Devastated. Absolutely devastated. Fearing for the safety of his family.
That was 2023. Shane Drumgold, then the ACT's director of public prosecution, was the target of a series of stories published in The Australian. The point of the stories? To my mind it was to paint Drumgold as biased in his role as prosecutor in the case of Brittany Higgins and her accused rapist Bruce Lehrmann.
Drumgold knew it was coming. In May 2021, the dedicated lawyer woke to these words: "Shane Drumgold SC might not be a household name. But he soon will be." He had seen The Australian at work over decades and seen the patterns. This was it - not just one story but multiple: "It means that over the hill there is an attack coming and there is nothing you can do about it."
His wife, Tash Drumgold, a mental health clinician, his four adult kids - they were all so worried about him.
"That caused me concern," says Drumgold now.
News Corp publications such as The Australian seemed to be of the view that Higgins was an unreliable liar and Lehrmann was a good guy, wrongly charged. Drumgold, they implied, had been sucked in by Higgins.
No mention that Drumgold had been advocating for fairer and more just treatment for sexual assault victims over a decade in the ACT system. No mention that only three of 100 victims of sexual assault ever get to a trial. He says justice is served if you get that far - but too many women don't ever report.
Drumgold himself had called for an inquiry after the on-again-off-again trial. During that inquiry, led by Walter Sofronoff, the News Corp publication ran 40 articles critical of the case against Lehrmann. The day Sofronoff's report, highly critical of Drumgold, was leaked to The Australian's Janet Albrechtsen, there were, he says, maybe 10 or 15 members of the media outside his house from early in the morning.
How they knew where Drumgold lived remains a mystery to this day. He's not on any electoral roles - but someone chose to put his family at risk that day.
"Nobody could come and go. They were ringing the doorbell every five minutes ... walking around the house, banging on the windows."
Even worse was to come.
The ACT's former attorney-general Shane Rattenbury called Drumgold later that day.
"I thought that he was contacting me to say we're deeply concerned about the leak of this report. We're deeply concerned about the credibility of this report and we're deeply concerned about what's happening to you.
"I thought this was a strategy meeting about how they were going to support me."
No. Instead, Rattenbury told Drumgold his position was no longer tenable.
The man who'd been part of the ACT's DPP for more than two decades was forced to resign.
What happened during that time is detailed in a new book, Getting Murdoched by Andrew Dodd and Matthew Ricketson, released today.
Surely Rattenbury (and by association, Chief Minister Andrew Barr) did the right thing - considering what Sofronoff found.
But Drumgold tells me by the time of the phone call and later Teams call, the ACT government knew the Sofronoff report was compromised and that Sofronoff giving it to Albrechtsen could invalidate its findings.
"Still, Rattenbury phoned me and on the basis of that report told me my position was untenable."
As Dodd and Ricketson write: "While Albrechtsen was writing about the need for greater propriety by the prosecutor, her own behaviour created a basis for the prosecutor to discredit the Board of Inquiry's adverse findings against [Drumgold]."
It's been nearly three years since Drumgold was pushed out of a job he loved, for what he continues to believe was no good reason.
Since that time, he has never, not once, had a phone call from either Barr or Rattenbury to apologise for their conduct. Not had a call from Albrechtsen. Not had any compensation.
Nor has he had a call from the ACT Bar Association, which publicly stated Drumgold could no longer practise law because of the Sofronoff report. He has to wait a year to be cleared.
There are still clouds on his horizon. He often thinks about Brittany Higgins and Bruce Lehrmann, the then-young people at the heart of the story.
"I think about them a lot. Brittany Higgins is still to this day like a rabbit in a dog's cage, constantly getting ripped apart. Occasionally I have the misfortune of stumbling across some rancid person on the internet - but there have never been any adverse findings about the [compensation] payment [to Higgins] other than in Murdoch media."
He's quiet for a minute. "I can't imagine what it would be like for her, with a new baby."
And he's shocked at the legal advice given to Lehrmann. Justice Michael Lee was critical of Lehrmann for "going back for his hat" when he took a defamation action against Channel Ten.
"But [Lee] makes no mention of the fact that Lehrmann had a whole legal team who convinced him that was a good idea."
How is Drumgold now?
Does he think the case had an impact on his future work? On his credibility? He replied as a prosecutor would - he can't know what other people think of him. But he can point to the reports which clear him.
I ask him if he's fat and happy. He laughs and tells me his practice is thriving, with constant work of the calibre he's used to - but he knew his time in the public eye would be uncomfortable.
"I was very concerned about the attacks. At no point did I ever think anyone would act on it. I didn't think it would get the traction it did."
And he was very surprised - and disappointed - in Rattenbury's response.
"He was the decision maker. As the attorney-general you have to put law before politics. Your overarching commitment should be to the law."
Drumgold is convinced that the sexual assault survivors who feel confident enough to report their attacks to police get justice. The same can't be said for the ACT's former director of public prosecutions. He's still waiting for an apology.
And he has a question for governments. He understands the pressure that Murdoch publications put on politicians. He also knows that those same politicians resent the pressure.
He liked the Dodd-Ricketson book but says that the gaping hole in all the commentary about Murdoch is this: "It's all well and good to know the piper but it seems to me that people are simultaneously dancing to his tune.
"My case is probably one of the starkest examples of a government dancing to the piper's tune whilst simultaneously complaining about the piper."
