'I'm not 18, trust me': Inside the life of bullied boy with dwarfism Quaden Bayles |Australian Story

aboriginal and torres strait islander viewers are advised that the following program contains images and voices of people who have died yeah you go the relationship i have with quaiden it's a different kind of mother-son relationship because he's not your average child he's a nine-year-old kid that just wants to live a regular life he wants to be normal you know he asks all the time can't the doctors fix me up can we see if there's any little tadpoles or fish so i think that's where my overprotectiveness comes in because i want to do everything i can to improve my son's quality of life to ensure that he's going to be okay because i know how cruel people can be nice and warm i get very easily angered when i hear of another incident because we just want it to stop this is how bullying affects a nine-year-old kid i could never have predicted what was going to happen after one video brisbane mother has posted this heartbreaking video to show the impact bullying can posted online collecting more than 23 million views i'm not saying this video is fake but uh 18 year old dwarf is gonna look the same as a nine-year-old he's an actor he's an influencer here he is with the money i have never seen the amount of vilification that came out of this one event it was relentless i don't think any child should ever have to go through what he's been through and any parent have to go through what my sister's been through we need to talk about these things because that's the only way we're going to make a change we couldn't suffer in silence any longer [Music] yeah that's nice hi my name is claire velden i want to be tick-tock famous i'm not almost turning 10 people think i'm 18 but i'm really not trust me i'm really ten one and zero i'll be turning that shoe [Music] quadin is a very energetic loving cheeky crazy happy person he proves everyone wrong he can do just about anything he puts his mind to nothing stopping quadrant which one's your favorite brooklyn eleven who's that he's got such a big heart but he is very self-conscious he's very sensitive and and he's an emotional little soul that's the best one isn't it i wish i could have a power that could be invincible and teleport and a power that you can do whatever you want [Music] i became a mother at 17. and being a first-time mum of twins as a teenager was very difficult where you going raya so with quade and 11 years later it was just like a miracle i felt like i was an adult now you know i'm ready for motherhood i get a second chance of you know everything i felt like i didn't get to do with my twin daughters because i was so young he was a healthy nine pound baby his father cut the cord he was so happy those first three days were just bliss [Music] everyone was elated you know but um i didn't let on but there was something wrong i just remember someone saying oh he's got a big head and that wasn't a very good thing for a mum to hear as soon as i'd given birth i came up and i remember looking at the little baby and i was like oh my god it's got little kind of wichita fingers and i didn't think anything of it right then i don't think she did either i just quietly said to one of the nurses what is this and i showed her quainting's fingers and she goes we call that trident fingers i went home and i jumped on the internet and i typed in trident fingers and the very first image that came up was a person with dwarfism on day three we got the diagnosis and that's when my world changed like it just felt like everything came crashing down achondroplasia is a form of skeletal dysplasia and so it's the most common type of dwarfism in simplest terms you're not going to get the same amount of long bone growth so it's something that the families often don't know until the time that their baby's born i think the fear of the unknown was definitely my biggest issue no one was allowed to say or repeat his diagnosis i didn't want anyone talking about it in front of me i didn't want anyone asking so i just shut down i pretended like everything was fine that much the facts were there they were indisputable i just wanted to get on with it you know what i mean but i just i just there was just this deep you know sadness i felt with inside erica and it affected my relationship with her a great deal i think yeah and eventually it was too much pressure on the family it tore us apart our relationship ended when quaiden was around two and a half i couldn't see what other people saw what are you doing i saw a perfectly healthy beautiful happy cheeky smart intelligent baby boy and then we started you know going out more in public and people would make comments or stare and i was like okay people know he's different people obviously can see like i can't see it [Applause] it's so rude the way that people will just look at quaiden and soon as they see him maybe even bring out their phone and start recording him start taking photos there's nothing quite like the pain that you feel when it's not you that's being ridiculed but it's your child and i think that was a really big struggle for yarika i was taking craden for his ot his physio his speech pathology all of these appointments on the one day and then for the first time in my life i saw other families with children with dwarfism she started to acknowledge okay my son has dwarfism she started to reach out to get support she started connecting with other families that had children with dwarfism or they had dwarfism themselves it was really good for us to understand what quainton had and what life would look like in the future for him there are amazing people in the dwarfism community around the world that are living their best life that are excelling so once i started seeing that i was like it was a huge weight lifted off my shoulder so it was almost like i found my tribe and out of that we've established dwarfism awareness australia we've