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Me Too movement and ‘belated accountability’ encouraged Porter allegations
A number of new documents used during the trial of Christian Porter’s barrister have been made publicly available for the first time, including interviews of the friend of the woman who accused him of rape. In one, she said the recent Me Too movement played a large part in the historic allegations finally coming to light.
Naomi Neilson
CW: Rape, sexual assault and suicide.
In the original dossier published in full on Thursday, 24 June, AB detailed the assaults that occurred when they were both teenagers. The 31-page document that includes a letter written by her friends includes allegations of date-rape drug usage and waking up to one of her assaults. The original article on the dossier can be found here – Lawyers Weekly advises caution to readers.
In three interviews by Four Corners and the 7.30 Report, AB’s friend Jo Dyer – who took Mr Porter’s barrister Sue Chrysanthou to the Federal Court over confidentiality breaches – said that she had known AB when they were in a debating competition and after the assault when she had become a “very different person”.
“When we reconnected, [AB] was a very different person… She was consumed with a trauma which she told me, deeply and consistently, was a result of an assault that had occurred, early in 1988, and her life at that point was really devoted to exploring how she could get some kind of justice, accountability and peace from that,” she said.
“She was not the kind of person filled with shining potential [anymore]. There was still a burning passion there, but it was to try and rectify a wrong, and not to soar to the heights that had previously been her direction,” Ms Dyer said, adding while AB’s life had been meaningful, it was different than imagined before the alleged assault.
Ms Dyer said she did not know specifically why AB chose to come forward last year rather than 33 years ago, but that “obviously, times supported the raising of issues, however historical”. With the Me Too movement, Ms Dyer said that it had opened new avenues for women to come forward with their experiences to a more “sympathetic” audience who could assist in “belated accountability”.
The alleged rapes have happened “a long time before men were being held to account for their behaviours, as opposed to women being asked to explain theirs,” Ms Dyer said. She added that the subsequent allegations that were raised about inappropriate behaviour in the Liberal Party had also “generally really buoyed her”.
As for why Ms Dyer so readily believed AB’s story, she said the details about the alleged rapes were “so clear and so consistent and so detailed” that there was no reason for AB to invent something like that, “let alone with the details it included”.
The allegations were first circulated in late February after the dossier was sent to several members of Parliament and given to some media outlets, which led to an ABC article that prompted defamation action. It also followed a Four Corners report last November that alleged Mr Porter had a “storied” history of sexist behaviour.
Reflecting on Mr Porter’s alleged behaviour, Ms Dyer told the ABC in her interview that AB was clear about her story “given the way [Mr Porter] had behaved towards her” and she was led to believe that he had “behaved that way towards other women”, including appearing to not treat them as equals. This, she alleged, had occurred despite him being “in this position of great authority and great power”.
In the letter attached to the dossier, AB’s friends said that the “risk of killing herself if she did pursue the claim had to be weighed against the risk of her killing herself if she did not pursue the claim”. AB herself outlined her struggles with mental health, which she said occurred after the alleged rapes had occurred.
In the interview, Ms Dyer said that even if no official finding or criminal conviction had come out of her coming forward with the rape allegations, AB wanted her story to be on the record: “If nothing else came of it, it would be there on the official record”.
This story is still unfolding. More to come.
Naomi Neilson
Naomi Neilson is a senior journalist with a focus on court reporting for Lawyers Weekly.
You can email Naomi at:
