‘He’d go the grope’: Alan Jones accused of indecently assaulting young men

For decades, radio broadcaster Alan Jones was one of the most influential and feared figures in the country.

A major investigation can now reveal allegations that Jones used his position of power to prey on a number of young men, indecently assaulting them, groping or inappropriately touching them without their consent.

A former 2GB employee, who alleges he was repeatedly indecently assaulted by Jones, said: “If I went to the police, Jones could be charged. What he did to me was a criminal offence. He cannot die without people knowing what he’s done.”

Odin Childs claims Alan Jones indecently assaulted him when he was working as a waiter at a restaurant.Credit: Nick Moir

In the years before his death, businessman Alexander Hartman made allegations to four journalists about Jones, including: “I would like justice done before he dies.

“I was his prey … I know I am not the only one and this will come out somehow.

“He forces himself on young men and uses his power in a predatory way.”

A third man, who was a young waiter at the time, alleged a drunk Jones grabbed his penis in a restaurant.

“He didn’t look around to see if someone was watching. He just went straight for my penis.”

A fourth man, an aspiring musician, described being “scared shitless” when Jones allegedly pounced on him and began kissing him.

In NSW, a person who sexually touches or kisses another person without their consent is guilty of an offence, the maximum penalty for which can be up to five years’ imprisonment.

In response to detailed questions sent to Jones, law firm Mark O’Brien Legal said in a statement: “Our client denies ever having indecently assaulted the persons referred to in your letter, and your suggestion that he has is scandalous, grossly offensive and seriously defamatory of him.”

Alan Jones had a successful tenure as Wallabies coach. He is pictured in 1987.Credit: Ian Charles Cugley

Brad Webster, who does not want his real name used because he does not want it to be forever linked with Jones, was 20 when he started working for the radio host at Sydney’s 2GB network.

By this time, the mid-2000s, Jones’ CV was mostly brimming with success.

Corporate records indicate Alan Belford Jones was born in Oakey, Queensland, in either 1941 or 1943. He’d been a champion tennis player and English and French master at Brisbane Grammar when he was barely out of his teens. At 26, he was head of English at The King’s School, Parramatta.

Apart from being a speechwriter for prime minister Malcolm Fraser, Jones had also been the twice-failed Liberal candidate for the state seat of Earlwood.

Jones had a string of noteworthy victories as coach of the national rugby union team, the Wallabies. But he had a less-successful stint coaching the Balmain Tigers rugby league team.

His broadcasting career was spurred on, as award-winning journalist David Leser noted, by an “unstoppable, dominating, mesmerising … and almost frightening energy” which saw Jones become the most successful and feared broadcaster of his generation.

Jones with then prime minister John Howard in 2007.Credit: Dallas Kilponen

When Webster started at 2GB, the then 65-year-old shock jock was not just king of the airwaves, he’d had newspaper columns and a national TV program.

“He was more powerful than the prime minister,” Webster said. “He could pick up the phone to John Howard and demand for things to be done.”

On air, he bullied police commissioners, accusing them of being “soft” on crime, and thought nothing of texting the Australian cricket captain “with the shits if one of his ‘boys’ was 12th man,” Webster said.

A quiet, shy young man, Webster was happy to start at the bottom to make his way in the media world. “I did every shit job there was … in the world of 2GB, I was very small, you couldn’t get any smaller than me.”

One of Webster’s jobs was to drive Jones home from 2GB’s Pyrmont studios to his palatial apartment in the Circular Quay building dubbed The Toaster.

Alan Jones at a press conference in 2021 announcing a new online venture.Credit: Janie Barrett

“During those 10 minutes, it would be wandering hands and then it just gradually became him grabbing my dick. And he would go for it,” said Webster, demonstrating the vigorous rubbing of his penis. “It was horrible.”

“He knew I wasn’t gay, so it was about power dynamics. I would be driving and he would have put his hand on my leg, and then you’d sort of push his hand away, just try and wriggle out. But you’re driving, you’re absolutely trapped … he’d go the grope, he’d rub my penis.”

Webster, who had to carry Jones’ bags up to his apartment, alleges that when he was in the lift Jones would corner him and forcibly kiss him on the lips. With a bag in each hand, Webster couldn’t fend him off.

“I’d be in the corner standing like that [demonstrating his arms by his side] and he would come over to me and kiss me on the mouth.” Webster became emotional, struggling to speak: “It was forced on me. It was unwanted from a position of power.

“If a 65-year-old man had pushed a 20-year-old woman into the corner of a lift, and began to kiss them non-consensually, what do we call that? We call that assault. That’s what he did to me.”

