Once they were just boys

It’s impossible to talk about Bayly Carter without discussing the whole Carter family. The Carter family tree included children in every class in the school. Cousins and aunts and uncles were taught alongside each other. There were even children with exactly the same name from different branches of the family. The children we were teaching at this time could be traced back to their grandfathers – three brothers who had each taken a slightly different path. They were a very close knit family who looked after each other. They were admired and feared by different elements of the community.

Bayly was the youngest of 5 siblings. On the surface there was no sign of the problems to come. He lived with his mum, dad and siblings in a smart semi detached house (that they owned). His dad worked long hours as a builder and his mum stayed at home to care for the children. By the time Bayly was born (just 11 months after his brother Lincoln) his older brothers were already displaying some behavioural problems. Both were excluded from secondary school and then attended a local school specialising in Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties (this would be called SEMH now but then was EBD). The unusual spelling of Bayly’s name came about when his dad went out to celebrate his birth and decided to get the new baby’s name tattooed on his arm. This is how he thought it was spelt so this is the spelling that was then transferred to his birth certificate. It proved to be useful as he grew older – his cousin Bailey Carter was only a year older and they were friends, attending the same school and both boys having the same name was quite confusing!

I first met Bayly when he was 9. He was a little boy who really struggled with learning and was disengaged from school. I was determined to build a relationship with him and knew that this was essential if I was going to engage him in education. Working with his mum was not successful – she avoided our phonecalls, and the one time I managed to get her to come in for a meeting she glared at me throughout and told me ‘this office stinks of shit’ before walking out. It was during a chat with Bayly when I’d been to remove him from class because he was disrupting the lesson that I started to find a way in. Bayly told me that he just wanted to learn to read. So from that day, he came to my office first thing every morning and after lunch to read. Yes it was very time consuming and the progress with reading was not rapid, but it enabled me to build a connection with him. We chatted about his life, his dogs, fishing with his dad as well as the books we shared. I really thought I was getting somewhere.

Throughout his childhood Bayly and his siblings were known to Social Care. At one point when he was very young, care proceedings got as far as court – before a judge decided that the children should remain with their parents.

When Bayly went into Year 6 his family life took a down turn. His parents split up, and his mum left the family home with her three youngest children (the oldest siblings were living in their own homes by this point) and declared herself as homeless. They became open to social care after mum reported incidents of domestic violence. The family were placed into a hostel at the other side of town, living in one room and sharing facilities with other residents. During this time Bayly reported finding needles and other drug paraphernalia in the shared lounge of the hostel. More worryingly, he also told us of a time where another resident of the hostel (an adult male) had tied him to a bed and scared him. All of this was reported to the family social worker and they tried to find an alternative solution for housing.

Bayly’s behaviour became more challenging as the year progressed until one day I was called by his teacher to help. She had evacuated the rest of the class to the corridor when Bayly started to tip furniture. When I arrived, he was in the middle of the room holding a large metal free-standing whiteboard above his head. He told us that if we didn’t get out of his way he was going to smash it over our heads. Although my instinct is always to stand my ground, on this occasion we moved out of his way fearing that he meant it and knowing that he didn’t really care about causing harm to others. He threw the whiteboard at the wall, walked out if the classroom, kicked the mag-locked front door open and left the school site. Bayly didn’t return to the school and we managed to get him a place in the local PRU.

It felt like a failure and that we had given up on him. I had to remind myself that I’d arrived at the school when he was nine and therefore hadn’t had long enough to form a connection. I vowed then to spot the signs at a younger age in future, and to make sure relationships were strong, so we could try to prevent these problems in upper key stage 2.

The next time I heard Bayly’s name was when he was arrested for murder at the age of 16. Clearly in the press he was ‘an unnamed 16 year old’, but within the local community the fact it was him was well known. His cousins still attended our school and everyone locally seemed to know about the incident. As part of a gang of youths, alongside his cousin Bailey and other young men we knew well, they had chased and kicked a man to death. A year later Bayly was found guilty of murder and his accomplices guilty of GBH. He was named in the press and his background was analysed. His learning difficulties were used as a mitigating factor. Details of the horrific incident were released.

Could I have predicted that he would go on to commit a crime? Yes.

Could I have predicted that he would grow to be a violent thug? Yes.

Is there anything I could do differently when I met the next ‘Bayly’ to prevent this from happening again? Yes. Building relationships is key. Children need adults they have connections with from a very early age so that when the cracks show, they have someone they trust who can get through to them. It is also crucial to identify any learning difficulties as early as possible so that intervention can be put in place. Most importantly, primary schools must have a curriculum that teaches empathy and care for others.

Gathering evidence, creating timelines and being professionally curious about a  family is also crucial. Bayly was failed by the system and a young man who was in the wrong place at the wrong time lost his life.