Alan Jones charged with additional offences relating to ninth alleged victim

ABC NEWS (Australia)

New South Wales Police have laid more charges against veteran broadcaster Alan Jones relating to a ninth alleged victim. Mr Jones’ lawyer has criticised comments made by the assistant Police Commissioner in a public press conference.

Transcript

00:00These are two new charges relating to, as you say, a ninth alleged victim, and they

00:07were laid by police yesterday, but weren't made public.

00:11Now following legal advice that New South Wales police has sought, they've been able

00:16to lay these charges, or at least publicly reveal that these charges have been laid.

00:20And so we've gone from now eight alleged victims to nine alleged victims and 26 alleged criminal

00:27allegations.

00:28They deal with historic sexual offences dating from 2001 right up to 2019, involve touching

00:34without consent, as well as assault in some instances as well.

00:39Now of course, Alan Jones has at every stage denied that he's done anything wrong here

00:45and he's made that very clear through his lawyers as well, Mel.

00:49And Miles, yesterday during the developments, Alan Jones' lawyer raised some concerns about

00:54comments made by police.

00:56What did they say?

00:58Essentially they dealt with comments from Assistant Commissioner Mike Fitzgerald, who

01:02had spoken to the media in a briefing yesterday afternoon that he had described some of the

01:08alleged victims as being brave.

01:10Now Chris Murphy, one of Alan Jones' lawyers, took particular exception to this saying that

01:16describing someone as brave could be contemptible of court and was inappropriate for the police

01:21to say so in a public media conference.

01:25I think it's totally contemptible of the Assistant Commissioner of Police to be praising

01:32the witnesses who he might like to call victim.

01:35This is a matter for a courtroom and I believe that he's in terrible breach doing that.

01:40But Mr Jones will be defending this case.

01:43And so that's Chris Murphy there, Alan Jones' lawyer, saying that not only does he deny

01:48wrongdoing but that he took umbrage with some of the comments made by New South Wales police.

01:52Police have not responded to requests for comment from the ABC regarding these criticisms

01:57from Mr Murphy on behalf of his client Alan Jones.

02:01This matter obviously is one that has developed over the last two days and really captured

02:05a significant amount of public attention.

02:08That's in part due to the prominent role Alan Jones held in public and media landscapes right

02:13across this country through his career as a radio broadcaster and TV broadcaster as

02:18well.

02:19Now the matter does appear in court for the first time at the Downing Centre in Sydney

02:23in December, on December the 18th, where Alan Jones is expected to appear publicly there.

02:29Of course, Mel, we can expect significant attention to be paid to that first mention.

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