Once they were upstairs in Jones’ apartment, Jones would slip into his Versace dressing gown and retire to his office to talk into his dictaphone while Webster was assigned chores, including ironing his boss’s underpants.

When Webster would ask permission to leave, Webster alleges Jones – who was naked underneath the red gown – would swivel around “and his nuts were just hanging out, it made you sick,” he said.

“There’s no doubt that at the time when all this was going on, I truly felt helpless, you feel helpless,” Webster said. “The power he had was ridiculous. You cannot quantify the power that that man had.”

Jones would send text messages asking for Webster to send “dick pics” but he could also be overwhelmingly generous, Webster said, buying him gifts and providing him with concert tickets. “With the benefit of hindsight, I now see it as grooming,” he alleges.

What also makes Webster angry is that at staff functions other senior colleagues had seen the young man’s acute embarrassment as Jones allegedly groped his penis under the table. “And then afterward – and this stuff made me angry – they would take the piss out of what just happened. Like, ‘Oh, did you enjoy that?’”

Webster said it was the fear that Jones would die without being held to account that prompted him to come forward. He also said, now he was the father of a son, if someone did to his son what Jones had done to him, “I’d hate to think what I’d be capable of.”

Webster recalled that his father-in-law, who “idolised” Jones, had once suggested it was money and fame that drove victims to make allegations against well-known people.

“They should put their name to it,” his father-in-law said. Webster replied: “‘Well, now’s probably a good time that I should tell you that this is what Alan Jones did to me. And this is why I won’t do it – because I’m now married to your daughter with your grandchildren. Do you want my name in the paper about this?’”

His father-in-law was gobsmacked. “‘Oh mate, f--- I am so sorry,’” he said to Webster.

One former producer, who asked not to be named due to fear of reprisals, said that while he didn’t see Jones touching genitals, “I did see inappropriate behaviour and I saw it on a number of occasions.”

The producer said Jones’ petting and pawing of young men was “uninvited”, “predatory”, “brazen” and “absolutely confronting”.

Jones, he said, “would be all over them – he wouldn’t take his hands off them”.

He said the young men, who included staff, waiters and singers on his show “would be very embarrassed and very uncomfortable”. He recalled making eye contact “and it was as though they were saying, ‘Can you believe this is happening?’”

‘Outraging public decency’

In 1988, Jones’ career was nearly derailed over his arrest for indecency.

Having landed in London at 8.15am on December 6, 1988, Jones headed straight out after dumping his bags at the Mayfair apartment of stockbroker Rene Rivkin, for whom Jones would later provide a character reference at Rivkin’s sentencing for insider trading.

By mid-morning, Jones had been arrested at one of London’s most well-known gay beats, the underground public toilets in Broadwick Street, Soho. He was charged with “outraging public decency” and “committing an indecent act”. Within weeks the charges were dropped.

The Daily Mirror front page after Jones was arrested in an underground public toilet in London.

The humiliating incident had no discernible effect on his career. When Jones defected from 2UE to 2GB in 2002, it was the biggest media deal for an individual in Australia, worth an estimated $40 million over seven years.

Having survived the London episode, as well as journalist Chris Masters’ explosive 2006 biography Jonestown, it wasn’t until 2019 that Jones was once again on tenterhooks over another potentially career-ending allegation.

‘It’s criminal behaviour’

From his home in Switzerland, businessman Alex Hartman – once the wunderkind of the technology world and a protégé of Jones – alleged to this masthead in 2017 and the ABC a year later that Jones had indecently assaulted him as a young man. Jones vehemently denies the allegation.

Hartman also said he was weighing up whether to come back to Australia to report Jones to the police.

In 1996, aged 16 and in year 10, Hartman had shot to national prominence as a tech whiz. At 17, the schoolboy was reported to have become a millionaire after selling his software company to Telstra for $1 million. At 18, Hartman featured on an episode of Australian Story, titled: “The Next Big Thing?”

The promo read: “A young man who has been cutting million-dollar business deals since he was in short pants.”

Alex Hartman photographed in 1997 after signing a reported $1 million deal with Telstra.Credit: Robert Pearce

Behind the scenes, things were not rosy. In December 2010, his younger brother John Hartman was jailed for insider trading. At John’s sentencing hearing, the judge noted: “Up until his final year at school, [John] had recorded a generally happy family life, but his situation changed dramatically when his brother Alex was diagnosed with serious bipolar disorder at the age of 18.”

