Tony tried to take his most painful secret to his grave

From a young age, Tony Carden never stopped entertaining.
His proud mum Lesley Saddington tells 9honey her son used to “just mimic people”, and then from the age of 11 he became interested in puppets.
“We bought him a little puppet show, and he used to do wonderful puppet entertainment and take them to schools and do them for children’s birthday parties,” Lesley, 88, says.
Tony was the third youngest of her four children, who were “all two years apart.” He was perfectly happy until he attended a private school and came home “a different little boy.”
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Lesley has written about her son’s life in her new book I Don’t Want to Talk About It: Biography of AIDS Warrior Tony Carden.
”He was white as a sheet and wouldn’t speak and I thought, ‘My gosh, something terrible has happened or he’s very ill’,” Lesley recalls.
When she pressed him to tell her what was wrong, he said, “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“But in the 1960s, 1970s, there wasn’t much awareness of child sexual abuse, particularly male teachers in boys schools. Mind you, it was all revealed later, wasn’t it?”
It was during the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse that Lesley discovered what had been going on at the school her son attended.
He was only 11 when he tried to die by suicide for the first time.
”Fortunately, his brother found him … Following that, he developed a terrible anger.”
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Looking back, Lesley feels that’s when transformed into an activist, someone who wanted to “stand up for other people who are being hurt.”
Tony never told his mother he was gay. Back then it was a dramatic “coming out” to loved ones, something Tony chose not to do, although Lesley knew and loved her son for exactly who he was.
She had no idea of the homophobia and discrimination her son was about to face.
It was when he moved to New York to try and break into acting that Lesley feels her son was happiest, although she feels it was a way of escaping the trauma he had endured at school.
Lesley learned through the Royal Commission that many of the boys who had been abused either died by suicide, moved far away from home, developed drug and alcohol addictions and/or struggled to sustain employment and hold down relationships.
“[Tony] studied acting at the Lee Strasberg School of Drama and Theatre, where a lot of the greats have studied. He got onto Broadway with a leading role off-Broadway,” she says.
“Then his closest friend got AIDS in Australia, and Tony came home to help nurse him.
“The boys from the school came, five of them, because the doctors wouldn’t come to the house. It was terribly sad. It’s a story about the terrible discrimination that the gay community suffered.”
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Tony never told her he was HIV-positive, although she suspected. She’d spotted a purple lump – known as a lesion, common during the latter part of the disease – on his leg.
During a doctor’s visit, they were told Tony had developed AIDS. He asked her not to tell anyone; he didn’t want to be treated like he was dying when he had “a lot of living to do.”
“And so I was sworn to secrecy, which was a relief in a way, because I was terrified of the discrimination that even parents and anyone associated with a gay guy with AIDS was receiving,” Lesley says.
With the time he had left, Tony worked hard to help the gay community, particularly those impacted by AIDS.
”He raised a million dollars to build a decent AIDS ward, and everybody else in the community weren’t the least bit interested in people with AIDS.”
It’s Ward 17 South at St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney, the first HIV/AIDS ward in Australia.
It was an achievement that took incredible effort, including raising funds and demonstrating and advocating on behalf of the community.
One of Tony’s most famous demonstrations involved setting up 100 beds and 100 drip sets, with protestors dressing like doctors and nurses, to show what an AIDS ward should really look like.
The then-health minister agreed to talk to Tony and they got their beds.
Tony died in 1995, just as life-saving medications to treat HIV/AIDS were being made available in Australia.
While sorting through her son’s belongings, Lesley found a cassette tape on which Tony had shared his innermost thoughts. She has included her son’s words in the book.
“It was quite beautiful, lots of humour in it. And it is a message to us all, his friends and his family to say, don’t grieve for me, celebrate my life. I’ve done everything I wanted to do, more than most people would do in 90 years,” she says.
“That’s giving me some peace.”
If you or someone you know is in need of support contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 or Men’s Helpline on 1300 78 99 78. In the event of an emergency dial Triple Zero (000).
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