Picnic at Hanging Rock, A Country Practice, McLeod’s Daughters, Wolf Creek.
These are just some of the Australian classics John Jarratt has under his belt after more than four decades in the Australian film and TV industry.
But in 2017 he was on our screens for a different reason, he had been accused of rape – and while fighting the charges he allowed 60 Minutes to film every minute of his journey through the courts.
Here’s a snippet from the episode. Post continues after video.
The complaint was made to the media before the police, and Jarratt only found out when his agent called to tell him about it.
John and wife Rosa had been married two years and were living in a share house in Randwick with the complainant, who they’d considered a friend up until this accusation 41 years after the fact.
In 1976, Jarratt was 23 and had already made three movies. He was a rising star.
The complainant said he came into the house drunk at 3am and woke her up by ripping the sheet and blanket off the bed.
Top Comments
Queenslanders will be seeing a lot of commentary about "active consent" and changing definitions around consent in these cases. A lot of the media comments so far uncritically back these changes - citing cases where a "mistake of fact" defence was run (usually unsuccessfully.). This includes a few law professors and students writing for newsites who are misrepresenting what happened in court and what the decision was about.
The argument is primarily about whether someone who is not told to stop can assume that the person they are with is consenting. This is obviously very dependent on context. Someone in the backseat of a car with their Bf / Gf would view lack of objection very differently from someone who jumped out of the bushes at a stranger. Yet the proposed change to the law wants to make them both equivalent.
The bottom line - juries are not stupid. They have life experience and need to be able to hear all the facts and judge people on real world thoughts and emotions, not what some theoretician thinks should happen.
Like most of us when we argue we tend to use extreme cases. There was one I read the other day about a women who ended up with broken bones and bruises and the guy claimed he thought she said yes.
Without knowing full details there doesn't seem to be a lot of room to argue that he legitimately thought she said yes.
On the other extreme was the lady who said yes to sex but she wanted to say no.
As with most of these types of things the vast majority are in the middle, where it's not 100% obvious.