been able to get great advice and support from people with dwarfism all around the world i want to teach my children what my parents taught me stand up and speak your mind fight for what you believe in i'm from a very big diverse background we were raised in a very strong politically active proud aboriginal family in sydney in the 80s mondinara you want coco pops or rice bubbles or corn flakes we've been raised by some deadly people they taught us that as an aboriginal kid we're no different to anyone else don't let anyone tell you you can't do that you can achieve whatever you want to go into your quarry yeah hey wait you got hey where'd you finish your breakfast you got to finish your breakfast first yarica's father tiger bales was a prominent activist well known for his work in the community tiger and his mamani maureen really wanted to set up something substantial in the community that was a media organization and so together we set up radio redfern let us know what you would like to hear maybe some songs maybe some news tiger was one of the most respected indigenous broadcasters he was hard-hitting he was entertaining um everyone knew tiger [Music] the relationship my dad and queen had was a a bond like no other and you would think coming from a big family and lots of grandchildren that you don't favor any kid and they're all equal pop knows how to do it equating was special it was a beautiful bond i guess my dad just made him feel like you know like superman like he was untouchable baden would always be quite upset about why he looked different and pop would always say you know you're going to get a little bit taller but you're not going to get tall like your sisters or like me you know he always told him the truth but i keep saying to him you will grow bigger and you will be able to drive a car play soccer or football or ride a motorbike you will be able to do those things it's just that you're going to be a little bit shorter in the arms and legs he taught me how to hunt taught me how to swim and um taught me a lot of things they spent a lot of time together and he was very much the father figure in crayton's life so when tiger passed i mean we were all deeply affected by it but i think jareka and quayden especially felt it most quaiden was six years old when my dad passed away from cancer i noticed a huge shift that's when i noticed the suicidal tendencies um creeping in and i think he just thought as soon as he dies he can go to heaven and be with pop and that was really alarming people say how can a six-year-old even know what suicide is we've been to that many funerals in our family our family members that have taken their lives so he's been exposed to that as aboriginal people that's our reality with the support of psychologists and psychiatrists and counselling that's the only way that i've been able to support my son through this you are 97.5 oh you're growing what was it last time did you remember quaiden's been in and out of hospital more than any kid i know the kind of surgeries and things that he's had to go through in hospital we would be quite scared and he's so resilient and so strong for everyone today on the morning of his fourth birthday we got his mri results back that showed compression of the spinal cord so if you think of you know a child with dwarfism they've got a much more larger pronounced head so the weight of his head is squashing his spinal cord they needed to expand the foramen magnum which is the hole where the spinal cord and brain stem meat okay your hands in a nice spot cause if he didn't have that surgery he was losing use of his limbs this one goes for two minutes so very still achondroplasia often does come with a set of potential issues that we really need to screen for thank you very much there can be increased fluid in the brain you can have tightening of the area around the base of the skull it was really long they needed to get your whole brain and your whole spine some in the most severe complications can be to that breathing sleeping respiration all those things so he goes into respiratory failure every time he falls asleep he cannot go anywhere without this machine it looks like a vacuum cleaner so it's literally life support [Music] my role as a physiotherapist is really about participation how can we get him to enjoy those things that he wants to do in a way that's safe [Music] he has the best ball skills of anyone i've ever worked with [Applause] he's got great eye-hand coordination oh so close he's got the balance to ride a bike he's got many many skills that are often challenging for people who have short stature very nice good work one good at afl football and basketball oh and um what's that thing that dashboard baseball no cricket tennis oh volleyball yeah that one as well it's not really good at i think also your balance and your standing stuff is pretty good i don't know that you could do any hops for me last time if he has a big day one day he'll have bed rest the next day i think that's probably stand for for a lot of people with the dwarfism i think the early onset arthritis and the very crackly bones so he's almost like a little old man um trapped in a little boy's body tied out huh quaden seemed to breeze through prep in grade one and then from grade two to where he is now in grade four he wasn't growing at the rate of other children in his class so he was the odd one out he would come home and ask me what does [ __ ] mean but i don't like like the n-word and the n-word and what they call it all that other stuff and like they just call me up shoot word and i just like the word shoot hung up the boots for a while the first term of this year of grade four he'd had enough he'd come home and told me that children were teasing and name-calling and he just didn't want to go to school anymore he'd had enough well who do you want to play for them he hadn't attended school on the monday or the tuesday and then on wednesday morning