Ben Roberts-Smith says mistress lied about abortion

Ben Roberts-Smith used a private investigator to find out whether a woman had an abortion after their extramarital affair, a court heard.

Ben Roberts-Smith arrives at the Supreme Court in Sydney on Tuesday. Picture: Joel Carrett

Ben Roberts-Smith has told the Federal Court he hired a private investigator to follow a woman to an abortion clinic because he believed she was lying about being pregnant in an effort to prolong their relationship.

On the sixth day of the Victoria Cross recipient’s high-stakes defamation case against The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, he told the court he believed the woman – identified as Person 17 – manipulated him by lying about being pregnant after he attempted to end their relationship in January 2018.

The former soldier is suing Nine newspapers and The Canberra Times, now under separate ownership, over reports published in 2018 that alleged he committed murder during deployments to Afghanistan. He denies the allegations.

He is also suing over reports alleging he assaulted Person 17 – a key witness in the defamation proceedings – at a Canberra hotel in March 2018. The newspapers will defend their reports using the truth defence.

On Tuesday, Mr Roberts-Smith told the court domestic ­violence was “highly reprehen­sible”, “deplorable” and “dis­gust­ing”, and he had no “toler­ance for anyone who would ever raise a hand to a woman”.

“That particular allegation, I feel, coupled with (accusations of me being) a war criminal, ruined my life,” he said.

Mr Roberts-Smith said he had separated from his now ex-wife, Emma Roberts, in September 2017. Shortly after, he began a relationship with Person 17. However, he attempted to end the relationship in January 2018 after receiving text messages suggesting she was “potentially going to self harm”.

He said he received two text messages from the woman’s husband while he was in Singapore, one of which said he (Mr Roberts-Smith) “was supposed to look after her”. When he arrived in Brisbane, he received a message from the woman asking if she could see him. She then revealed she was pregnant.

“I called her and we had a conversation,” he told the court. “She had a family, I had a family, and we agreed to terminate the pregnancy.” Asked by his barrister Bruce McClintock, SC, if he believed she was pregnant, Mr Roberts-Smith said: “No.”

He then hired private investigator John McLeod in an effort to “identify whether Person 17 was in fact pregnant,” he said. “I asked him to find out whether or not she attended the clinic.”

Mr Roberts-Smith said he watched Mr McLeod’s video of the woman leaving the clinic and believed it was “strange” that she was able to bend over and pick up a bag after undergoing an “invasive procedure”.

Later that day, he showed the woman the video at a Brisbane hotel room and she admitted she had not had the procedure but said she did have a termination in Townsville. He said she eventually “started to cry” and conceded that she had not had the abortion, instead claiming that she had had a miscarriage.

“So now I had three stories as to what was going on,” he said. “(It) gave me great concern that I was being manipulated so I would stay in the relationship.”

The hearing continues.

Need to talk to someone? Lifeline: 13 11 14 or lifeline.org.au; ­Beyond Blue: 1300 22 4636 or ­beyondblue.org.au`