An alleged victim of Alan Jones told his older brother, after the broadcaster was arrested, that his indecent assaults were “nothing too bad” but involved Jones grabbing his penis, a Sydney court has heard.
The witness on Tuesday was asked by the trial prosecutor Georgina Wright to describe what his younger brother, known as complainant J, told him during a meeting at a McDonald’s.
Last week, J, a former student athlete, told the court he reported the indecent assaults to police in 2024 after Jones was arrested because he wanted his child to know “right from wrong”.
Jones has pleaded not guilty to 20 charges of indecent assault and two of sexual touching against six complainants.
J’s brother said J told him at McDonald’s words to the effect of: “This is the hardest thing that I’ve ever had to tell you. You’ve probably seen the news about the defendant. I’m one of the people who have come forward.”
The witness then asked his younger brother: “How bad was it?”
The witnesses told the court that J replied: “Nothing too bad, he didn’t try to fuck me or anything like that. He would grab me on the cock, he would kiss me, those sort of things.”
Complainant J told his older brother that Jones would “grab me on the cock and ask me if it was OK” and he would tell Jones he was “uncomfortable” and the older man would change the subject and become “a different person”, the court heard.
Asked by his sibling why he hadn’t told him about the abuse decades ago, J said, according to the witness: “It was hard. I didn’t want things to stop, the money, the support.”
J’s brother agreed that he told police the complainant disclosed to him that the hugs would get longer and “one time he put his hands on my shoulders and told me he loved me”.
The brother, the first of more than 70 witnesses other than the alleged victims to appear at the trial, said he met Jones on several occasions in the early 2000s, at the broadcaster’s homes at Circular Quay and Fitzroy Falls, and at the 2GB studios. He told the court he had never seen the broadcaster acting inappropriately towards his younger brother.
The witness said the first time he met Jones was when he drove his younger brother to 2GB in 2003. He said they talked about J’s athleticism and horse racing as they sat around a boardroom table.
He told the court that Jones was generous and they shared a love of sport. J’s older brother said Jones offered to help him buy his fiancee an engagement ring and later gave him a Villeroy & Boch dinner set as a wedding gift.
The witness said during a family visit to Jones’s Fitzroy Falls farm he went for a drive with Jones and his brother to “put some bets on”, played tennis and toured the property.
Under cross-examination by Jones’s barrister Gabrielle Bashir SC, the witness said his brother had never told him he was frightened of Jones.
Last week, J told the court he watched Jones’s arrest on television almost two years ago and decided to make a statement to NSW police.
Asked on Tuesday why he didn’t tell his mother about the abuse, J said he wasn’t prepared for that at the time, and she would have pushed him to report it to police. “I would be crushed in court and no one would believe me,” J said.
Complainant J said he did not remember Jones giving his family a dishwasher or sending flowers and hampers to his mother.
J’s former high school girlfriend, who he met in the mid-2000s when she was 16, told the court on Tuesday that she remembered a conversation with J late one evening when he said: “Alan Jones has touched me inappropriately.”
The witness said J was embarrassed and couldn’t look her in the eye.
“He felt uncomfortable telling me; he had his head down,” she said.
“I said, ‘Is this something you want to speak about to somebody, and maybe you should report it,’ and he said a very firm no,” the ex-girlfriend said.
J insisted at the time “in a very aggressive way” that she not tell anyone about it, the court heard.
On the day he had disclosed the alleged abuse, he came to her house straight from Jones’s southern highlands farm, and she knew something was wrong, the witness told the court. “He looked like he’d seen a ghost.”
The trial before judge Glenn Walsh continues.
