The assistant defence minister, former SAS officer Andrew Hastie, has told a court there was a “widespread view” within the SAS that Ben Roberts-Smith was a bully towards his comrades.
The minister told the federal court on Thursday that Roberts-Smith’s reported version of a mission they both served on in Afghanistan was an “alternate universe” to what he observed.
Hastie was called to give evidence by three newspapers defending a defamation action brought by Roberts-Smith, who alleges the media reports portrayed him as committing war crimes, including murder, as well as acts of bullying and domestic violence.
The newspapers are pleading a defence of truth. Roberts-Smith, a recipient of the Victoria Cross, denies all wrongdoing.
Hastie briefly gave evidence late on Thursday. He is scheduled to resume on Friday.
Hastie is a former captain in the SAS who served alongside Roberts-Smith in Afghanistan. He gave evidence on Thursday about a SAS mission on an insurgent base in Syahchow in October 2012.
He told the court Roberts-Smith’s version of events on the operation, given by Roberts-Smith to senior SAS command, was an “alternate universe” to what he observed.
The Syahchow mission in 2012 is the site of an alleged “blooding”: the practice where a new soldier is initiated into the regiment by being ordered to register their first “kill” on operation – allegedly often of an unarmed prisoner. In their defence claim, the newspapers allege Roberts-Smith ordered another soldier, Person 66, to kill a captive, unarmed Afghan man who’d been taken out into a field. Roberts-Smith has denied the allegation.
Asked directly, during his evidence last year, if he had ordered Person 66 to execute a prisoner, Roberts-Smith said: “I did not.” Person 66 is due to give evidence after Hastie.
Hastie also told the court he remembered being told by Roberts-Smith “officers shouldn’t be on the ground with soldiers, they should be in an elevated position away from where the action is”.
Earlier on Thursday, a woman who had an affair with Ben Roberts-Smith – and who alleges he punched her in the face after a function at Parliament House – told the court she feared for her safety, and for her children, if the affair ever became public.
Under cross-examination Thursday morning, the woman, anonymised as Person 17, was questioned at length about an affidavit she had filed to the court, seeking a non-publication order on her name and any identifying details. In it, she says: “I am concerned for my safety and that of my children should our identities be revealed.”
“Despite being very secretive, it seems some people have still be able to find out who I am and harass me and my family.
“I am obviously most concerned about the physical and mental safety of my children.”
The court granted Person 17 the suppression order. Person 17’s name, and the city in which she lives, have been inadvertently said in open court several times by Roberts-Smith’s barrister, Bruce McClintock SC, and once by Person 17 herself. Those details have been ordered stricken from the court transcripts and online recordings.
This week in court, Person 17 said she was accosted by a stranger on a beach who showed her two photographs of her having sex with Roberts-Smith in a Brisbane hotel room. The shots appeared to have been taken through the hotel room window.
The man threatened Person 17, she told the court: “He said ‘you’ve been seeing Ben Roberts-Smith’. He showed me the photos. I was to tell Emma [Roberts – Roberts-Smith’s then wife] about the affair or the photos would be made public.”
Person 17 said Roberts-Smith had warned her, as their relationship foundered, he was “not someone you’d want to get on the wrong side of”.
“If you turn on me I will burn your house down. It might not be you that gets hurt, it might be people that you love and care about,” Person 17 alleges Roberts-Smith said on another occasion.
In her affidavit, Person 17 said other people, unknown to her, had also threatened her and her family. She said her husband had received an anonymous phone call from someone identifying themselves as “a friend of Ben and Emma [Roberts, Roberts-Smith’s wife]”, asking questions about the affair.
Person 17 said she received an email from an unknown account that referenced her affair with Roberts-Smith, saying “talking yourself up really is a poor way to get attention”.
Person 17 said she is “extremely anxious to the point where I suffer panic attacks..
“I cry most days and am anxious about what is going to happen next. When I go out, I often feel paranoid.”
Person 17, in her affidavit, said: “My grave fear is that if my name and identity is revealed, I will be subjected to harassment and vitriol by people who support Ben and think I am just a lying woman trying to bring down a war hero.”
During her second day of cross-examination, Person 17 was also questioned exhaustively about events in early 2018, when Person 17 and Roberts-Smith attended a function at Parliament House.
As they left the event, Person 17 fell down some stairs, hurting her head and left thigh. She said she asked to be taken to hospital, but Roberts-Smith refused, saying he would take care of her.
In their room at a hotel in Canberra, she said Roberts-Smith was angry with her, yelling in her face “what the fuck have you done”, saying she had been flirtatious with other men, and had exposed their affair.
Person 17 said she just wanted to go to bed and that her head hurt.
She told the court, Roberts-Smith responded by saying “It’s going to hurt more”, or “I’ll show you hurt”.
“And he punched me with his right fist on the side of my face and left eye … I ended up lying on the bed. I just lay there still because I didn’t know what he was going to do next.”
In her affidavit, Person 17 told the court: “I have given the police photographic evidence of the black eye I suffered as a result of the assault and a series of Telegram messages from the day after the assault in which Ben is coaching me about how I should explain the black eye to my husband.”
Person 17 has told the court she did not, ultimately, proceed with a formal complaint to police.
In court on Thursday, Person 17 was questioned about Telegram messages included in her affidavit, sent between Roberts-Smith and herself, that discussed the injuries she’d sustained and her explanation to her husband.
Under cross-examination, McClintock put it to Person 17 she was intoxicated on the night at Parliament House, and had injured her head falling down the stairs: “You have no memory of what happened.”
“That’s not correct,” she replied.
McClintock said Person 17’s allegation was “a complete fabrication”. “You have just made that up. He did not hit you.”
“He did,” Person 17 said.
In cross-examination, Person 17 was exhaustively questioned about the miscarriage of a pregnancy to Roberts-Smith. McClintock said she chose not to tell Roberts-Smith she had lost the pregnancy via phone message “in a calculated campaign of deceit, didn’t you”. McClintock said it was “appallingly dishonest … and manipulative”.
Person 17 fought back tears as she told the court: “I still wanted to see him face to face, I was still going through something awful.”
Roberts-Smith was questioned on the alleged incident at the Canberra hotel during his testimony before the court last year. He denied all allegations of violence or threatening behaviour, saying the allegations were “completely false”.
“The whole story is a fabrication,” he told the court.
“I’ve never hit a woman. I never would hit a woman. And I certainly never hit Person 17.”
Roberts-Smith said Person 17 sustained the injuries to her face and side when she fell down the stairs at Parliament House. He said he did not believe she needed to go to hospital, and that he took her to the hotel room where he put an icepack on her head, put her to bed, and stayed awake all night checking she was OK.
Roberts-Smith has previously told the court he and his wife were separated at the time he and Person 17 began their affair. His now ex-wife told the court this was not true, that they were not separated, and he pressured her to lie.
“I’ve never had any qualms with using the word affair,” Roberts-Smith told the court.
