Alan Jones attends schoolboy reunion as fresh assault allegations emerge

As Alan Jones spent Friday celebrating with former players from The King’s School rugby team he coached to a premiership victory 50 years ago, more men have come forward with fresh allegations that the controversial broadcaster indecently assaulted or groped them.

In December, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age reported allegations that the 83-year-old had used his position of power, first as a teacher and later as the country’s top-rating radio broadcaster, to prey on a number of young men, indecently assaulting them, groping or inappropriately touching them without their consent.

Alan Jones arrives at the Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron on Friday to celebrate 50 years since coaching The King’s School rugby side to a premiership.Credit: Sam Mooy

Jones vehemently denies those allegations, as well as the fresh allegations raised in this story.

On his recent return to Australia after a three-month hiatus in London, Jones went to stay with a former pupil, Anto White of “Belltrees”, near Scone.

Jones, an English teacher and sports coach at The King’s School in the early ’70s, guided the school’s First XV to win the 1974 GPS premiership.

In March, White, the team’s captain, emailed members of the team about the upcoming 50-year reunion, saying: “Al has just been to stay at mine and is in great form and is also looking forward to seeing everyone.”

The premiership-winning Kings School rugby side in 1974. Coach Alan Jones is seated middle front row, to his left is captain Anto White. Scott Walker is on the far right of the middle row.

White told a polo podcast last year that Jones, who is godfather to his son, “always got the best out of people”.

A noticeable omission from the invitation list to the celebratory lunch at the Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron in Kirribilli was Scott Walker, a talented athlete who had played on the wing.

In his final school year, 17-year-old Walker, who was on an academic scholarship, had rebelled against Jones, preferring to concentrate on athletics rather than rugby. Jones went to the headmaster, who rang Walker’s father and, much to his chagrin, Walker was told he had to play.

Walker alleges that from then on, Jones ostracised him, repeatedly referring to the rugby team as “14 plus one”. Walker recalls “losing it” and crying in a locker room over Jones’ petty and vindictive use of that “horrible” phrase.

The allegations of Jones’ cruelty extended to the classroom, where he gave the gifted English student zero out of 50 in one of his final exams because, Jones claimed at the time, Walker’s handwriting was illegible.

“It hasn’t changed 50 years later. It’s still ‘14 plus one’,” Walker said.

Before his rebellion against Jones, Walker alleged Jones would be in the bathroom while the schoolboy showered and would often drive Walker home.

Walker previously alleged there were times when his teacher would pull over in a deserted car park and would “moon up at you … ‘You do know how much you mean to me’.”

Jones also wrote gushing letters to his teenage pupil, Walker alleges.

The invitation to attend Friday’s lunch.

When he developed a stitch in his abdomen during a strenuous Jones training session, Walker alleges Jones would “shove his hand down in my shorts”, saying “I am just finding the bubble”.

While Walker does not claim Jones touched his penis, he alleges Jones “made out that the stitch came from somewhere in the groin area, to the left of the penis”. Because Jones was his coach, as a teenager, he thought, “maybe there’s some physiology, something bubbling in your bloodstream”, which, if Jones bursts it, “my stitch will go”.

A similar pattern

This masthead can reveal a similar pattern of alleged behaviour by Jones at Brisbane Grammar, where he taught before King’s.

One former Brisbane Grammar student said that in 1965, he was 14 when his teacher, Jones, allegedly put his hands down his pants and squeezed his testicles.

Jones, who taught English, also coached cricket. The boy was batting in the nets when he was struck in the groin by the ball. As he lay on the ground in agony, he alleges Jones put his hands down his pants and held his testicles for “maybe 30 seconds to a minute”, the man recalled.

“I had no reason to doubt him,” the man said of his teacher. It was only with the perspective of adulthood he had reason to be troubled by what had occurred, he said.

In an emailed response, Jones “emphatically denied” the allegations put to him. “Not only do I deny it, I cannot recall ever having any dealings with 14-year-old cricketers or cricket teams,” Jones said.

Retired intensive care specialist Phil Byth, who was a student at Brisbane Grammar from 1965 to 1968, also told this masthead that it was only as an adult that he realised Jones had allegedly been “grooming” him.

As a state champion middle distance runner, Byth was one of a “group of A-league athletes known as ‘Jones’ boys’,” he said.

