WARNING: This post deals with sexual abuse allegations and details several disturbing encounters. Some readers may find it distressing.
If you are of my generation just looking at him brings the memories flooding back.
He was the lovable architect, with the kooky secretary and the three cheery kids.
It is hard to equate that stalwart of your childhood with the reports coming out of court yesterday.
The ‘lovable’ Dad in court yesterday was a mere shadow of how we remember him.
Robert Hughes starred in the hit TV series Hey Dad! in the late 80’s. Yesterday, in a Sydney court he starred in a show all of his own – up against 11 child-sex charges in relation to multiple alleged sexual assaults of young girls in the mid to late 1980s.
The girls’ ages ranged from seven to 15.
The allegations have been played out in the media since 2010 when two former cast members went on a prominent current affairs show accusing Robert Hughes of sexual abuse while they worked together on ‘Hey Dad!’.
At the time, Hughes strenuously denied the claims.
The allegations gained momentum and other women came forward.
Again many of these made headlines. And again Hughes denied the claims.
After a two-year investigation police arrested him in London.
The victims – five young women – will now face their accused in court via video link.
Hughes has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
On the first day of his trial yesterday a packed courtroom heard prosecutor Gina O’Rourke tell the jury of five incidents in which Hughes allegedly indecently assaulted young girls who were sleeping at his home.
She said one of the girls was the daughter of a friend Hughes met though the entertainment and voiceover industry.
The prosecutor described three of the incidents where Hughes allegedly went to the rooms where the young girls were sleeping and put his hand down their pants to touch them, or he forced them to masturbate him during the night.
On one occasion Hughes allegedly told his victim she was a “good girl”.
“He then handed her her teddy and said ‘here’s your teddy, go back to sleep’,” Ms O’Rourke told the court.
The victim’s parents spoke to police and the actor was approached by police in 1996 but he denied the claims.
The SMH reports that:
“The jury were told they would hear from another woman, who saw Hughes walk naked around his home while the neighbourhood children were there.
Another woman would allege Hughes rubbed his erect penis against the side of her face while he administered her eardrops in 1987, the jury heard.
Some victims went to police or told their stories to media in 2010, after seeing another victim’s story on a current affairs show or in a women’s magazine.
The court also heard Hughes told a 15-year-old girl he wanted to have sex with her in 1988 but agreed it was better to wait until she was 16.”
The lawyer acting for Robert Hughes, Greg Walsh told the court that he strenuously denied the charges and that Robert Hughes has been the subject of constant publicity over the last few years, and a victim of rumour and innuendo.
The ABC reports that Greg Walsh said “his client became a popular star of Hey Dad! and became close professionally and socially with other actors in the show.
But he said he did not sexually assault them.
“Mr Hughes denies emphatically each of the allegations,” Mr Walsh said.”
Hughes was extradited from London to Sydney to face these charges.
The trial in Sydney’s Downing Centre District Court is expected to take up to six weeks.
Top Comments
I went to the same primary school as his daughter. When he would come to the school my friends and I used to hide and watch him from afar .We found him scary but never quite understood why he scared us. If he does turn out to be found guilty maybe our childhood gut instincts were on the money.
I completely support the position our legal system takes of innocent until proven guilty. However, I think that over time this has been stretched to extremes at the expense of victims.
The purpose of such a stance is to protect people from false allegations that are harmful, and that is absolutely crucial. It also encourages society to wait for all the evidence in a situation before imposing judgement, which is a good lesson to live by. But that doesn't account for situations where nasty, manipulative and sociopathic people use it to hide behind while casting doubt on legitimate accusations and causing the victims more harm. Then others have learnt from these tactics.
I feel we have gone too far on the side of the perpetrators and some effort needs to be made to redress the balance. If a person accused of a crime is protected by "innocent until proven guilty" then equally they need to be held accountable if they abuse this privilege and prevented from using it to cast doubt on the allegations in a way that calls into question the integrity of the victims. Craig Thomson is an excellent case in point on this. His behaviour in covering up his activities was deplorable. It seems our legal system has not accounted for the fact that dishonesty on both sides of the equation.
False accusations are an incredibly small reported number, far less than the number of genuine crimes that go unreported because victims are afraid of coming forward. The emphasis on the former is compared to the latter is not commensurate with this ration.
The reason I see this as relevant to the case in point is because I feel uncomfortable passing judgement on "Hey Dad" without it having been examined in court. And yet at the same time I feel that in not openly saying what I feel and think I am disrespecting the victims who have come forward and participating in "Hey Dad" manipulating the system and public opinion in his favour.
I agree with what you're saying, but I really don't know how we can sway things back onto the side of the victim without abusing the fundamental innocent until proven guilty rule. There are some procedural rules that have been instituted like having the defendant leave the courtroom when the victim is testifying, but what else can we do?
I agree with you, and agree with Zepgirl that it's a tough one to address.
How do we stop "innocent until proven guilty" to translating into the accusers being liars until proven otherwise?
It also sets up a difficult distinction between being guilty and innocent, which is extremely problematic in sex crimes cases. Often very very bad/immoral/exploitative behaviour doesn't fall within the exact definitions of the Crimes Act.
Let's look at some of the past AFL rape cases. The guy gets acquitted, and the interpretation is that he's a poor bloke who was wrongly accused, while the girl is a lying slut bitch. Often the truth is that the dynamic was fucked, the guys behaviour was really disrespectful and gross, and while it wasn't technically rape, the girl wasn't lying about how she felt about it either. I wish we were better at addressing all those blurry lines, as a society.