we got a call from the principal she said look we noticed quadrants not at school today but the bullets are coming in we know how much he loves his sport especially basketball then as soon as i mentioned that to quayden he was up ready to go had his basketball shoes on we went to pick him up we're a bit early so we got there just before three and quaden's class was still on the basketball court at that time these girls were in front of him and you know they were putting their hand you know to their waist like seeing where he comes up to and just laughing about it i saw the pat on their heads and they're all giggling and chuckling straight away my heart broke me and i was like not this again like [ __ ] are we over this already i could feel the pain i could sense it looking at him i knew that he was going to break down i knew that he just had enough every single freaking day something happens another episode another bullying another taunt another name and you know when we got in the car that's when he just broke down and he just started crying and saying all of that stuff i want someone to kill me he hates his condition he really does he wants to be like his dad and like us and he knows deep down he can't and that's what hurts him so so much you don't even do anything he was hysterical he wanted something done right there and then and i didn't know what to do i said quaiden i want everyone to see how this is affecting you i don't know what to do anymore i want people to know parents educators teachers this is the effect that bullying has [Music] this is what bullying does i just got on my facebook live and recorded it and this is the side that i don't choose to share i choose to keep this private but we can't do it anymore sometimes i did wish mum didn't post that video you know because it did affect all of us a very in a very big way but um i understand why she didn't you know we all do [Applause] just to show people like this is how my sons feel when you you know react like that to him in public [Music] i woke up in the morning my phone's blowing up we've got media at our door i'm like what is going on i've got non-stop call after call after call and then we'd realize oh my goodness this video has gone viral and i'm like what the hell have i done the world is right now rallying behind bullied brisbane boy quayden bales and that video has been viewed millions of times even garnered support from celebrities including actor hugh jackman clayton you are stronger than you know over that weekend when it really did at hit like nrl's ringing jonathan thurston's ringing indigenous all stars the whole team is now doing a video message we just want to make sure that you're doing all right all of this attention from community the support um the media um it was huge it was huge it was fun and i wanted to run with them but i didn't get to because they they thought i said to walk out with them but i said run crater's also delivering tonight's match balls it was a really big crowd saying my name and i got bit like shy yeah hey quaiden my name is brad williams i'm a dwarf who lives united states of america i just want to let you know that we love you we support you i shot the video on wednesday the 19th i then get an inbox the next day on thursday the 20th of february and just said hi my name's brad williams i'm a comedian in the u.s you can contact me if you just want to talk he asked if he could do a gofundme and i'm like yeah sure i figure what can i do from half a world away let's send the kid to disneyland it's the happiest place on earth he needs to be happy so i put up a gofundme i thought ah 10 grand that'll do it brad was checking in he's like wow let's reach 5k then wow 7k 8k 9k it's up to 10k we've reached our target pretty much in 24 hours so i was like okay cool we're gonna go to disneyland everything was fine and then it just kept going and going and going more than 200 000 has been raised to send a little boy to disneyland thank you very much for giving me lots of love and support it was like the talk of our family every day every hour we're talking about the crowdfunding that was such a beautiful gesture and then and then it turned really sour that's learned behavior you are teaching your son how to be a [ __ ] victim you're a piece of mum [Music] when people started seeing how much money was being donated we then became under attack for being fraudsters or scammers um i got some questions are we sure if this is even true have we checked the facts like what parent does that y'all famous people got scammed by little shoddy right here apparently quaden is an 18 year old man he's already rich and famous he's an actor i coached him to do and say everything in that video and it was all fake so yeah i just think wow really [Music] that's when i knew we needed a lot more help and support and i remember my dad interviewing george newhouse so i rang him for advice and i said look i think i'm gonna need a lawyer we've dealt with online race vilification before but i'd never seen anything quite as bad as this addressing cyber racism is actually a laborious and time-consuming activity and it involves work both here in australia and in the united states which is where the the vile material was emanating from so we couldn't do it on our own i thought of eric burn immediately he's had experience with internet vilification and can deal with the googles of this world search for ken bell scam gets 13 000 hits on youtube we saw this proliferation of fake and imposter accounts targeting the family with all types of defamatory racist harmful commentary you've got people who post on facebook and then go to twitter so the 120 videos that we had identified we got about 106 videos taken down so that for us was a great success they'd steal photos from yaraka's social media pages and try and portray them in a negative light bite the family's distress was made so much worse by the fact that there were a number of