‘Absolutely not’: athlete denies ‘sinister’ Jones spin
Adelaide Lang |
A former athlete denies trying to paint Alan Jones as having a sinister ulterior motive when describing payments he received after multiple alleged indecent assaults.
The 85-year-old veteran broadcaster is facing the first of many weeks of a marathon court hearing after he pleaded not guilty to 22 counts of indecent assault and sexual touching without consent.
Six men – who cannot be identified for legal reasons – allege Jones kissed, groped, or subjected them to sexual misconduct between 2003 and 2020 at locations across Sydney and the NSW Southern Highlands.
A painstaking cross-examination of the first complainant by Jones’ barrister Gabrielle Bashir SC was covered by an interim court order which prohibited its publication.
Judge Glenn Walsh lifted the order on Thursday afternoon, paving the way for media to report on the days-long exchange.
The complainant recalled meeting Jones when he was aged 14 and a rising athletics star.
The athlete said Jones gave him gifts that ranged from a mobile phone to a car and a weekly stipend of up to $600 “as a gift” so he could focus on sport.
He said he was grateful for the former Wallabies coach’s support but their relationship was tainted by a series of unwanted kisses and groping incidents over two years, all while he was still a teenager.
However, he accepted under cross-examination that there were inconsistencies in his timeline of the alleged indecent assaults.
The former athlete initially told the court he had been given the phone weeks after he met Jones and received the car when he was aged 17, but on Wednesday accepted evidence showed he had been 18 or older.
He had also put his age at 17 when Jones first allegedly indecently assaulted him in a Chinese restaurant but later realised he had finished school at the time.
When he first went to police, the athlete initially said words to the effect that he had been groomed by Jones from the age of 12 but accepts now he had left school by the time of the first alleged assault.
The athlete rejected suggestions from Ms Bashir he tried to paint the former teacher in a certain light or “fit a schoolboy narrative of sexual touching”.
He told the court he was sure about his recollection of the indecent assaults at Jones’s hands but less sure about the timeline, given the intervening two decades.
The complainant recalled Jones saying he would increase his weekly payments because he’d been “such a good boy” after an indecent assault, but couldn’t situate the comments in time.
After a lengthy grilling, he accepted stipend increases had nothing to do with Jones saying he’d been a good boy.
Ms Bashir accused him of trying to assert Jones had an ulterior motive for making the payments and recasting them as “something sinister” in his evidence.
“Absolutely not,” the athlete retorted.
At one point, the court was told he had only 23 cents in his bank account before a timely payment from Jones.
The athlete revealed he had lost his job and was struggling to make ends meet in the months before Jones was arrested in 2024, years after the payments ceased.
But he strongly denied Ms Bashir’s suggestion that he had seen the former radio host’s arrest as an opportunity to extract money from Jones.
“I don’t want anything other than proper justice from this matter,” the athlete said.
Jones has been charged with nine indecent assault offences against him, all of which he denies.
The veteran broadcaster has been listening intently and scribbling notes in a notebook during the complainant’s three days in the witness box.
1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732)
National Sexual Abuse and Redress Support Service 1800 211 028
AAP