Woman harassed at party in 1998 by broadcaster Chris Smith tells her story

A junior staffer who was harassed by then chief-of-staff Chris Smith at her Channel 9 leaving do has spoken out for the first time about the incident that left her shocked and disgusted.

Sacked broadcaster Chris Smith last week insisted he is not, despite evidence to the contrary, a serial sex pest.

“This is not the man I am,” a chastened Smith said on Monday, less than 48 hours after two women came forward to say the 60-year-old broadcaster had allegedly groped or made sexual advances towards them at The Establishment following the Sky News Christmas party at the nearby Ivy on Saturday night.

However 24 years before Smith drunkenly harassed two female Sky colleagues, he exposed himself to two young women during a drinking session at Channel 9’s Artarmon HQ in Sydney in 1998.

And 13 years ago he did the same to four women at a 2GB Christmas party in 2009, prompting his suspension but not his dismissal.

No charges were ever laid in relation to the incidents and Smith wasn’t accused of any criminal wrongdoing.

Broadcaster Chris Smith, seen in a previous social media post, was sacked by Sky News and 2GB last week.

Nine ended up paying the two women $20,000 each in settlements and presented them with nondisclosure agreements, signed but now lapsed, but Smith was not sacked — at least not until another incident weeks later at another department dinner at an Artarmon restaurant.

Today, for the first time, the woman Smith exposed himself to in 1998 tells her story.

Smith in 1995, when he was reporter on A Current Affair.

Sally (not her real name) was 24 when Chris Smith, then chief-of-staff of TV weeknight news show A Current Affair and her manager, drunkenly pulled his penis out at her leaving do.

Her farewell party, held in Nine’s swank third-floor boardroom on Sydney’s affluent north shore, had been a joint party to celebrate Sally and also her more senior departing colleagues, A Current Affair’s senior producer Fiona McKenzie and reporter Michael Willesee Jr — future husband of Ally Langdon, recently appointed host of A Current Affair.

Most of the program’s 40-plus production unit — including star presenter Ray Martin — were invited to attend the farewell drinks, along with a handful of senior network executives, including Nine’s legendary managing director David Leckie, who would pick up the tab.

Also there on that fateful Wednesday night in late 1998 was A Current Affair’s executive producer David Hurley and the program’s chief-of-staff, Chris Smith, 36.

Pretty, blonde Sally was the most junior of the three staffers leaving Nine and the youngest on the program’s staff. The job was her first out of university.

“It was my leaving do with Fiona and Mike and we were all up in the boardroom,” she said.

“I’d had a great time at Channel 9, I’d learned a lot and gained some fantastic experience, but realised I wanted to move into another related field.

Smith in 1995 outside Burwood Court, after pleading guilty to forging the signature of a program executive to obtain release of a female prisoner.

“It was me he went after, and it was lucky that Kim (not her real name; a receptionist at Nine and the other woman to receive a payout) was there the second time he did it, because it happened more than once.

“We were in that boardroom. We were all having drinks and relaxing and I was in the middle of it all when Chris came lurching and swaying up to me, clearly already a bit drunk.

“I’m paraphrasing here, but he said something along the lines of ‘I want to f**k you, you’re f**king hot’ and then I looked down, his pants zip is undone and his penis is hanging out.

“I was shocked and disgusted that he did this to me because I had done some good work at Nine and thought Chris respected me.

“To this day I have a photographic image of that incident in my mind because it was so distressing. I’d liked and respected him as my boss, and for him to do this to me was a tremendous shock and personal insult.

“I remember saying ‘What are you doing? Why are you doing this to me? This is wrong,’ and I tried to get away from him by walking around the corner, only to see that he was not taking no for an answer and had followed me.

“There he pushed me up against the wall, still with his penis hanging out, his drunken breath in my face, continuing to tell me how much he wanted me.

“I again managed to push him away and fled to the other side of the room where there was a couch, and I found Kim, the receptionist, along the way and I said ‘Oh my god Kim, you will not believe what happened to me’.

“I was very upset by it, and I remember that my hands were shaking and I had broken out into a cold sweat.

“Kim and I are sitting there on the couch and I’m telling her what happened and he comes lurching over to us both and there it is, still hanging out of his pants.

“Kim was so appalled and I think I said something like ‘Put it away you dickhead’. He did not put it away.

“Then I looked up and a senior employee was walking past and I said: ‘Please come and help me. Stop this man’.

“He looked over and he could see the penis and grabbed Smith by the collar and pulled him out of the boardroom, and I was thinking ‘good, this guy will be punished’.”

The researcher was shocked when Smith was not immediately sacked over the incident.

“I expected Chris would be sacked, but they said they would take his car away from him for six months and ban him from going to the Channel 9 bar. That was the punishment. It was a slap on the wrist!

“I was angry and upset, and I was petrified about it because of the impact it could have on my career. I had decided I would not do anything about it.

“But then a few days after the incident it was reported back to me by another Nine colleague and there were suggestions I had been flirting with Chris and that I somehow provoked him that night!

“That is when I lost my mind and thought: ‘You can’t do this to me — or any young woman’.”

Smith back on the air at 2GB after being stood down by the network for groping women at the station’s 2009 Christmas party.

Sally said Nine’s blokey masculine culture contributed to the incident.

“It was then that I decided to do something about it to stop it from happening to another woman,” she said.

“I spoke to my brother, who is a lawyer. There was no adequate sexual harassment policies at Channel 9, so Kim and I said, as part of our settlement, they had to rewrite their sexual harassment policy.

“That is what I wanted more than anything, to make sure something like this would never happen again.

“I also wanted a public apology from Chris to the staff that were in attendance — and they did tell me this took place.

“I wanted him to be accountable in front of the team so they would also know that this kind of bad behaviour is not on.

“What he did to me was terrible and upsetting, but I was more angry with the men that ran the place.

“I had a beautiful boyfriend at the time who I was committed to and certainly not interested in an ageing and overweight man. He was a powerful man.”

Smith with wife Susie Burrell, who has reportedly moved out of their family home. Picture: Richard Dobson

For some time afterwards Sally found it hard to secure a good job as rumours of the ugly incident spread through local media.

“I found it really difficult to get the kind of work I wanted because it seemed like Chris Smith knew everyone in town,” she said.

“I was going to interviews and they’d say ‘there was an incident at Channel 9, did you know what happened?’ And I thought: ‘I can’t get away from this’.”

A decade later, following Smith’s suspension from 2GB in 2009 for lecherous behaviour, Sally bumped into a former colleague who was a reporter at A Current Affair in 1998 and later became the program’s host.

“He told me Chris Smith had gone and done it again.

“I had a little baby and I hadn’t heard about it and I remember thinking ‘this guy will do it again, and again’ — and he has.”

Sally has little sympathy for the man who has repeatedly trotted out his mental health issues as an excuse for his poor behaviour.

“All this business (from Smith) about ‘I was drunk, I have mental health issues’ – I’m sorry but don’t drink.

“Don’t go to a Christmas party and drink around people.

“If it was only dealt with properly then. It is like when you have a child you let get away with murder, they keep pushing the boundaries.

“He had no boundaries. They let him run free, not once, not twice.”

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