Power, trust and money in focus at Alan Jones trial

By Adelaide Lang 

When an up-and-coming athlete first met Alan Jones, he was in awe of the influential broadcaster.

More than two decades on, the power dynamic has shifted.

The former athlete has spent days in a courtroom detailing the indecent assaults he says he suffered at the hands of Jones, who sat silently listening to the testimony wearing a fixed look of concentration.

The 85-year-old former radio star has pleaded not guilty to 22 counts of indecent assault and sexual touching without consent against six men, who cannot be identified for legal reasons.

The half-dozen complainants allege Jones kissed, groped or subjected them to sexual misconduct between 2003 and 2020 at locations across Sydney and the NSW Southern Highlands.

The dates coincide with the radio titan’s stranglehold of Sydney’s airwaves, where he won the breakfast slot a record 226 times.

Nine of the charges relate to the athlete, who was the first complainant to enter the witness box as Jones fights the allegations against him in a marathon Local Court hearing.

The former Wallabies coach praised him for his sporting prowess when they met, the complainant said, and seemed intent on fostering his career.

Jones gave him a silver Nokia phone to stay in contact before later gifting him a white Nissan Pulsar sedan to allow him to get to training, he told the court.

Around four years later, the athlete had entered adulthood and was at the former radio host’s harbourside apartment watching sport on TV.

Jones allegedly made an inappropriate comment about another athlete’s genitals.

As the teen stood to leave, he said Jones, then in his 60s, told the teenager passionately “I love you, mate” and gave him a peck on the lips.

“Did you consent to the kiss?” crown prosecutor Georgina Wright SC asked him this week.

“No – I wasn’t given the opportunity,” the former athlete replied.

He said after Jones forced two non-consensual kisses on him, the former teacher began to pay him hundreds of dollars a week so he wouldn’t have to get a job and could focus on sport.

“He said I didn’t need to tell anyone about it because it was a gift,” the athlete said.

The payments increased to $600 a week after Jones indecently assaulted the teen multiple times, the court was told.

“You’ve been a really good boy. I’m going to give you some more money,” the athlete claims Jones said.

In one alleged assault, he described the leading radio broadcaster and feared political interviewer squeezing his genitals painfully tight while he was driving to the NSW Southern Highlands, causing him to nearly veer off the road.

“I was trapped,” the former athlete said.

“I had one of the most powerful men in the country in the car. I had to focus on the road.”

When they got to Jones’s house in Fitzroy Falls, Jones allegedly continued to indecently assault the man 40 years his junior with unwanted kisses.

After they shared a bottle of wine that evening, the former radio host allegedly told him: “There’s only one rule here – there are no rules.”

Jones then allegedly told the athlete to go and have a shower and “come back in a robe and nothing else”, a demand he repeated.

The athlete testified he suspected he knew what was going to happen, based on the earlier alleged indecent assault in the car.

“Very fearfully I put on the robe but as a form of protection for myself I put on the undies,” the athlete said.

“I thought there would be repercussions … I didn’t like when he was disappointed in me, I felt quite disappointed in myself.”

The underwear resulted in Jones scolding the athlete, the court was told.

Still, Jones was, on the teen’s account, not deterred from groping his genitals on the lounge and only stopped when the complainant said he was uncomfortable.

But when the athlete went to bed, he told the court Jones followed him into the bedroom and hugged him, again professing his love.

He said the failed politician aggressively squeezed his bottom before kissing him and undoing his own robe so their genitals touched.

“It’s probably as scared and nervous as I’d been in a long time,” the former athlete said.

“I felt like my heart was going to come out of my chest.”

His evidence was rife with unflattering descriptions of Jones, from the size of his genitals to the “slobbering”, “chomping” way he allegedly kissed.

He claimed he had been forced to wipe excess saliva from his chin after more than one of the uninvited encounters.

But an alternative portrait was slowly painted by Jones’s barrister, Gabrielle Bashir SC, over days of cross-examination: that of a charitable benefactor who helped an athlete achieve his dreams, only to be attacked years later by fabricated accounts and mistaken memories.

Under questioning from Ms Bashir, the former athlete accepted Jones had been an “unfailingly generous” supporter who saw his potential from a young age and continued to back him even after retirement.

At one point, the court was told he had only 23 cents in his bank account before a timely payment from Jones.

The former athlete said Jones’s support was one of the reasons he had been reluctant to stand up to him or report the matter to police.

“I was fearful of him but I was also accepting these things from him,” he told the court.

“Was I doing everything I could to push him away? No, I wasn’t because I didn’t want to lose those things.”

He strongly rejected Ms Bashir’s suggestions he fabricated the allegations against Jones to extract money from him after becoming unemployed and falling on hard financial times.

“I don’t want anything but proper justice in relation to this matter,” the former athlete said.

“I’m not after any of his money.”

But Ms Bashir pressed him on a text he’d sent to an ex-girlfriend about a statement she gave to police in relation to his complaint about Jones.

“That is something that will change my life for the better,” the court was told he wrote.

“Once it’s all over, I promise I’ll look after you.”

The athlete denied suggestions he meant the promise in a financial sense, reiterating he only wanted justice for Jones’ alleged actions.

He acknowledged there were inconsistencies in his timeline but insisted he did his best to recall events accurately after two decades.

On Friday, Ms Bashir suggested the fact the young man never tried to escape Jones’s country estate and even played tennis with the broadcaster after multiple incidents of alleged assault indicated the story was false.

“Instead of (seeking help), you had a long look around the farm and had a hit on the tennis court … Alan Jones joined you on the court,” Ms Bashir said.

“He was very good,” the athlete replied.

Jones, whose brash and opinionated rhetoric became a trademark of his broadcasting career, has remained quiet through the first week of the hearing, leaving Ms Bashir to do the talking.

He has been met by both supporters and detractors outside the Downing Centre in central Sydney.

One man waited outside the courtroom to shake the former radio host’s hand – which he joked he would never wash again – while another screamed obscenities at Jones as he left the courthouse.

That might be water off a duck’s back for a man whose polarising career took him to the pinnacles of Australian broadcasting.

The more crucial debate about who Jones was away from the microphone and whether it was within the bounds of the law will only intensify over the coming weeks and months.

1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732)

National Sexual Abuse and Redress Support Service 1800 211 028