UK activist Kellie-Jay Keen accuses ABC, Pesutto of defamation over Moira Deeming matter
Kellie-Jay Keen is accusing 7.30 host Sarah Ferguson and John Pesutto of defaming her, as Moira Deeming’s case against the Liberal leader proceeds in the Federal Court.
UK women’s rights activist Kellie-Jay Keen has issued defamation concerns notices against both the ABC and Victorian opposition leader John Pesutto, as she prepares to lodge a case in the Federal Court, which could run concurrently with expelled Liberal Moira Deeming’s.
Mrs Deeming is suing Mr Pesutto for allegedly defaming her after she attended a “Let Women Speak” rally last March, which was gatecrashed by neo-Nazis.
The case has been set down for a two-week trial in September, where Mrs Deeming and Mr Pesutto will respectively be represented by star defamation barristers Sue Chrysanthou SC, and Matt Collins KC.
The March demonstration was hosted by Ms Keen’s organisation “Standing for Women UK”, in protest against what attendees see as the infringement of transgender self-identification laws upon the rights of women and children.
Fellow gender-critical feminist and protest organiser Angie Jones has also lodged a concerns notice against Mr Pesutto, using the same legal team as Ms Keen, namely Brisbane-based Alexander Rashidi Lawyers, barrister Bridie Nolan, and lawyer, former Liberal candidate and outspoken critic of recent changes to transgender laws, Katherine Deves.
Ms Keen’s concerns notices follow a notice she issued in late August, against Mr Pesutto and the other three members of his Liberal leadership team, accusing them of making “grossly misconceived, wilfully vexatious, and wretchedly false” claims, which she argued had seen her become the target of “extreme hate, abuse, harassment, and stalking”, and culminated in her “being physically attacked” and “placed in life threatening danger” at a Let Women Speak rally in New Zealand.
In her new notice against the ABC, she accuses the public broadcaster of defaming her in a 7.30 interview, which was conducted by host Sarah Ferguson with Mr Pesutto on March 27 — just over a week after the Melbourne “Let Women Speak” rally, and the evening after Ms Deeming had been suspended from the Liberal partyroom.
The notice accuses 7.30 of making 11 defamatory imputations against Ms Keen, implying that she either is a neo-Nazi or sympathises with people who are.
In her introduction to the interview, Ms Ferguson described Ms Keen as “controversial UK figure, Kellie-Jay Keen, an anti-trans activist associated with the far-right”, and went on to portray her in questions to Mr Pesutto as “someone with very clear … far-right associations, many of which you detailed in the dossier that you presented to your own partyroom” and “a woman with Neo-Nazi and far right associations.”
Ahead of the partyroom meeting at which Ms Deeming was suspended, Mr Pesutto had circulated a 15-page dossier of social media screenshots and media reports – mostly relating to Ms Keen – accusing the MP of “organising, promoting and participating in a rally with speakers and other organisers who have been publicly associated with far right-wing extremist groups including neo-Nazi activists”.
The dossier sought to depict Ms Keen as having an “association with far-right extremists”, citing a Wikipedia article that states she was interviewed by a “far-right YouTuber” and photographed alongside a Norwegian neo-Nazi in 2019.
Ms Keen’s lawyers took issue with both assertions in her August concerns notice, which states that she was not aware of French Canadian white nationalist Jean-François Gariépy’s views when she was interviewed by him, and was unaware of the of the identity of Norwegian neo-Nazi Hans Jørgen Lysglimt Johansen when he “imposed upon her to take (a) selfie with him” and posted it online.
The dossier also referred to Ms Keen’s use on the social media platform Spinster of a profile picture featuring a Barbie doll wearing a Nazi uniform, something Ms Keen’s lawyers argue “was an ‘in house’ ‘tongue-in-cheek’ retort to a group of left-wing feminists who publicly called our client ‘Nazi Barbie’ in debate on the social media platform.”
In her latest concerns notice against Mr Pesutto, Ms Keen accuses him of defaming her in both the 7.30 interview, and in an interview with then 3AW mornings host Neil Mitchell.
In the Mitchell interview, Mr Pesutto said Ms Deeming had “associations, Neil, with organisations, with organisers of Saturday’s protest who have known links with Nazis, Nazi sympathisers, far right extremists, white supremacists.”
Asked who he was referring to, Mr Pesutto said: “Kellie-Jay Keen.”
“And she’s had associations with, she’s got associations with Nazis?” Mitchell asked, to which Mr Pesutto responded: “Absolutely.”
Asked who the Nazis were, Mr Pesutto said: “Okay so, Jean-Francois Gariepy, she’s done videos with Richard Spencer, Mark Collett, Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. There is a long rap sheet.”
Asked whether they were videos or interviews, Mr Pesutto said: “Videos, interviews. She’s shared platforms with this person.”
The only online record of Ms Keen’s name being mentioned alongside those of Spencer, Collett and David Duke, all of whom are reviled neo-Nazis, is in an article in LGBTQI+ community publication Pink News, part of which was featured in Mr Pesutto’s dossier, which states that Gariepy has “made videos with neo-Nazi Richard Spencer” and that his guests “have included former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke and known neo-Nazi Mark Collett.”
No direct link was made between Ms Keen and Spencer, Collett or Duke.
Later in the interview, Mitchell asked Mr Pesutto whether he was saying Ms Keen was a “sympathiser of Nazis”, to which the Liberal leader responded: “Yes.”
Ms Jones is also suing Mr Pesutto over the 3AW interview, during which he cited a tweet she issued in the aftermath of the “Let Women Speak” rally, stating: “Nazis and women want to get rid of paedo filth. Why don’t you?”
“The neo Nazis who turned up to the rally had made it clear that they were there to support this (Let Women Speak), as we later found out, and we later found out that one of the organisers, Angie Jones who did a video with Moira and two other people including Kellie-Jay Keen later on Saturday, actually posted this,” Mr Pesutto said in reference to the tweet.
Asked later in the interview whether he considered others in addition to Ms Keen to be Nazi sympathisers, Mr Pesutto said: “Well certainly her, Angie Jones posted what I said before, I won’t repeat it, so it’s not as if any of this is in doubt, it’s on the public record.”
In her concerns notice, Ms Jones’s lawyers state that her tweet needs to be seen in “context”, as a response to an activist she claims “thinks ‘adult baby’ men who eroticise infants are a legit(imate) sexuality.”
They argue the matters raised in the 3AW interview “contained direct allegations about our client, which were grossly misconceived, wilfully vexatious, and wretchedly false,” and cite Ms Jones’s Ashkenazi Jewish background as a woman whose “own Jewish grandmother fled to England from Nazi-occupied Austria” as evidence of her lack of Nazi sympathies.
Ms Keen and Ms Jones’s legal team has also been defending broadcaster Sall Grover in the “Tickle vs. Giggle” case brought against her by transgender woman Roxanne Tickle, over Tickle’s exclusion from Grover’s female only social networking platform “Giggle for Girls”.
Spokesmen for the ABC and Mr Pesutto declined to comment.
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