A high-profile Melbourne man has been accused of committing sexual offences, including rape, a Melbourne court has heard.
The man was charged in August last year with two counts of rape, along with one count of sexual assault and one count of attempted rape.
The alleged offences are said to have occurred in March 2023. He has pleaded not guilty to the four charges, which relate to one complainant.
Media outlets, including Guardian Australia, succeeded in having a blanket suppression order in the case lifted on Thursday but identifying details regarding the man remain suppressed.
The man faced a committal hearing in the Melbourne magistrates court in June. He has since been committed to stand trial in the county court.
Police say the woman, who cannot be named, was at the man’s Melbourne property at the time of the alleged offences.
The woman’s evidence during the committal hearing occurred in a closed court. A redacted form of her statement to police was later released by the court.
In the statement, she claimed she had consumed a significant amount of alcohol and cocaine over several hours after meeting the man at his house. She alleged that both substances had been supplied by the man, who she said carried a large bag of about nine grams of cocaine in his pocket and allegedly commented: “I’ve always got it on me.”
She said she had been emotional about separating from her partner and had been consoled by the man, who she alleged then “inappropriately” kissed and touched her.
“Every time I felt him put his hands somewhere that I didn’t like I would push his hands away and just say ‘stop’, I kept saying, ‘I don’t want this’… he was saying things like ‘you’re so sexy’, ‘I can’t stop, I need your help to sleep’,” she said.
She alleged that he had raped her soon after this, before she broke free and punched him in the face.
“He immediately grabbed his face and said ‘you’ve broken my nose’,” she said in the statement.
“He recoiled and started carrying on like a baby, I got out of bed and ran around to the couch, I said ‘you’re a fucking rapist.” He denied he raped the woman, saying “it’s not rape, I was using my fingers” and denied that he had used his penis, she said.
She said he had told her that he wanted her to leave but she had decided to go to a spare room at his house. She said a short time afterwards she went to speak to him as “I was just confused, I wanted to hear him say he knew what happened”.
She alleged he had then started masturbating in front of her and said “come here, do it for me, I need you to do it for me”, before she left the room.
According to the statement, the woman had texted details of her allegations to her mother, who had called police. They had arrived in the early hours the next morning.
The officers who had responded recorded the woman’s allegations on body-worn camera at the scene, the court heard.
In the text message exchange with her mother, the court heard, the woman said: “I held my own during the event despite telling him multiple times I was not interested” and “when it was happening, I closed my eyes and pretended it was not happening”.
But during the committal hearing, her mother said she had felt her daughter may have been affected by drugs or alcohol because of the language used and typographical mistakes in the texts, which included multiple references to “loving” the man.
“I told him I loved him for his spirit, but it was explicitly not sexual,” she wrote at one point, the court heard.
“I opened up to him about my abusive past.”
Her mother also told the court that she did not appear to want to divulge the man’s address to her as she did not want police to attend. The court heard that this approach was possibly influenced by a previous incident in which the alleged victim claimed she had a negative interaction with police. The court later heard an internal police investigation did not substantiate the allegations.
“I can’t go with the police, I trust the police less than [him],” she said in a text, the court heard.
“Police have hurt me more than [he] has.”
The woman also said in the texts that she had decided to stay at his house despite the alleged rape because he “owed” her.
Her mother said the alleged victim had previously made allegations to her about inappropriate behaviour by the man, including alleging that he had made a pass at her but that she felt he would not act similarly again.
The woman detailed similar allegations in her police statement.
The committal hearing was held over several days in June and included evidence from witnesses including the alleged victim, and former employees of the man, a business partner and friend of the man and one of his former employees, and police. The hearings can now be reported on because of the lifting of a blanket suppression order.
Det Sen Const Joshua Guy, the informant in the case, was asked by the man’s barrister, Dermot Dann KC, about emails he had sent regarding the case.
This included one regarding his application for a suppression order, in which Guy strongly opposed an order being “gifted” to someone whose offending was related to his “arrogance” and “personal status”.
Guy also agreed with Dann that he had made a “harsh comment” in relation to reports that indicated the man had attempted suicide since being charged.
The committal also heard details of forensic evidence taken during the investigation. He was accused of not wearing a condom.
A friend and business partner told the court about the pair’s visit to his house hours before the alleged assaults.
It was not unusual for the man to visit his house, the friend said, but it was unusual for him to bring a female friend.
The group consumed about a bottle of wine, he said, with the accused only having one glass and the alleged victim “a few”.
He said that the accused had nodded off at one point and he had told him it might be time to go home.
A former employee of the man told the committal hearing that the alleged victim had also been a friend, who helped her prepare a job application for a role with him.
The woman had been given the job but told the court that she had found out on her second day that the alleged victim had contacted her new employer asking if she could instead be given the position.
She said she had told the alleged victim that it would be a betrayal if she applied for the job that she had been appointed to.
Several months later, she said that she told the alleged victim she had been asked to go to an event with him, but did not want to for various reasons, including that she did not like mixing work and free time.
She said the alleged victim had come to her house and started “chucking things in bags pretty quickly” so the pair could go out.
The alleged victim was persistently asking about being able to see him that night, she said, but she had repeatedly said no.
She told the court that she had felt the alleged victim was trying to force her way into his life and the pair had an argument.
The row had ended, and the pair went out for dinner.
But she said the alleged victim again raised the man, before she had a tantrum, and was screaming “how dare you do this to me” and “just one drink, just one drink with [him], why won’t you give me just one drink”. She told the court that a barrage of abusive texts had followed, and said that she had since blocked the alleged victim’s number and not spoken to her.
She said when she was contacted by police regarding the allegations she told them there had been no inappropriate conduct in the man’s workplace during her six months working there.
Justin Quill, a lawyer for the media outlets, argued in the magistrates and county courts that a suppression order in the case should be lifted because it was not necessary to protect his safety.
But his psychiatrist, Dr Jacqueline Rakov, told the county court in October that he had twice been admitted to a mental health clinic since he was charged because of fears he could harm himself.
Rakov said he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety, and had a low mood, a loss of interest in previous enjoyable activities, poor concentration and low self-confidence and sense of purpose.
She said he was largely staying at home, not going to work or socialising, and panicked about being outside.
His distress had increased after media coverage of an earlier court appearance. That coverage led to a “blanket” suppression order being issued last December.
“He’s said, ‘If I’m guilty, put it on the front page,’” Rakov said.
“He’s heard from colleagues … that even allegations being made can lead to relationships being broken … so he understands the flow-on effects.”
Judge Nola Karapanagiotidis ruled on Thursday that the blanket suppression order should be lifted because despite “the chronic and enduring nature of the applicant’s psychological condition” it was important for an order to have “as minimal an intrusion as possible” into the principles of open justice.
“I have every expectation and confidence that the media organisations will abide by the order in its very clear terms,” she said.
