My 15-year-old son Brayden Peter Dillon was shot in the head while he slept in his bed on Friday the 14th of April in 2017. It was Good Friday. You, Sophie Massie, have pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact for your role in Brayden’s murder. Today you will be sentenced.
No matter what words I use today, there will never be any words that truly capture the trauma and heartache your actions have caused.
Sophie Massie, you had 89 days to come forward. You didn’t. This is the thing that impacts me the most – as a mother yourself, you didn’t come forward about the murder of a child. I cannot reconcile this. It is inexplicable, and for me there will never be a reason that justifies this.
I can clearly recount the evening I received the phone call informing me you had been arrested. I sat on the edge of my bed smiling then my smile turned to tears. I spent 89 days in fear of not knowing who or why.
You Sophie Massie has 89 days to come forward!
89 days that YOU knew who murdered my little boy!
89 days of me living in fear!
89 days of me, and my family, living in HELL!
For 89 days my Brayden’s murder was over every newspaper, every radio station, every news station.
For 89 days my beautiful son’s horrific murder was shared on social media.
You will never fully comprehend what those 89 days and the impacts of your actions and inaction had on me and my family. Despite knowing this I need to try and express some of that impact. To say my world imploded and exploded all at the same time is not even close, but I will try to convey it as best I can.
During those 89 days I ripped out my hair. I stopped eating. I couldn’t be around my young children.
I didn’t know who did this to my little boy.
But you did Sophie. You knew who did it! You had 89 days to put me out of my misery.
You knew and you said nothing! You knew what he did, yet you made the police come find you and arrest you.
In those 89 days where you knew who murdered Brayden I had to bury him. I joined a group no-one would want to join – parents who have to bury their own child! My beautiful little boy was gone.
If only you came forward instead of covering up your actions.
You have now spent over 674 days in gaol instead of having morals and a conscience you made the decision to conceal a murder. I often wonder how you sleep at night. How could you ever hold your head high again knowing the role you played in a 15-year-old child’s murder.
At Christmas, how will you be with your own children?
During Easter, knowing you played a role in my son’s murder at Easter time, how will you be in years to come?
I wonder about Mother’s Day. Will you hold your children knowing that I will never hold my son again? How will that make you feel?
When you say goodnight to your children and walk away from their door, will you ever think of me, of the night before Brayden was murdered, about you driving to my house in the darkness of the night. I wonder if you’ll ever say goodnight to your kids and think that the next time you see them you’ll have their brains in your hands because that’s my lasting memory. The last time I spoke to my son, saying goodnight.
I wonder if you have learnt anything from this.
I wonder if you feel shame and embarrassment. Do you feel regret, not that you got caught but that you yourself weren’t the one to go to police. I often wonder about what motives you had not to come forward. I debate these motives in my mind BUT at the end of it all I can see no good reason for you to have covered up Brayden’s murder.
I want your sentence to reflect the actions of your crime Sophie.
You had so much time to tell the police the truth. Yet you did not. Not even after you got arrested did you come clean. Police had to gather the evidence and facts against you.
If only you came forward on the day my son was killed.
But the fact is that you didn’t, so my wondering and questions are unanswered, but mother to mother I hope that you live with and are consumed by those questions for the rest of your life.