Over the years, Alex Hartman battled mental illness and rode the peaks and troughs of the tech industry with companies such as Newzulu and Mytek.

In 2015, a prominent media executive, who would only speak on the basis of anonymity, took a call from Hartman who was in New York at the time. Hartman outlined to him that Jones had indecently assaulted him. The executive urged him to go to the police.

Hartman made the same allegation in a Zoom interview in April 2018 with ABC producer Ben Cheshire and the then ABC news director Gaven Morris. Cheshire, who had produced the Australian Story episode in 1999 and had stayed in touch with Hartman, made a record of the conversation.

According to notes of the conversation sighted by this masthead, Hartman alleged that following his rise to fame, Jones organised for Hartman to come to his then-Newtown home for dinner. The record contains Hartman’s graphic description of the alleged indecent assault.

The notes show Hartman was terrified, scared, in shock and did not know how to get out.

Hartman alleged on another occasion when he was invited to dinner, Jones, wearing a red silk dressing gown, opened the door and exposed himself.

The notes show Hartman alleging Jones’ behaviour was criminal and it had taken the businessman a long time to talk about it.

The conversation concluded with Hartman saying he would like justice done before Jones dies.

Six months before the ABC interview, Hartman also contacted The Sydney Morning Herald columnist Peter FitzSimons, taking him to task over a rare favourable column FitzSimons had written about Jones.

In Hartman’s email, dated October 2017, he challenged FitzSimons’ suggestion of rugby officials appointing Jones to coach a Barbarians team, likening it to putting Jones in his “candy store”.

Alex Hartman claimed to journalists and friends that Alan Jones had assaulted him.

He went on to claim that Jones had indecently assaulted him which had been “life-shattering”.

Hartman also detailed his complex relationship with Jones. “More than once, I have confronted him – he’s not easily confronted – or deterred. On the occasions I have been in particular distress, he has sent these ‘investments’,” said Hartman, claiming that Jones had backed him financially.

Corporate records show that in 2001, when Hartman had just turned 21, Jones, through one of his companies, Hadiac, invested $100,000 in Mytek, which provided computer tech services.

“I don’t think his hold over me will be gone until he dies and I will just have to live with it until then,” wrote Hartman to FitzSimons.

Two years later, Hartman again emailed FitzSimons. Earlier that same day, in September 2019, Hartman had been troubled by an email that arrived in his inbox at 5.32am, Geneva time.

“I act for Alan Belford Jones,” well-known Sydney criminal lawyer Chris Murphy wrote to Hartman.

“Your recent behaviour causes serious concern for your situation. I wish to draw to your attention it is criminal conduct to demand money with ‘menaces’,” wrote Murphy, adding this crime attracted a potential 10-year jail term. “Although you have contacted him many times at all hours with threats and demands, he denies any wrongdoing of any kind,” said Murphy of Jones.

Hartman forwarded Murphy’s email along with earlier emails between Hartman and accountant Tony Tighe which indicated Hartman, who was married with two young children, was in financial trouble, with debts of €70,000 ($115,000), and had been seeking assistance from Jones to stay afloat.

After reading the emails, FitzSimons rang Hartman who told him that, as recently as two weeks ago, Jones was texting him, addressing him as “Angel”.

Alex Hartman on the front page of The Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday, November 15, 1997.Credit: The Sydney Morning Herald

Hartman told FitzSimons that “it looks like Jones wants to tough it out” and that he couldn’t believe that in a fortnight it had gone from “‘I’ll pay you,’ to ‘I deny everything and will sue you’”.

Hartman also discussed the possibility of returning to Australia to press charges or to tell the story publicly. But these options came to nought with his untimely death.

“Our hearts are broken. Our loss is enormous. Our precious Alex passed away peacefully in his sleep, next to his wife Domi whom he adored,” read the 39-year-old’s death notice in the Herald in October 2019.

Since then, one of Hartman’s friends from St Ignatius’ College, Riverview, has confirmed that Hartman confided to him that Jones had allegedly inappropriately touched his genitals at Jones’ home. “He was shocked and traumatised,” recalled the friend.

A former girlfriend recalled one occasion when Hartman, in tears, alleged he’d been indecently assaulted. She asked if he was going to go to the police. Hartman replied that it was Jones and “he was too powerful”.

Other friends of Hartman have also confirmed to this masthead that, over the years, he had spoken to them about the allegations concerning the prominent broadcaster.

In response to questions, Jones’ lawyer “vehemently” denied the allegations, adding that Hartman was “a person who had a history of engaging in dishonest conduct”.

