
However, in Brendon’s case, she said the childhood violation would have been immense and extreme. To be pulled off the toilet by an intruder was to be assaulted when extremely vulnerable. To then be shot and thrown down injured in front of his mother who was also under attack would have been hugely traumatic for a small child.
“In cases like this, even when a child has received support and therapy, it’s not fair to say that the efforts failed,” Van Niekerk said, explaining that when children are traumatised at a very young age, it is generally necessary for them to undergo therapy repeatedly throughout life as the trauma could re-emerge at different life stages and during development.
“When the initial event is traumatic, we tend to think therapy is necessary at the time and then it’s finished.
“But often what is needed is kind of a booster. Like when a child is traumatised at age five and they receive help, then at adolescence they start attaching differently to others and experience their own development issues they may need help or guidance through that,” she said, explaining how traumatised individuals could sometimes develop misperceptions regarding other people and their own worth as a person needing love. This was particularly the case when the trauma suffered by young children was of a sexual nature.
And short term interventions in times of distress, she explained, were generally only effective in the short term.
“The problem is that when people put out a cry for help, sometimes what arrives is not what they need at that point,” she said, adding that adults often experience difficulty in empathising with childhood trauma.
“In this country we have a lack of these skills and in many rural areas they are non-existent. Yet we have so many hurting adults,” said Van Niekerk.
“In my experience, boys find it more difficult to accept rejection than girls and they won’t address their issues in therapy. Their hatred for whoever or whatever harmed them is magnified and they can grow up to reject an entire class of people, sometimes turning it into racism,” she said.
Ultimately, Van Niekerk said, therapy was important and necessary in dealing with past hurt and trauma for impacted individuals to learn coping mechanisms and how to maintain healthy survival habits.
“Victims who don’t get help and support can end up turning to harmful behaviours,” Van Niekerk said, adding that even with good support and follow-up, damaged people might not recover well and still find suicide their only way out. This was a possibility and not something others needed to feel guilt or blame for.
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