Ex-lover accuses Ben Roberts-Smith over pregnancy and assault

Ben Roberts-Smith’s former lover claims the war hero punched her in the face and demanded she perform a humiliating act just weeks earlier.

Ben Roberts-Smith leaves the Federal Court in Sydney. Picture: Gaye Gerard

In all the raw and wounding allegations levelled against Ben Roberts-Smith by his former lover, it wasn’t her claim the war hero punched her in the face that seemed to cause her the most distress but a humiliating act she says the former SAS soldier demanded she perform just weeks before.

The VC winner forced her to take a pregnancy test in front of him to prove she wasn’t lying about carrying his child, she said.

Often in tears, the woman known as Person 17 gave emotional evidence in the Federal Court on Tuesday, including a claim that at the end of their relationship the former SAS soldier had threatened to burn her house down, warning her: “It might not be you that gets hurt, but people that you love and care about.”

Mr Roberts-Smith is suing Nine newspapers over their allegation that he committed war crimes in Afghanistan. But in the witness box last year it was the claim he’d punched a woman – any woman – that brought the war hero to tears.

“I walk down the street and people will look at me,” he said then, voice quavering.

“The first thing I think of is that they think I hit a woman.”

On Tuesday, Mr Roberts-Smith, who denies every allegation, stared out the courtroom window through much of his former girlfriend’s testimony, occasionally texting but rarely looking to the witness box.

Person 17 told the court she and Mr Roberts-Smith had begun their affair in October 2017 when they met and flirted at a charity lunch and later had sex in his hotel room.

Though both were married, their “all-consuming” relationship continued, with the two communicating by burner phones and encrypted messages.

Person 17 told the court that in February 2018 while on an overseas trip she discovered she had fallen pregnant.

She said she knew the child must be Mr Robert-Smith’s because she hadn’t slept with anyone else, including her husband, who had had a vasectomy.

When she told Mr Roberts-Smith she was pregnant, she says he demanded proof, but they agreed she should have an abortion. She said Mr Roberts-Smith told her if she kept the baby, “he would not stick around long-term”.

However, soon after, she said, she miscarried the baby but didn’t tell him immediately.

The woman told Mr Roberts-Smith she would have a termination done at a private hospital in Brisbane, but when she met him later in his hotel, he informed her that he had had her followed and accused her of faking the pregnancy. She said he produced a pregnancy test that he had brought with him “and he made me do it in front of him”.

When the test didn’t seem to produce a valid result, he took her downstairs to a shopping area outside the hotel.

“He went and bought another pregnancy test and brought it back to the room and made me do it and the result was positive,” she said.

The woman’s testimony is at odds with Mr Robert-Smith’s previous evidence that she had admitted she had faked the pregnancy.

Despite her distress, she said, the affair continued.

Again contradicting Mr Roberts-Smith, she said the war hero had not told his now former wife, Emma Roberts, about the affair, and recounted overhearing a phone conversation in which Ms Roberts asked him what he wanted for dinner that night.

Mr Roberts-Smith has previously told the court he and his wife were separated at the time he was in the relationship with Person 17.

However, Ms Roberts has given evidence that not only was she unaware of his affair, she didn’t know she and her husband were supposed to have separated.

Person 17 told the court that after a function at Parliament House in Canberra in March 2018, he punched her in the face.

She recounted getting drunk at the function and described how, as she was leaving the building she tripped on stairs and fell, hitting her head and bruising her thigh.

Back at their hotel, he was furious with her, she said.

“He said, ‘What have you done … They’re all gonna know we’re having an affair. I should have just left you there.’

“He said I let you into my world and I trusted you and you just treated it like a high school formal. And I was saying sorry, I knew that I had behaved badly at the function. And I knew that I was drunk.

“When I said my head was hurting, he said something like ‘It’s going to f..king hurt more’ or ‘I’ll show you hurt’,” she said.

“I had his hands and I was saying ‘Please just go to bed and forget about it’ and then he punched me with his right fist on the left side of my face and eye, and there was an ottoman at the end of the bed. I went back on to that and ended up lying on the bed and I just lay there still because I didn’t know what he was going to do next. And then I heard him go into the bathroom. And that’s all I remember.”

Mr Roberts-Smith has emphatically denied punching the woman and says her injuries occurred when she fell down the stairs earlier in the evening.

The woman says the next morning Mr Roberts-Smith showed her photographs he had taken of her lying on the bed, naked, and asked her: “Do I need to keep these?”

She says she agreed to lie to her husband about how she sustained the black eye.

The woman claims that on the last occasion they met, following this incident, they agreed to break up.

“He said you’re like crack and I’m going to find it really hard to give you up, which I also agreed with because even after everything that happened, our relationship had become a bit like an addiction.

“We couldn’t stop, even though we, I think, both knew it was bad for us,” she said.

“He said to me, ‘As long as we’re on the same page, you’ve got nothing to worry about, but if you do anything stupid, or turn on me, I’ll burn your house down and it might not be you that gets hurt, but people that you love and care about.

“And then he showed me photos from the hotel room in Canberra and that was some photos of my notebook and photos of my bankcards from my purse.”

She says they stayed together that night and had sex, but she woke up crying in the night and knew it was over.

The following day she went to Mr Roberts-Smith’s house and told his wife about the affair.