Former elite junior cricketer Jamie Mitchell is suing Cricket Australia for the trauma and distress he has allegedly suffered as a result of the 1985 Australian under-19 tour of India and Sri Lanka.
On Wednesday, Mitchell’s lawyers issued Cricket Australia with a writ and statement of claim, seeking damages over the consequences of an alleged sexual assault on the tour.
"That tour damaged Jamie and he has lived with the consequences for almost 40 years," Mitchell’s lawyer Michael Magazanik of Rightside Legal said.
"He is making his legal claim to hold those responsible to account. This is a moment of truth for Cricket Australia. It can follow the Catholic Church's lead and engage in legal warfare with survivors, or it can address its past and take a constructive approach to the issue of historical sexual abuse in junior cricket."
In January, an ABC Sport investigation revealed Mitchell returned from the trip and told confidantes that he had been sexually assaulted on the final night of the tour in Colombo and feared that he had contracted AIDS.
On the evening of the alleged abuse, Mitchell fell ill and was placed under heavy sedation by the Australian team doctor, Malcolm McKenzie.
Dr McKenzie informed Mitchell's teammates that Mitchell was "quarantined" and nobody was to enter his hotel room, leaving a 10-hour window in which Mitchell was allegedly attacked.
Soon after Mitchell's return from the tour, the late John Miles, a respected figure in Melbourne club cricket and a member of Victorian Parliament, approached Mitchell's parents to discuss the trip and said: "I think you have a right to know that Jamie was raped."
Mitchell's parents recalled that in their shocked state, they also heard the words "Jamie told me", "someone in authority" and "doctor", the latter a reference to Dr McKenzie.
In recent months, ABC Sport has interviewed a number of men who say they were sexually abused by Dr McKenzie as teenage boys in the 1970s and 1980s.
Each man said Dr McKenzie was their trusted family GP in Malvern, south of Melbourne, and that the offences occurred under the guise of legitimate medical treatment.
Upon his death in 1998, Dr McKenzie was lauded by colleagues from the Australian Medical Association, the peak medical body of whom he was once elected Victorian president.
But one survivor of Dr McKenzie's abuse told ABC Sport that at the time of his death, Dr McKenzie was facing imminent legal action from a group of abuse victims.
'This is not right. What are we doing here?'
After Mitchell's story came to the attention of Sports Integrity Australia, the conduct of Dr McKenzie and Australian under-19s coach Bob Bitmead on the 1985 tour became the focus of an Australian Federal Police (AFP) investigation. As yet, no charges have been laid.
Players on the tour told ABC Sport of the discomfort and anger they felt about what they witnessed, particularly Bitmead's close association with young Indian and Sri Lankan boys, which they claim included the coach's photographing of young boys in his hotel room.
One player told ABC Sport: "It was in our faces … I remember guys in the team saying, 'What is going on? This is not right. What are we doing here?'. It was not good.
Asked to confirm allegations that he often had young boys in his hotel rooms, Bitmead told ABC Sport: "No, not really. Well, again, some of the players that were in the Indian side would come in, but they were always two or three and not, you know … They'd just pop in and say hello and we'd talk there for a while, and that was it. It was very seldom. I wouldn't say it was a regular occurrence, but it did happen, yes."
Asked if he'd photographed young boys in his room, Bitmead said: "I can't confirm or deny. I may have. Let me think. I'm trying to … No, not really, no. I've taken photographs of them at the ground and out around. Just general photographs that you take while on tour. But no, if you're inferring that I was taking photos in the room, no."
Bitmead, who coached the elite Victorian under-19s squad for five years and the national team across three seasons, led teams that produced a golden generation of Australian cricketers, including Steve and Mark Waugh, Mark Taylor, Ian Healy, Paul Reiffel and Tom Moody.
Bitmead denied that he used those positions to seek sexual gratification.
'A lot of unnecessary anxiety'
Mitchell's teammates have rallied around him in recent months, but the events of the tour and CA's handling of Mitchell's recent complaint have been a source of frustration and anger.
Some players from the 1985 tour were unimpressed with Cricket Australia chief executive Nick Hockley's failure to issue an apology to the squad, his claim that the governing body's treatment of Mitchell was "best practice", and CA's decision to give sensitive information to the media before it was passed on to Mitchell.
"I have had to find things out second-hand," Mitchell told ABC Sport at the time.
"That has caused me a lot of unnecessary anxiety."
In August 2021, Mitchell contacted Cricket Australia with his concerns, but said that 10 days later, he was "fobbed off" and felt no empathy in a call from Hockley, who directed Mitchell to Cricket Australia's integrity unit.
"If that's the way that Jamie still feels about it then I'm very sorry that that's the way I made Jamie feel," Hockley told ABC Sport in January.
"For those who know me, I think they, hopefully, consider that I'm a caring and considerate person, so I can only apologise to Jamie. It wasn't my intention to make him feel that way. Procedurally, I felt we were doing the right thing."
Cricket Australia only signed up to the National Redress Scheme in response to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse after Mitchell's revelations.
In August 2021, when Mitchell's allegations first came to the attention of cricket administrators, Cricket Australia was listed among institutions "intending to join" the scheme, but it was later removed from the page after failing to fully commit to the scheme.
On January 2, Hockley told the ABC that Cricket Australia had "signed up to the Redress Scheme", but Cricket Australia later confirmed it had signed a memorandum of understanding only on December 24, 2021, and that its "on-boarding" process was not complete.
Mitchell and his teammates have also been offered support by the Australian Cricketers' Association, which as a result of ABC Sport's investigation, extended its coverage beyond former first-class players to include members of elite junior national squads like Mitchell's.