“If you told someone today that a boarding school master was driving home a 15-year-old boy and parking under a tree for a motivational chat, people would say it’s unprofessional conduct … he never physically touched me or anything like that, but I consider it emotional abuse to a severe degree. I’d call it emotional grooming that was unfulfilled from a physical point of view,” Byth alleges.

“He’s got away with it for all this time partly because of people who were too afraid to report it, and others who should have done something but didn’t,” said the retired doctor.

“It was obvious to all to see, there was no secret about it,” Byth said of Jones’s alleged behaviour while at Brisbane Grammar.

Jones responded: “In relation to Phil Byth, he was a gifted athlete of mine and under my coaching won many middle-distance events. I took on other athletes to coach. I think Phillip took exception to that, but the suggestion of ‘grooming’ is preposterous.”

Knowing comments

Decades later, in 2014, it was the knowing comments from Jones’ driver that floored a young man as he fled from Jones’ Sydney harbourside apartment after Jones had allegedly groped him.

“Are you OK? What happened? Do I need to call anyone?” said the driver as the shaken young man climbed into the back of the car.

It struck the young man that the driver must have witnessed this scenario previously. “I remember thinking, ‘Well, maybe it wasn’t his first rodeo’.”

While the man has provided detailed allegations of Jones’s unwanted advances, he asked for the details not to be published.

In 2012, a schoolboy and aspiring journalist was attending the launch of a men’s suit designer in Pitt Street, in Sydney’s CBD.

“I noticed Alan Jones was there and I thought, ‘Oh, my goodness, what an opportunity for 17-year-old me to go and say hello, potentially get an interview or something’.”

He recalls Jones saying, “Oh, this is a nice shirt”, as the top-rating radio man rubbed his new Hugo Boss shirt with his fingers.

Jones suggested they get something to eat and as they headed towards the cheese platter in the centre of the room, the man alleges “with no notice, he grabbed my bum with one of his hands. I don’t mean like just like a slap, I mean, proper grasp”, he recalled. “I didn’t know what to do. I was so shocked. Oh my God, it’s Alan Jones.”

He said he didn’t want to make a scene, but he was taken aback by Jones’ allegedly brazen behaviour. “I was 17, and he was a man in his 70s,” he said.

‘It felt disgusting’

Another young man recounted an alleged incident that occurred in the boardroom of a Sydney hospital in 2019. After Jones had addressed a group of wealthy donors, he joined the man in the corner of the room. What he alleges occurred next shocked him.

The broadcaster “put his hand on my upper back, and then just slowly sort of ran it down my spine, and just rested it on the top of my buttocks,” the man alleged.

The man said he froze. “It felt gross and disgusting.”

He added: “That it was the first time I ever realised sort of what women have been going through for such a long time. And even though it’s quite small, it was just that it still just makes you feel very dirty.

“I told my boss that night, straight after the event, and she was furious,” he said.

Jones said: “I cannot recall ever being involved in a boardroom event for a Sydney hospital.” Nor could he recall an incident at a designer launch.

Years earlier, before he defected to rival station 2GB, Jones was working at 2UE’s Greenwich studios when a co-worker alleges she witnessed a troubling event.

Alan Jones pictured in 1988.Credit: Quentin Jones

It was in the early ’90s, and only a couple of years earlier, Jones’ career had almost been derailed following his arrest in 1988 in one of London’s best-known gay beats, a public toilet in London’s Soho district. The charges of “outraging public decency” and “committing an indecent act” were subsequently dropped.

The woman, who asked not to be named for fear of retribution, was working in an office near Jones. She recalled her shock at seeing a terrified boy, “he was only about 17 or 18 years old”, she alleges, running down the corridor with Jones in pursuit.

“The boy was fearful, he was yelling out to me for help,” she alleges. “Alan was after him, and I am screaming at Alan, ‘Get away from him’.

“I grabbed this boy by the arm, and I shoved him into a spare office,” the woman alleges. As she stood spread-eagled against the door, Jones turned and walked away. She said it was never made clear why Jones, who could be a bully, was pursuing the youngest person in the office.

“I didn’t go into management because I would have lost my job,” the woman recalled. “Everyone was fearful of losing their jobs because Alan could wield his power.”

The woman believes the boy either left or was sacked because she never saw him again.

Jones responded to this allegation: “I can assure you I have never ever pursued anyone down any corridor.”

In his email, Jones said he “underwent surgery for total hip arthroplasty” earlier this week.

“Apart from my doctor’s approved release for two hours today, I will remain in hospital and rehabilitation for some weeks and can, therefore, make no further comment. I have further surgery to come.”

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