Sorry, but guilt requires some evidence

BARNABY Joyce was accused on the ABC of sexually harassment but no evidence was given, meaning he couldn’t defend himself, writes Andrew Bolt.

BARNABY Joyce is just the latest victim of a devastating new form of denunciation — particularly of men. On Tuesday, the former Nationals leader was accused on the ABC of sexually harassing a woman in a way so “traumatic” that she later “burst into tears” and “couldn’t sleep for a week”.

When this “terrified” woman later told her friends, they were “absolutely shocked”.

Wow. From that description of the effects, you’d assume the cause was a form of assault so brutal that I don’t dare describe it for legal reasons.

You’d probably also assume the victim rushed to the police to report a crime.

MARRIOTT SPEAKS OF ALLEGED SEXUAL HARASSMENT

But I said this is a new form of denunciation — one that now dominates political debate and leaves men unable to defend themselves.

You see, this accusation, made by West Australian businesswoman Catherine Marriott, was aired publicly without a single detail of what allegedly occurred.

Neither Marriott nor the ABC would describe what kind of harassment they were talking about so you could know where it fitted on the vast scale from an innocuous wink to a rape. No detail was given that Joyce could then rebut or put in context.

The ABC audience was asked, instead, to judge by Marriott’s subjective feelings, not any objective facts: “(After the incident) I walked up to my hotel room and I burst into tears. I then couldn’t sleep that whole night. I didn’t actually sleep for a week.”

Barnaby Joyce is just the latest victim of a devastating new form of denunciation — particularly of men. Picture: Kym Smith

But how could anyone judge if Marriott was indeed the victim of something serious, or was wildly overreacting?

Joyce, himself, “absolutely denies” any misbehaviour and denounces the allegations as “spurious and defamatory”. Indeed, Marriott’s ABC interviewer, Leigh Sales, at one stage accused Joyce merely of “inappropriate behaviour”.

Moreover, a long investigation by the National Party into Marriott’s claim (which she detailed to it) concluded it had “insufficient evidence” for any finding.

And Marriot didn’t go to the police, despite Joyce challenging her to do so.

Asked why not, she gave the ABC a curious answer: “If I went to the police, it’s me versus him, which is a toxic space to be in.” But isn’t that exactly the “toxic space” she’s in now — or has dropped Joyce in?

Catherine Marriott’s allegation has been aired publicly without a single detail of what allegedly occurred. Picture: ABC/7.30

Except there’s this difference: by accusing Joyce, as she’s done on the ABC, means she’ll never have to prove her claims.

So why wouldn’t Marriott at least tell the ABC what happened?

Again, another odd evasion: “I don’t want to be someone who’s defined by that incident. I want to be able to have a career where the first thing that people think about when they meet me is not, ‘Oh, that happened to her’.”

But isn’t Marriott already defined by her accusation, made so publicly?

Isn’t she already the woman who had Something Terrible done to her — a Something Terrible she invites you to imagine?

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Of course, I cannot say Joyce is a good man who did nothing wrong.

But I don’t even know what he’s accused of, and so act by the golden rule: innocent until proven guilty.

Yet on the ABC, Marriott invited us to consider Joyce guilty without even putting a direct accusation.

Never mind the facts, just see the victim cry.

This is the new kind of accusation — of guilt, not of a specific crime — that’s also been hurled for three weeks at the men of the Liberal Party.

Take Chris Wallace, an Australian National University research fellow, who yesterday enthusiastically claimed on the ABC: “There is absolutely no doubt that there is horrendous levels of bullying going on in the Liberal Party …

“I really admire the Liberal women coming out now and putting it on the agenda and saying this is happening.”

Pardon? Not one of those women — Julie Bishop, Julia Banks, Kelly O’Dwyer, Lucy Gichuhi, Linda Reynolds — has actually said what in fact “is happening”.

True, they’ve all mischievously claimed there’s been bad bullying in Canberra, but not one has given a single example of it.

I’ve asked why not and a mutual acquaintance of one of those women assured me at the weekend that the bullying was real, but the women wouldn’t describe it because voters would conclude it was “trivial”.

Trivial. Just as I suspected.

Indeed, Gichuhi last week belatedly admitted she hadn’t been bullied at all.

But how could male MPs defend themselves against such allegations — without evidence — a toxic product of a victim industry where the strong are always guilty and the weeping always right?

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