‘I felt really sick’

It only takes a passing mention of Alan Jones’ name for Odin (Todd) Childs to pull over his car to avoid having a panic attack while driving. Childs was a 22-year-old waiter at a Kiama restaurant when, in 2008, he alleges a drunk Jones grabbed and fondled his penis without consent.

Childs went over to the table where Jones was sitting with another man. As he topped up the glasses of wine, he alleges Jones brushed his leg. He didn’t think much of it until later in the meal, when Jones went to the bathroom, brushing Childs’ buttocks as he went past.

“He came back in from the toilet and pressed himself up against me and kind of pointed and reached for one of the wines that was on the top shelf,” said Childs.

“But as I turned to look and got distracted ... I can feel his hand, not even a grab, but kind of like place his hand over [my trousers] and pull my penis to the side. It’s a disgusting feeling and it’s hard to talk about.”

Childs said if he’d tried to push Jones away, “I’d have lost my job”.

Childs said he didn’t go to the police at the time because it was his word against one of the most powerful figures in the media industry and he couldn’t afford to lose his job. His partner was about to have a baby and he was worried about paying the rent and buying a pram.

“My anxiety was going off. I felt really sick,” he said. As the broadcaster was leaving, he “puts his right hand on top of mine and his left hand under it and winks at me, saying ‘That’s for you, you don’t have to share it with anyone else’.” Jones allegedly handed him a $20 note.

“In the few seconds … where he had my penis in his hand, it’s just a few seconds to him and a few seconds in relative time, but so many hours of reflection and anxiety surrounding it over the years,” Childs said.

Marcus Schmidt was 26 when Jones allegedly groped his penis while he was driving. It was 2001 and Schmidt, who’d left school in year 11 because he was bullied over his sexuality, thought Jones might be sympathetic and help him find some direction in his life.

Marcus Schmidt sent a photo of himself to Alan Jones.

In his letter, Schmidt pointed out their families knew each other from the Queensland country town of Oakey. He also sent Jones a photograph of himself bare-chested and staring confidently, straight at the camera.

“We’d both been raised in small, mostly homophobic, country towns and both been treated terribly in those townships when we were young,” Schmidt said.

The pair met and agreed to have dinner in Leichhardt. Jones insisted Schmidt drive Jones’ Mercedes to the restaurant. “The car ride was a bit outrageous,” recalled Schmidt because he alleges Jones “put his hand in my lap” and “touched my penis through my pants”. Schmidt said he removed Jones’ hand immediately.

He alleges Jones did the same thing in the car as they drove from the restaurant. “I actually said, ‘Don’t do that’ and removed his hand. I don’t know if he looked at it as a power game and that’s maybe why he said, ‘Why aren’t you afraid of me like everyone else?’”

Schmidt said he didn’t feel harassed as he said he’d learnt “it was something some gay men did”. But he did feel disrespected. “I was disappointed because I thought Jones might be better than that,” he said.

Another young man, a musician, has told this masthead that in 2008 Jones allegedly grabbed him and kissed him.

The musician alleges Jones had first obtained his phone number when he was a teenager and part of the Talent Development Project, which assists government high school students in developing their musical talents. Jones, who is currently chairman, was on the TDP board and frequently invited the high school students to perform on his radio show or at private events that Jones hosted.

“There is another side to him that people don’t know about,” said the musician, who was in his 20s when Jones, 40 years his senior, allegedly invited him to his apartment overlooking the Opera House. He presumed he was going to a dinner party and was startled to find himself alone with Jones. The musician found it difficult to discuss what happened.

They were listening to music when he says Jones produced a dressing gown suggesting the musician might feel “more casual” if he put it on. He alleges Jones “didn’t initiate. He just did it. He just grabs you and kisses you all over.”

Asked how it made him feel, the musician replied: “Scared shitless.”

“It’s so hard,” he said, his voice trailing off. “I’m not one to say ‘Sorry, no’. I’m not like that.” The pair ended up in Jones’s bedroom, but it didn’t progress to sex. He believes Jones knew “I wasn’t going to the police or anything. He could trust that he could keep on going and I wouldn’t cause a ruckus.”

The musician said that afterward, he felt numb and was “pretty shocked ... trying to assess what just happened”. He couldn’t say anything to anyone because Jones was immensely powerful and no one wanted to risk getting the broadcaster offside. “You get on the wrong side and he’ll ruin you,” he said.

“He’s probably cleaning himself up a little bit now with the #MeToo sort of thing. It’s only my experience but I’m sure there would be others. It wouldn’t just be me.”