high-profile people who retweeted this vile material on the daily telegraph star columnist miranda devine retweeted the claims on twitter that's really rotten if this was a scam i saw a lot of the screenshots from miranda devine she has maybe 70 000 followers on twitter i think it was how could any one parent do this yep exactly on the case because i thought okay why does she feel the need to you know perpetuate that cycle of misinformation the conspiracy theory was always absurd and by the time divine was giving it credence it had already been shown to be nonsense there was a request for an apology from our legal team that was rejected and then our legal team proceeded with the defamation case we ended up getting our apology and the matters being settled so this is the apology we received from miranda devine on september the 19th i posted some comments on my personal twitter account i now know those comments were hurtful and untrue i sincerely apologize to the bail we're very happy to be able to just you know put that behind us and move on with the rest of our life yeah smile i think this case exposes the good and the bad side of human nature the campaign that brad williams had established ended up raising around 450 000 u.s as much as quaiden has always dreamt of going to america it just wasn't sitting right and i just really had to think carefully and we came up with that decision that it's probably best that we don't take the trip and the family then had to negotiate with brad williams about how the funds would actually be distributed newspaper rock i can tell you that most of the money has gone to charities particularly for those with disabilities receives a small amount in trust i can assure you that it is a very small percentage of the funds that were raised wait in so good to see you pal are you doing all right there's been so many positive aspects over the negative yeah great after the video went viral people were wanting to help and support any way they could and i noticed this american guy that was analyzing the video the mom thinks that by showing this video that empathy is going to sweep across the world and all of a sudden people are going to be kind when i first saw clayton's video i just was heartbroken the moment i saw his face in total despair and his mother feeling completely helpless on how to help her child she desperately wanted to change the world around her son so that he wouldn't have to suffer review what we uh what we went over last time as a school psychologist my message to yerika was no no empower your child to be emotionally resilient where they're not he's not living for the approval of other kids while at first i felt like my parenting was under attack i felt my defensive mechanisms were kicking in i sat back and i processed that and i was like he's right if i say someone's bullied me what do you think happened the first thing i wanted to get rid of the word bully or bullying from their vocabulary it just complicates and escalates uh hostilities no no call it what it is and keep it in its proper size instead of using the word bully it's better to use what happened like this you could say they called me a name they pushed me around they told my secrets to other kids the second thing i wanted to do was teach quaiden emotional regulation he can actually control how he feels by changing his thinking it's basic cognitive behavioral therapy so if he doesn't believe what people are saying is a big deal he won't have an emotional consequence reaction one two three go yeah make it oh hey quitting yeah i know i'm sure i'm short yeah you'll always be sure you'll never grow in your life i'm gonna grow a little but but not much i i like it i always stay young really helped it was really good don't get upset feeling like a friend and that's what i say to people now and now they like understand ah good kick i'm just so proud of the way that he's just able to tell people how he feels now because that's something that he hadn't been doing for a very long time [Music] my hope is that he understands that there's nothing he can do to reverse what he's been born with and um for him to be truly happy within himself that's the that's the magic there you know so it has been um a bit of a rocky road since quayden's returned to school pink lady your favorite we've got a team of about 15 people helping to guide and support us through his school life yes he's got a male indigenous support worker there so he feels safe and protected oh careful but unfortunately the anxiety um is something that he's really struggling with at the moment he doesn't have the energy to be able to last full days of school but that's due to the deterioration in his health all we can do is take it day by day i just want to be in grade 6 already and graduate and just not go to high school straight to college so i can just be smart straight away because you learn more when you're in college and i want to be a basketballer afl fully work for energetic and be a millionaire what are you going to do with your millions um probably buy a house and a car from my mum and help the homeless and be a good man [Music] so [Music] what i really want to do i wanted to act when i was a little kid like i wanted to do comedy like laughing so because i like watching funny shows i like to make people laugh so this will be like my first movie that if this program has raised personal concerns you may wish to contact one of these services for further information or advice lifeline 131114 beyondblue 1300 to 4636 you

Channel: ABC News In-depth

Views: 859,565

Keywords: news, abc, abc news, australia, Australian Story, Quaden Bayles, Quaden Bayles bullying, Quaden Bayles bullying video, Quaden Bayles flexing, Quaden Bayles dwarfism, dwarfism, yarraka bayles, what is dwarfism, achondroplasia, bullying, viral quaden bayles, Quaden Bayles scam

Id: tLnKRAGNUjQ

Length: 31min 59sec (1919 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 26 2020