Callous one minute, charming the next. Do you recognise this alleged predator?
BY AMBER SCHULTZ
This rape allegation against a cabinet minister can't be fully investigated and will likely not go to a trial. But the woman's story should be told.
Note: This article was published on Monday March 1, prior to Attorney-General Christian Porter naming himself as the minister at the centre of historic rape allegations. Mr Porter has denied any knowledge of the alleged rape or having seen the statement this article references to. In re-circulating this article, Crikey is not making any allegations against the attorney-general.
This story discusses suicide and explicit details of sexual assault.
One of Australiaโs most prominent politicians, a current cabinet minister, has been accused of raping a 16-year-old girl in 1988. Last year his alleged victim took her own life. Crikey has decided not to publish the womanโs name. She will be referred to from this point as Jane Doe.
The details of that night have been shared with politicians including Prime Minister Scott Morrison through an impassioned letter written by Janeโs friends and Janeโs detailed police statement (submitted in 2020 to NSW Police).
Crikey has seen both these documents, including photos of diary entries from the years shortly after the alleged attack. Crikey has spoken to the lawyer who helped her write her statement, Michael Bradley (who writes on legal matters for this publication), and to three of Janeโs friends who knew her when she was a student and have requested anonymity.
One friend said he was made aware of the alleged attack several months after it happened. All believe Jane wanted the issue to be made public and wanted justice. For risk of defamation, Crikey canโt go into details that would identify the alleged rapist. He will be called John Doe from this point.
Rape, and especially historic rape, is not an easy issue to write on. Itโs estimated that around 13% of victims of sexual assault report it to the police. Less than a third of those reports lead to legal action. The fact that rape is gendered, the fact it often occurs in private, and the fact it usually happens between two people who have a prior relationship make conventional forms of legal recourse difficult.
While Janeโs statement only shows us her delayed recollection of what happened that night, it does show a pattern of what one expert has called โtextbookโ predatory behaviour, with John Doe allegedly attempting to control, domineer and gaslight his victim. Jane, like many who experience sexual assault, suffered for decades from poor mental health.
The alleged crime against Jane cannot be fully investigated and will likely not go to a criminal trial. Crikey hopes that by publishing details of the allegations, other potential victims might recognise this pattern.
Violence against women advocacy group Our Watch was consulted prior to writing this piece.
Red flags
Jane has been described by friends as a bright, fastidious student who at the time considered her alleged abuser a friend and potential partner.
The pair first met in 1986 and again in 1987 in Adelaide when Jane was 15 at a national school competition. The group of students travelling together became close friends, socialising, dancing and studying together.
While the group was close, one friend told Crikey that John Doe had an โarrogantโ side to him and as competitions intensified he would become mean.
โ[Jane] talked about how she was shocked because sheโd imagine that everyone was friendly, and yet the way that [John] was behaving towards it was not as a friend would behave,โ she said.
โI think that was the first inkling she had that he was not what she had thought that he was.โ
John would make callous remarks at women, Jane wrote. She recalled him saying she didnโt โhave the **bleep**โ to wear a bikini, and joking that the alfalfa sprouts on her salad made it look like she was โeating spermโ.
But later he would flatter Jane, complimenting her โ and himself. According to Janeโs statement, he asked her to iron a shirt he wanted to wear.
โYou would make a wonderful wife one day,โ he said. He called her โso smart and so prettyโ, capable of doing โall the good housewife thingsโ.
One friend, who reviewed a statement by Jane that was longer than the one submitted to police, said Jane had outlined more controlling behaviours by John throughout this time.
โFrom my understanding, there was a lot of controlling and manipulating behaviour that led up to this, that it wasnโt a spontaneous drunken event,โ he said.
Crikey has not viewed the initial draft of the statement.
John bragged about how he was going to be prime minister by the time he was 50 adding that he needed a smart, pretty wife to help his political career. Jane said, based on these comments, she believed the pair would one day marry.
Bragging and bravado, oscillating between criticism and flattering: these behaviours, according to CEO of Womenโs Safety NSW Hayley Foster, are flags for abuse.
โResearch has consistently found that men who hold traditional, hierarchical views about gender roles and relationships are more likely to perpetrate violence against women,โ she said.
Foster said that asserting dominance was a big factor; it leads to a sense of ownership and entitlement to a woman, including for sexual gratification and exploitation. She believes lying, bragging and chipping away at Janeโs self-esteem could have been John asserting his dominance.
โThe pattern of flattery and approval followed by denigration and derogation is also textbook,โ she said.โThis is done to reinforce the expectation as to how she should look and act, but it is also done to coercively control her in other ways.โ
Violent abuse
Jane believed she was drugged by John on the night of January 9, 1988.
