The freedom messiah is free, but a few women won’t join the cheer squad

In 2014, the Scottish novelist Andrew O’Hagan published in the London Review of Books a 92-page essay narrating his relationship with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, as they worked together on Assange’s autobiography in 2011. Assange had signed a £600,000 ($1,144,000) contract with Canongate to deliver the book. It was also sold to the New York publishing house Knopf, as well as a “slew” of other publishers around the world.

The total value of the book, which didn’t yet exist, was more than $US2 million (more than $3 million).

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange arrives in Canberra on Wednesday.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Assange chose O’Hagan, an award-winning author and a passionate believer in the WikiLeaks cause, to be his ghostwriter. O’Hagan attempted to work with Assange over a five-month period before the project derailed. A book was eventually published, without O’Hagan’s or Assange’s cooperation, as an “unauthorised autobiography”.

During those five months, Assange was holed up in Ellingham Hall, a 19th-century manor in Norfolk, under what was jokingly called “mansion arrest” following charges of sexual assault flowing from allegations made by two Swedish women in 2010.

A year later, in 2012, Assange took refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden. If he went to Sweden, he said, he risked being extradited to the US to face espionage charges over his WikiLeaks activity. He stayed in the embassy until 2019, and from there he went to Belmarsh Prison, until Wednesday, when he came home to Australia, a free man.

The sexual assault charges were dropped in 2017. Sweden’s lead prosecutor, Marianne Ny, told reporters: “I can conclude, based on the evidence, that probable cause for this crime still exists.” But it was impossible to investigate without Assange’s co-operation.

It is worth noting that in the midst of the hero’s welcome Assange has received, from the highest level of government down, the assault allegations were largely airbrushed from the public story of the man who has become a freedom messiah.

In counting off the 14 years of his legal limbo, it is rarely mentioned that Assange chose to take refuge in the embassy rather than face the assault allegations (which O’Hagan describes as “weak”, having read the affidavits of Assange’s two accusers). As Assange put it in 2010: “I don’t need to be at the beck and call of people making allegations.”

There was never any basis to his paranoiac claims that his accusers were honey traps planted by the CIA to trap him into eventual US custody.

What was interesting was how many of his left-wing supporters jumped on the victim-blaming wagon.

A letter showing FBI agents wanted to interview novelist Andrew O’Hagan about Julian Assange.Credit: Instagram/Getty/AP

Prominent progressives, including the feminist writer Naomi Wolf and filmmaker Michael Moore, made public comments implying the women were motivated by revenge or malice. (Moore later walked back his comments following a backlash.)

As author and journalist Sady Doyle told Vox: “Particularly for progressives, there was a real reluctance to admit that one of ‘ours’ could be guilty of something like that.”

The two women who accused him of assault had both had consensual sex with Assange – one alleged he had been rough with her, and had removed a condom without her knowledge, an act known as “stealthing”, which is criminalised in most Australian jurisdictions, as well as in Sweden. The other woman said she had consensual sex with Assange and then woke up to find he’d been having sex with her again while she was asleep, also without using a condom.

Assange vehemently denied all the allegations, and said all the sex was consensual. He said one of the women had gotten into a “tizzy” over the prospect of contracting an STD, and then said she had been “bamboozled” by police. He said Sweden was the “Saudi Arabia of feminism” (it is unclear what he meant by that, but it doesn’t seem like a compliment) and that he “fell into a hornets’ nest of revolutionary feminism”.

Assange is a notable supporter of revolutions, but perhaps he draws the line at ones inspired by feminism.

O’Hagan’s compelling essay chronicles the breakdown of the ghost-subject relationship, as Assange lapses into paranoia and delivers obscurantist monologues about power and freedom, rather than assisting with the task of writing the book. It becomes clear to O’Hagan that Assange refuses to provide transparency about his own life, and doesn’t really want the book to be published. He wants to be famous, but not scrutinised.

Assange’s treatment of the people around him, in O’Hagan’s telling, is arrogant and almost laughably rude – he talks over people constantly and eats like a “pig”, picking up his plate and licking it when he’s finished eating.

As O’Hagan notes, this does not make Assange Josef Mengele. But the essay provides a damning character portrait of the WikiLeaks freedom fighter.

“He is thin-skinned, conspiratorial … and he thinks he owns the material he conduits,” O’Hagan writes.

During their association, Assange was surrounded by an entourage of WikiLeaks hangers-on, all of whom were much younger than him. Assange’s then girlfriend, Sarah Harrison, who was also his personal assistant, protected him from the outside world.

O’Hagan, early in his dealing with Assange, asked him if he had a working title for the book. “He said, to laughter, ‘Yes. Ban This Book: From Swedish Whores to Pentagon Bores,’” O’Hagan recounts.

When O’Hagan, Assange and his girlfriend/PA Harrison went to a cafe, Assange had become distracted by some “young girls” walking past.

Sarah Harrison, then Assange’s assistant and girlfriend, thanks supporters outside Ecuador’s embassy in 2012. Credit: Peter Cox

“Hold on,” he said, and turned his gaze. “No,” he said. “It was fine until I saw the teeth.” One of them was wearing braces, O’Hagan reported.

Later, Harrison had confided in O’Hagan that Assange “openly chats girls up … and goes nuts if I even talk to another guy”.

“She said he couldn’t stand her being away from him and didn’t think she should see friends or go on holiday or ‘abandon’ him at all,” O’Hagan writes.

Last week, Clara Berglund, the head of the Swedish Women’s Lobby, noted Assange’s accusers were never given a chance for legal redress. “This is about a case that takes place on the major political stages, and men’s violence against women is given incredibly little weight,” she said.

A couple of points, perhaps minor, to keep in mind as Assange’s supporters celebrate his return home. His pursuit by the US Justice department was unconscionable for anyone who believes in press freedom. But the allegations of his behaviour towards women, if true, are truly despicable.

If that matters to anyone in the ledger of Assange’s alleged misdeeds.

Jacqueline Maley is a senior writer and columnist.