The high-profile trial of former broadcaster Alan Jones for indecent assault and sexual touching charges begins on Monday in Sydney’s Downing Centre local court and is expected to run for four months and hear from ۷۶ witnesses.
Judge Glenn Walsh will hear from six complainants who were allegedly indecently assaulted by the ۸۵-year-old between ۲۰۰۳ and ۲۰۲۰.
Jones is facing ۲۲ charges at his judge-alone trial. They include ۲۰ indecent assault and two sexual touching charges, the court was told in pre-trial hearings last month. In ۲۰۱۸ the offence of indecent assault was replaced by sexual touching, carrying a maximum penalty of five years imprisonment.
The youngest complainant, who was ۱۷ at the time of the alleged offending, is giving evidence in camera – presented in a closed courtroom – on Monday after the delivery of opening statements by the prosecution and the defence.
On Friday, Walsh knocked back an attempt by the defence to prevent media reporting the evidence of complainants.
Jones’s barrister Claire O’Neill argued that under the criminal procedure act, in-camera evidence was not permitted to be published.
But Walsh did not agree, saying he wasn’t satisfied in-camera meant “a non-publication or suppression order”.
He also said Complainant J was not “fussed” by media reporting his evidence.
“The Complainant J doesn’t seem to be jumping up for the crown to say no, but the defendant is.”
Complainant J is anonymised in line with the right of all alleged victims of sexual offences to maintain their privacy. The court heard in pre-trial arguments Complainant J, whose case accounts for nine of the ۲۲ charges, told police he met Jones as a young man and was given a mobile phone by the then ۲GB breakfast host, who invited him to visit his Macquarie Street apartment.
Jones is alleged to have put his arms around Complainant J at the apartment, and give him a “squeeze” and a “peck” on the mouth while saying “I love you mate”.
The court has heard that Jones allegedly touched Complainant J’s penis while he was driving him to Fitzroy Falls in the NSW southern highlands.
The prosecution case is that there is a pattern of alleged behaviour by Jones involving the targeting of “significantly younger men” in his professional and social circle.
Prosecutors told the court last month in pre-trial that it is “improbable” that two similar accounts of Jones allegedly touching a complainant’s penis while driving would be “untrue”. Each complainant was driving a car and there was “no reciprocity prior to the touching”, the court heard.
Two of the six complainants told police they were assaulted on the first occasion they met Jones: one at a fashion show and one at a fundraising meeting.
Jones has denied all wrongdoing and said the allegations are all either baseless or they distort the truth.
“I have never indecently assaulted these people,” he said outside court in December ۲۰۲۴. “The law assumes that I am not guilty, and I am not guilty.”
NSW police formed Taskforce Bonnefin after alleged victims came forward in the wake of a report in the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age.
