‘Obliterated’ reputation key to Shandee Blackburn’s case hearing

A Supreme Court judge will hold a hearing to decide if boxer John Peros suffered serious harm to his reputation from a podcast released more than a year after a coroner found he savagely stabbed his former girlfriend Shandee Blackburn to death.

John Peros. Picture: Daryl Wright

A Supreme Court judge will hold a hearing to decide if former champion amateur boxer John Peros suffered serious harm to his reputation from a podcast episode released more than a year after a coroner found he savagely stabbed his former girlfriend Shandee Blackburn to death.

Mr Peros killed Blackburn as she walked home from work in Mackay on the central Queensland coast in 2013, coroner David O’Connell found in August 2020 after an inquest in the unsolved murder case.

Blackburn suffered 23 stab and slash wounds to her face, neck, chest and arm in the ­frenzied attack.

John Peros is suing over Episode 13 of Shandee's Story after previously being found by a coroner to have killed Shandee Blackburn. He denies involvement and was acquitted of her murder at an earlier trial.

But Mr Peros is suing Blackburn’s older sister, Shannah Blackburn, along with Nationwide News as publisher of The Australian, and journalist Hedley Thomas, for defamation over comments made in Episode 13 of the Shandee’s Story podcast that was first released in December 2021.

Ms Blackburn spoke in the episode of her firm belief that the coroner got it right.

Mr Peros was in 2017 found not guilty of Blackburn’s murder by a jury.

He has always denied any involvement.

Two judgments from Queensland Supreme Court judge Peter Applegarth in the defamation case over the podcast episode were published Monday.

Queensland Supreme Court judge Peter Applegarth. Picture: Liam Kidston

In one, Justice Applegarth rejected an application from the defendants for the case to be dismissed due to jurisdictional issues, but found that before a trial commences there should be a hearing to determine if the podcast episode caused Mr Peros the necessary serious harm.

In the other judgment, Justice Applegarth ordered Mr Peros to provide extensive further details about the state of his reputation before the episode’s release, including the extent to which he was already reputed to have killed Blackburn, both generally in the public and to the podcast’s listeners.

Mr Peros’s statement of claim alleging serious harm to his reputation had said “nothing about what his reputation was prior to the episode’s publication”, the judge stated.

“The defendants contend that before the podcast was published, the plaintiff’s (Mr Peros’s) reputation had been effectively destroyed or `obliterated’ by the widespread reporting of a Coroner’s finding that Shandee Blackburn `died due to injuries sustained in an incident involving violence with Mr John Peros who used a bladed instrument’,” Justice Applegarth stated.

Without serious harm to his reputation from the episode, Mr Peros does not have a case.

Mr Peros had sought to delay the serious harm debate until the trial.

Shandee Blackburn’s mum Vicki and sister Shannah. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen

If the case does go to trial, Nationwide News as publishers of The Australian, along with Thomas and Shannah Blackburn will plead defences including truth, public interest, honest opinion and qualified privilege, Justice Applegarth stated.

Any trial is expected to run for at least six weeks.

Justice Applegarth said that “unsurprisingly, the Coroner’s finding that the plaintiff (Mr Peros) violently killed (Shandee Blackburn) was widely reported, including by newspapers and broadcasters, and in their online publications”.

He said “those publications have remained online since their first publication”.

Thomas’s work on the podcast was “instrumental in the calling of a Commission of Inquiry into Forensic DNA testing in Queensland that found major, systemic failings in the system of DNA testing in this State”, Justice Applegarth stated.

Hearing the serious harm issue could potentially relieve the many witnesses of the “distress and inconvenience of giving evidence”, he stated.