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Alan Jones sailed past the waiting media looking every centimetre like a man arriving for his day in court.
He wore a purple check tie with a pink shirt, pristine white cuffs angling from the sleeves of his brass-buttoned blazer. His feet were shod in woven leather loafers – perhaps Italian, to the untrained eye – and he paired them with watermelon-pink socks. He walked with the assistance of a gold-tipped cane.
The former broadcaster’s journey to the Downing Centre, which he took in a chauffeured black BMW, was short – a five-minute drive up Elizabeth Street, from his home at his Macquarie Street apartment at Circular Quay, one of the country’s most prestigious addresses.
Later, the court heard Jones liked to introduce one of his accusers as coming from the metaphorical opposite end of town: “Number one, Struggle Street”. Jones had allegedly bought this young man, a rising sports star dubbed Complainant “J”, a white Nissan Pulsar to get himself to training.
Jones’ wealth, status and power, compared to the financial struggles and lower social status of some his alleged victims, is a theme of the prosecution case.
“I never had the comfort of financial support. I never had my own car. I struggled for a long time,” “J” told the court in his evidence on Monday.
“I didn’t want to lose those things, so I just dealt with it,” he said of Jones’ alleged unwanted touching and kissing.
Once inside the courtroom, Jones was installed in a special chair, flanked by his high-profile lawyers, Bryan Wrench and Chris Murphy, although he was later asked to shift seats, to remove himself from the sight line of “J” as he gave his evidence.
One man in the public gallery greeted him warmly, grasping his hand, but otherwise, the former broadcaster was accompanied by no one but his sizeable gang of lawyers.
That man didn’t stay for long; he had vanished by morning tea break.
As the courtroom waited for the presiding Judge Glenn Walsh to commence the hearing, Jones sat impassive, at one point twirling his cane like a Vaudeville character, fidgeting either from nerves, or impatience, perhaps, to get this whole business started and then over with.
The only flash of Jones’ natural garrulousness was a brief chat he had with a member of the public, during a short break, about his “crook” knee.
“It’s bone on bone!” he said ruefully, to commiserations. Jones is 85.
Otherwise, Jones, the man who used to talk for a living, the sometimes generous, sometimes bullying broadcaster who lectured premiers and hectored prime ministers, was silent.
He cast his gaze forward into the middle distance as the prosecutor Georgina Wright, SC, gave her opening remarks. Her words travelled through the courtroom like a surreal sound wave.
Wright detailed allegations dating to the years that Jones was feared and revered, when he was at the height of his powers. It was a litany of alleged non-consensual acts, all showing a pattern of the sexualised leverage of power.
“Continued to drive while the defendant gripped his penis … Complainant ‘J’ felt trapped and did not know what to do”; “a chomping open-mouth kiss that also touched the complainant’s nose”, the court heard.
It went on for the better part of 30 minutes.
“First met the defendant as a 14- or 15-year-old” … “the defendant changed into a robe … started to undo the complainant’s robe and rubbed his penis”.
“The defendant said, ‘There is one rule… there are no rules’.”
Jones listened quietly as further details about alleged non-consensual behaviour were spilled in court: painful penis-squeezing, gushing text messages and kisses which left a residue of saliva that had to be wiped off.
If it was difficult to hear as an observer, it must have been multitudes worse as a defendant.
When defence counsel Gabrielle Bashir, SC, rose, she recast the allegations as “rivalry, treachery, double-dealing, money, hatred, desperation, opportunism and more”.
Such base motivations were “all at the heart of this case”, she said.
Bashir also said that the accusations came as part of a “trial by media”, powered by the hatred and jealousy of Jones’ 2GB radio rival and nemesis, Ray Hadley.
“You will see evidence in Hadley’s own words of his resolve to destroy Jones and to, one by one, tear his supporters apart,” Bashir alleged.
Still, Jones stayed motionless, lips pursed, chin tilted upwards, his turtlish profile perfectly still. His only movement was his fierce scribbling in a black notebook as “J” gave evidence, following the opening remarks of both prosecution and defence.
Occasionally, he would underline some words for emphasis, a clean stroke of his silver pen, and show his lawyer, Wrench.
“J” appeared via videolink, beamed in from a small, fluorescent-lit room elsewhere.
Now a man in his early 40s, he told the story of his upbringing, the second of four children to a single mother living in Sydney’s west. He was a rising sports star with plenty of ambition but no money to realise it.
Jones invited “J” on his radio show as a 14- or 15-year-old, and allegedly gave him a phone, at first. Then Jones gave him a car, “J” alleged, to drive himself to training.
Then, it was cash – transfers of $400 a week, which rose to $500, paid fortnightly. When the unwanted kissing started, culminating in an alleged indecent assault while “J” was driving,“J” did not feel in a position to fight Jones off or tell anyone else.
He spoke openly about how he struggled with his discomfort with what Jones was allegedly doing, versus the material comfort Jones was providing. To have the latter, he needed to endure the former, J alleged.
“I come from a small family and we struggled our whole lives,” he told the court.
“I was getting everything handed to me. It was a wonderful life. I thought if I told someone about what was happening to me, I would lose everything.”
He told the court that, “for me, it was a fearful relationship” he had with his benefactor.
Jones denies all 22 charges of indecent assault and sexual touching. The court rose just after 4pm, with Jones dropped home, back to Macquarie Street, after fighting through the media crowd for the second time that day. His proximity to the court is fortuitous – the hearing is set to run for four months.
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