‘Jones inspired great loyalty’

For years, Jones has raised eyebrows with his patronage of a number of young men, many of them troubled sports figures such as swimmers, tennis players, athletes and football stars.

Staff recalled Jones’ accountant Phil Ingram preparing weekly envelopes of cash for the designated young men who would come into the station to collect their envelopes.

Some lived with Jones for a time. Others worked as his driver. “He once had a very young man, maybe 17, who was working as his driver. He could barely see over the steering wheel,” said a former radio colleague who explained that “Jones inspired great loyalty in these young men”. Jones paid their bills, bought them cars, got them jobs at 2GB and bailed them out when they got into trouble.

“At least one of Alan Jones’ staff formed a dim view of his mentorship of some of these athletes: ‘He thought he was helping them but he was really controlling them, controlling them through money’,” wrote Masters in Jonestown.

The cover of journalist Chris Masters’ book on Alan Jones.

Those collecting envelopes included Olympic swimmer Scott Miller, who lived briefly at Jones’ Newtown house. Miller is serving a jail term for drug supply.

Another collecting money and staying at Jones’ place was troubled young rugby league player Jacin Sinclair, who was suspended in 1997 for spear-tackling a player who made derogatory comments about his benefactor.

In December 2010, Sinclair, a father of three, was found dead in a Woolwich flat. His father later said that the cause of his son’s death was inconclusive but he believed Sinclair “overdosed on painkillers, antidepressants and other tablets”.

Reporting on Sinclair’s death at the age of 38, Jones broke down twice during his morning radio program.

Webster and another long-time 2GB employee recalled a devastated Jones describing Sinclair as his “soulmate”.

One young man, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, in 2007 worked in the same Pyrmont building as Jones where they both started at about 4am. The man was troubled when he realised that each morning Jones would be in his Mercedes waiting for him to arrive. “He’d be in his car pretending to be fussing around and then would hop out so he could catch the lift up with me.”

On one occasion, about 10am, the man and a female colleague found themselves in the lift with Jones who had finished for the day. The man said, to his embarrassment, Jones “unashamedly gushed” over him. But when the woman complimented “Alan” on his matching tie and pocket square, Jones “disdainfully looked her up and down, from head to toe, and then said, ‘It’s Mr Jones to you.’”

A producer from Jones’s 2UE days said Jones had a pattern of elevating handsome young men while he “looked through women as though they didn’t exist”. One senior male producer was instructed by Jones to inform a young female assistant to stop saying “good morning” to the radio host.

It was Jones’ misogynistic attitude to women that ultimately brought him undone.

In May 2020, Jones announced his retirement from 2GB on doctor’s advice. Behind the scenes, Jones was being forced out on commercial grounds.

Nine Entertainment (the owner of this masthead) had finalised the ownership of the Macquarie Radio Network, which included 2GB, in late 2019. Nine was alarmed at the estimated $20 million advertising loss following an angry tirade by Jones about then New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern. Major advertisers fled in droves after Jones told his audience in August 2019 that then prime minister Scott Morrison should “shove a sock down her throat” and he hoped Morrison “gets tough here with a few backhanders”.

For many, it brought back Jones’ extraordinary 2012 attack on Julia Gillard in which Jones called for Australia’s first female prime minister to be put in a “chaff bag” and dumped at sea.

Previous missteps had included a tribunal finding that Jones and 2GB in 2009 had incited hatred and vilified Lebanese Muslims, with Jones calling them “vermin” and “mongrels” during the 2005 Cronulla riots.

A decade earlier, an inquiry found Jones had been involved in “cash for comment”, taking money from big companies to promote their services, without disclosing to his listeners he’d been paid to do so.

His reckless bullying campaign against Queensland’s Wagner family had resulted in one of the largest defamation payouts in Australian history. In 2018, the Wagner brothers were awarded $3.7 million in damages, plus millions more for their legal costs, after Jones repeatedly falsely accused them of being responsible for a dozen deaths in the 2011 Grantham floods.

On Jones’ last day on radio, political leaders and sports stars fell over themselves to bid the shock jock a hearty farewell.

One of the final callers was the then NSW deputy premier John Barilaro, who gushed: “What keeps me up at night is that there are people falling through the cracks and if it wasn’t for you, Alan, they would never be identified.”

What keeps Webster up at night is concern that Jones’ alleged victims will fall through the cracks and the once-feared broadcaster, now 82, will “get away with it”.

“If people don’t know about this, Alan will get the state funeral. He will get the prime minister going to his funeral. He will. He will leave this earth exactly how he wanted to, not how he should.”