Media credibility took a big hit during federal Attorney-General Christian Porter’s Perth press conference last Wednesday, when he denied he had raped a woman at a debating tournament in Sydney in 1988.
Despite the viciousness of comments on Twitter from those who refused to believe a word Porter said, non-partisan viewers of the press conference most likely felt sympathy for Porter, and for the accuser who tragically killed herself last June. Many would have been shocked by the bullying media scrum as Porter took questions.
Some commentators argue women voters will turn against Prime Minister Scott Morrison over the Porter allegation and an earlier revelation about the alleged rape two years ago inside Parliament House of Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins. Police are looking at that incident and Morrison has correctly set up an independent inquiry under Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins to look at the workplace culture of Parliament House.
Yet most women love their sons and their husbands, while wanting all women to be safe from sexual assault. Thoughtful women will also be wary of the political and media gamesmanship in the Porter allegation.
This newspaper’s Dennis Shanahan nailed that point on Wednesday in a piece that contrasted last week’s hysteria with the calm way similar allegations against former Labor leader Bill Shorten were handled in 2014. At the time this newspaper was upfront with Shorten about the substance of the allegations against him. We ran the story on page one without naming him.
The ABC has been less forthright. Porter says he has never been given detailed claims regarding the allegation, to which he might be able to respond. An ABC spokesperson last week said all allegations in November’s “Inside the Canberra Bubble” episode were put to the two ministers named. Porter was not named in the program in connection with any rape allegation.
Four Corners reporter Louise Milligan said on Twitter last Friday that she met the lawyer for the woman at the centre of the Porter allegation the day after her death, several months before the program. A letter revealing details of the alleged rape sent to the PM, as well as Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young and Labor senator Penny Wong, makes clear the dead woman’s friends were working towards naming Porter in that program.
The letter says: “The Four Corners episode … initially intended to cover much of (the woman’s) story. Defamation constraints and the concerns of (the woman’s) family led Four Corners to drop (the) rape (allegation) from that story.”
Milligan broke the story of the letter last Friday week. The ABC spokesperson said: “The ABC sought and received comment from the people to whom the letter was sent. The story did not … link the allegations in the letter to any individual.”
While the story did not name Porter the letter did many times, but it was not sent to Porter. Milligan’s latest report did not reveal her close personal relationship with one of the friends responsible for the letter.
The case has echoes of the ABC’s campaign against Cardinal George Pell, acquitted last April in a unanimous 7-0 High Court judgment. The primary sources for allegations against Pell and Porter both had inherent credibility issues.
The woman in the Porter allegation had long-term bipolar disorder. The letter sent to Morrison, Wong and Hanson-Young came from friends of the woman who say they believed her story, but knew of her long-term mental health issues and several suicide attempts.
In The Australian on Wednesday, Paul Kelly noted the letter says the woman’s parents did not support her friends’ strategy: “They worried that she may have confected or embellished the allegations due to her mental illness.”
NSW Police on Thursday said the woman had told them when she made her complaint in February 2020 of her psychological issues — that she “dissociates”. Police said “victim care and welfare” was a key concern of theirs.
This newspaper sent some of the country’s most experienced journalists to investigate the Pell allegations. Several alleged witnesses had long-term addiction issues.
In the Pell matters that did proceed to trial (most were dropped) the jury was not permitted to hear of psychological issues that had plagued the two choristers allegedly assaulted by Pell after Sunday mass at Melbourne’s St Patrick’s Cathedral in November 1996. One of the alleged victims, who died in 2014, had denied any assault to his parents.
The jury in the second Pell hearing and two of the Victorian Appeals Court judges placed much store on what they saw as the credibility of the surviving alleged victim, Witness J. The dissenting Appeals Court judgment of Justice Mark Weinberg warned of the dangers of giving too much weight to appearances of credibility, as did the High Court.
Friends of the dead Adelaide woman made similar comments about her credibility in a piece by Milligan on March 2 on ABC online and another in this paper on page one the same day. Yet most, including fellow debaters from 1988, only learned the woman’s story 30 years after the alleged event.
Holes in Witness J’s account in the Pell matter were pointed out in detail by the so-called opportunity witnesses. Andrew Bolt on Wednesday night said claims the debaters had been to Sydney’s Hard Rock Cafe were impossible because it opened only in 1989. In The Weekend Australian, Jamie Walker suggested it must have been the Oz Rock Cafe in Kings Cross.
Bolt also said claims Porter had bathed the woman were impossible because at the time, rooms at Sydney University’s Women’s College had only showers.
The push for some form of inquiry into Porter, despite knowing there could never be a criminal conviction, is effectively a push for a lower standard of proof in sexual assault matters.
The Age’s crime writing doyen John Silvester got the issue right on Thursday: “The criminal case against Porter is not weak. It is non-existent.” Discussing calls for an inquiry, he wrote: “No matter the good intentions we cannot develop a two-speed justice system where there are different evidentiary standards for sex crimes.”
Labor is likely to pull back. If it forced the government’s hand the Coalition would ensure Shorten’s conduct was included in any inquiry. The complainant against Shorten claims her friends from the time were never interviewed by Victoria Police. That is the substance of her letter to Liberal senator Sarah Henderson.
Brittany Higgins will have a chance to receive justice but the only possible resolution of the Porter allegations beyond a political decision will be the Adelaide coronial inquiry into the woman’s death.
A key line of inquiry is likely to be the possible role of recovered memory syndrome, as revealed in The Weekend Australian by Richard Guilliatt and Paul Kelly on Saturday.
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