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When Len and Sue Roberts-Smith were told their eldest son Ben was to receive the Victoria Cross, they marked the occasion with a special gift: an ornate sword which had been presented to Roberts-Smith senior when he was promoted to the rank of major-general.
“I’m very honoured,” Ben Roberts-Smith said in an interview in 2011. “In fact, I tried not to take it because I knew how much it meant to him. But it obviously meant more to him to give it to me.”
In the same interview, Roberts-Smith credited his parents for the values they had instilled in him. “You have to hold your integrity at the forefront of everything because without it, you don’t have anything at all,” the former Special Air Services Regiment (SAS) soldier said.
Fifteen years later, the Roberts-Smiths sat stony-faced in the front row of the public gallery of courtroom 5.2 in Sydney’s Downing Centre Local Court, as their son, charged with five counts of war crime – murder, applied for bail.
As they left court after bail had been granted, Roberts-Smith’s mother told waiting reporters she supported her son. “I love him,” she said.
The Roberts-Smiths have become accustomed to media attention, just as they have become permanent fixtures in Sydney’s courtrooms. The couple may have missed the odd day during Robert-Smith’s marathon 14-week defamation trial against Nine, but if they did, it was the exception, not the norm.
And on Friday, as their son’s face was broadcast to the court from a video pod at Silverwater Correctional Complex, the Roberts-Smiths were in court as usual, ready to post a significant surety to allow their war veteran son to be released after spending 10 days in jail.
While their eldest boy has suffered a spectacular fall from grace, from war hero to accused war criminal, the Roberts-Smiths have not faltered in their support. They have spoken of being deeply proud of their son.
Roberts-Smith senior – a former Supreme Court judge, Army Reserve major-general and judge advocate general of the Australian Defence Force – was prepared to offer $250,000 to ensure his son could be released from Silverwater.
Judge Greg Grogin on Friday granted Ben bail under “exceptional circumstances”.
The Roberts-Smiths are notoriously private, although they have occasionally taken swipes at critics of their son.
In 2021, on the eve of what would become one of the most protracted and costly defamation trials ever seen in Australia after this masthead alleged their son had engaged in war crimes, the couple issued a strident defence.
“We are very proud of him for the father and son that he is,” the couple said in statement released on June 6, 2021. “We love and care for him like every parent loves and cares for their child.” They never expected he would be “unfairly attacked in this manner after he served his country in Afghanistan with distinction”.
In 2025, Sue was so outraged that Western Australian MP Andrew Hastie could be elected federal Liberal leader she launched an extraordinary attack, emailing Coalition MPs with accusations that the man who testified in her son’s defamation trial was “not fit” to lead the party.
Hastie, a former captain in the Special Air Service Regiment who served alongside Roberts-Smith in Afghanistan, was subpoenaed by the Nine newspapers to provide evidence after Roberts-Smith launched defamation action against the publications.
Hastie told the Federal Court that it was a persistent rumour within the SAS that Roberts-Smith had kicked an Afghan prisoner off a cliff.
The Roberts-Smiths have two sons. Their younger son, Sam, is an operatic baritone who has performed with the Deutsche Oper Berlin, Opera Australia, West Australian Opera, Sydney Philharmonia and a host of other opera companies in Australia and overseas.
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Alexandra Smith is a senior writer and former state political editor of The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via X or email.From our partners
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