Andrew Bolt: Holes in Rosslyn Dillon’s account of rape

We’re told to believe rape victims, but there are good reasons to approach with caution historical rape allegations, like those made by Bob Hawke’s daughter Rosslyn Dillon, writes Andrew Bolt.

We’re told to believe rape victims, but there are good reasons to approach with caution historical rape allegations, like those of Rosslyn Dillon, daughter of former prime minister Bob Hawke.

Dillon has sensationally claimed that her father begged her not tell police she’d been raped three times by Bill Landeryou, because Hawke needed the faction boss’s help to become Labor leader.

Maybe Dillon was raped. But her story is inconsistent.

Here is what Dillon asks the NSW Supreme Court to believe as she sues her father’s estate.

“In 1983, after I moved in with my first husband to my father’s home, he used his influence to secure me a position with the (Victorian) Minister for Industrial Affairs and Minister of Labour and Industry, William Landeryou.”

Prime Minister Bob Hawke with daughter Rosslyn Dillon in 1985.

Dillon claims Landeryou then raped her three times, once in his Sunshine home.

But Dillon says that when she told her parents, Hawke asked her not to tell police: “I can’t have any controversies right now. I am challenging for the leadership of the Labor Party.”

Dillon later found she was pregnant with her son David, and considered aborting him until she was told Landeryou couldn’t have children. David was born on April 26, 1983.

First, some background: Dillon, now on a disability pension, needed help back then because she and her husband were heroin addicts.

Landeryou was a powerbroker critical in getting Hawke made Labor leader in February 1983.

But Dillon’s story has some holes.

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If she’d feared David was Landeryou’s son, the rapes must have happened around late August 1982, not 1983.

Landeryou wasn’t Minister for Industrial Affairs and Labour until four months later — December 1982. Hawke became Labor leader just two months after that.

Landeryou lived in Essendon, not Sunshine, and has two children.

Note that Dillon makes this claim when her parents and Landeryou have died and can’t respond. (Landeryou died in February, Bob Hawke in May.)

I’m not saying Dillon wasn’t raped. But her memory seems faulty.