A 2020 report found that 50% of women who have been sexually assaulted believe alcohol or another substance contributed to their abuse. Four in five sexual assaults are committed by people known to the victim.
After dancing in Kings Cross, Jane โ who said she was in a dissociative state โ agreed to a non-penetrative sex act propositioned by John. Jane wrote that she agreed to the act because she had been hurt by Johnโs comments about her body.
He then allegedly violently forced Jane into performing oral sex on him despite her saying no. Jane said he kicked her to the ground and wrapped his hands around her neck.
Later, she said he bathed her thoroughly, dressed her and comforted her as she fell asleep telling her it was โall a bad dreamโ.
She said she woke to John anally raping her. He allegedly raped her twice without a condom.
โThe only thing that I remember [John] saying to me was that was โI donโt want to get you pregnantโ,โ Jane wrote.
The next day, Jane said John joked about how the night โmight have been differentโ if he had a condom before referring to his โgood Catholic girlfriendโ back home.
โIt is common for an offender to either deny or make light of their violent and abusive conduct,โ Foster said.
โThis can be a reflection of a sense of entitlement to behave in such a manner, but also a deliberate tactic to gaslight the victim into thinking nothing untoward had happened, or worse still, that she was to blame in some way.โ
Jane wrote in her statement she felt shame and guilt the next day but believed it would be okay as the pair were going to get married.
The last time Jane saw John was in 1994 where she said he made โvarious inappropriate remarksโ to her. She said John was wearing a piece of plastic tied around his left wrist put there by his girlfriend as a reminder not to kiss other girls, and joked about being the โoldest fresher on campusโ at university.
He allegedly propositioned her, telling Jane โyou know you owe me oneโ. Jane, who was dating someone at the time, called her boyfriend.
โI felt shaken but relieved as if I had broken a spell that had been cast some seven years earlier,โ she wrote.
A turning point
Jane lived with the allegation for 30 years. Feelings of shame and guilt are common in survivors; 57% of victims experience anxiety and fear in the year after the assault.
One male friend, who met her around six months after the alleged assault said Jane spoke about experiencing a โserious and traumatic eventโ which he assumed to be a form of sexual assault.
โFor many years, weโve had many discussions around many aspects of her being assaulted and the damage that it did without her identifying who it was,โ he said.
โAt no occasion did she ever contradict herself or was she ever inconsistent.โ
Jane had been a high achiever. School captain. Dux. She was incredibly smart, being accepted to school teams earlier than most students and was the โbrightest starโ out of the school team, friends said.
But Jane struggled, suffering from mental illness and substance abuse which intensified as she went into university. In one study, 45% of survivors of sexual assault reported having a drinking problem in the year before the survey.
โShe did go on to experience real challenges with her mental health,โ one friend said. They added that Jane believed her mental health issues were linked to her alleged assault. While Jane still worked and studied, friends say she never had a career of longevity or finished her PhD.
After seeking counselling from both a psychologist and a psychiatrist in 2019, Jane decided to make her allegations public. She reached out to friends who were around her in 1988. These messages, sent between 2018 and 2019, have been seen by Crikey. The three friends Crikey spoke to reject the idea that the memory could be false.
โThe level of ancillary detail โฆ the sidebars and the interpersonal things that she commented on, some of them I know to be true and some of them ring very true,โ one friend said.
The three friends Crikey spoke to said Jane was determined and resolved in telling her story. Her parents reportedly only found out about the allegation in 2019 and they do not believe that it is true.
โShe needed to do this to move on with her life โฆ she had spent a long time trying to bury it to get past it without confronting it,โ one friend said. โShe had made a rational calculation about doing it because she couldnโt see a way past it or through it for herself.โ
โShe was fully aware that it would bring enormous scrutiny to her,โ another friend said. โThere was a real desire to get some kind of resolution and peace.โ
Jane also spoke to Laborโs Senate leader Penny Wong and wrote a letter to former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull.
Crikey understand the cabinet minister has not contacted any of the friends or schoolmates named in the letter sent to politicians.
But Janeโs efforts were stalled. Due to the pandemic, the NSW police she had originally made a statement with couldnโt travel to Adelaide to interview her. Friends say Cardinal George Pellโs case in the High Court concerned her. She later checked herself into a psychiatric clinic in Melbourne.
Hours before killing herself she called NSW Police, reportedly to tell them she would not be proceeding with the case. One friend told Crikey he did not believe she retracted her statement.
The friend said Jane didnโt want her allegation to become a party political issue.
โMy fear is this becoming a partisan political Labor versus Liberal issue โ that actually no one will care about her.โ
The cabinet minister did not respond to Crikeyโs questions by deadline.
