Ben Roberts-Smith punched a woman he was having an affair with in the face, refused to take her to hospital when she pleaded for medical help, and then took pictures of her naked while she slept, the woman has told the federal court.
In an emotional two hours in the witness box, the woman, who has been anonymised before the court as Person 17, gave evidence about a tempestuous six-month relationship she had with the former SAS soldier, which she alleges was at times threatening and violent.
She also gave evidence Roberts-Smith pressured her into terminating a pregnancy and threatened he was “not someone you’d want to get on the wrong side of”. She told the court several times she was scared to upset him because “I was afraid of what he might do”.
Person 17 told the court Roberts-Smith pressured her to lie about him hitting her, instructing her to say she had sustained a black eye when she fell down the stairs.
She said that as they talked about ending their affair, he threatened her: “As long as we’re on the same page, we’ve got nothing to worry about, but if you turn on me I will burn your house down. It might not be you that gets hurt, it might be people that you love and care about.”
Roberts-Smith, a recipient of the Victoria Cross and one of Australia’s most decorated soldiers, is suing the Age, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Canberra Times for defamation over a series of reports he alleges portray him as committing war crimes, including murder, as well as acts of bullying and domestic violence.
The newspapers are pleading a defence of truth. Roberts-Smith denies all wrongdoing.
Person 17 has been subpoenaed to appear by the newspapers. The court has placed a non-publication order over the woman’s identity.
She told the court she met Roberts-Smith at a charity event in October 2017 and they began seeing each other “every 10 days or so”.
She said the pair communicated via Telegram, Roberts-Smith’s second “burner” phone, and a shared Gmail account to which they both held the logins so they could correspond without any electronic trace.
Person 17 described the initial relationship as “fast-moving and all-consuming”.
“He said to me he wished he met me 20 years earlier, before he met his wife. He said he didn’t want to stay in an unhappy marriage for the rest of his life.”
“I said I thought I was falling in love with him.”
But the court heard the relationship was riven by mistrust and confrontations. Person 17 said Roberts-Smith threatened her when he thought she was flirting with another man. She said he told her he was suffering from depression and was an alcoholic, drinking two to three bottles of wine a night.
At one stage, during an argument in early 2018, she said she asked him why he was stressed, and whether he was worried about work.
“Work problems,” Roberts-Smith said, “we’re talking about fucking war crimes.”
While on holidays in early 2018, Person 17 said she discovered she was pregnant.
“I knew that the father was Ben, because I had not slept with anyone else,” Person 17 told the court.
Person 17 said, after initially agreeing to terminate the pregnancy, she “started having second thoughts about it all”, but said she felt pressured by Roberts-Smith.
“It’s not something I really believe in. He started to get angry with me, my indecision, my failure to do anything. He said ‘you need to do something about this now, if you don’t, you’ve only got a couple of weeks left, and then it will be too late. You’ve got to book something today and tell me where it is’.
“He told me if I kept the baby, he would not stick around long-term,” Person 17 told the court.
Person 17 gave evidence she told Roberts-Smith she had booked a termination at a clinic in suburban Brisbane. In his evidence last year, Roberts-Smith hired a private investigator to follow and film Person 17 at the clinic. Roberts-Smith said he did it because he didn’t believe she would terminate the pregnancy and he believed she was lying about the pregnancy to get him to stay in the relationship.
Person 17 told the court she miscarried the pregnancy a few days before the appointment, but attended the clinic to maintain the pretence. She said that, when she saw Roberts-Smith in Brisbane, he forced her take a pregnancy test in front of him.
She said that when that failed to register a result, he walked her down to a shopping centre to buy another test. But approaching an underpass leading to the shops, Person 17 said she was too scared to go with him.
“I just remember feeling so afraid to even go in there with him.” Roberts-Smith ultimately bought the pregnancy test himself.
Person 17 said that in early 2018, she and Roberts-Smith were at a function at Parliament House.
She said that she and Roberts-Smith had been drinking at lunch and throughout the afternoon. Person 17 said she felt “quite drunk by the time we left”. She said Roberts-Smith was agitated when they left and walked ahead of her to the car park. She fell down “two or three steps”, hitting her head, and the side of her body. She was helped to the car by another person.
“When I got to the car, I got into the backseat on the left-hand side, he [Roberts-Smith] got into the front. There was some discussion about whether I should be taken to hospital or a doctor, and I thought I should be.
“The driver offered to take us to hospital emergency centre. Ben said no, to go back to hotel and he would look after me.”
In emotional evidence she said Roberts-Smith was angry with her back at their hotel room, yelling in her face “what the fuck have you done”, saying she had been flirtatious with other men, and had exposed their affair.
Person 17 said she just wanted to go to bed and that her head hurt.
She told the court, Roberts-Smith responded by saying “It’s going to hurt more”, or “I’ll show you hurt”.
“And he punched me with his right fist on the side of my face and left eye … I ended up lying on the bed. I just lay there still because I didn’t know what he was going to do next.”
Person 17 told the court she was fully clothed when she fell on the bed, but when she woke up later in the night, she was naked.
“I said ‘my head hurts and I want to go to the hospital’.
“He said ‘no, you’ll be fine, I’ll look after you’.”
She said she and Roberts-Smith had sex later in the night, “and afterwards he was holding me saying ‘it’s going to be OK’. And I was just saying I’m sorry and I loved him, and apologising.”
Person 17 told the court in the morning Roberts-Smith showed her photos he had taken on his phone of her asleep naked, and asked her: “Do I need to keep these photos?”
“I didn’t say anything,” Person 17 told the court.
Later that morning, Person 17 said she and Roberts-Smith discussed what she would tell her husband and friends about the black eye she had sustained, with Roberts-Smith allegedly telling her the future of their relationship depended on what she said.
“Do you remember what happened in the hotel room?” Roberts-Smith allegedly asked her.
“No,” Person 17 said she replied.
“Good girl. You hurt yourself when you fell over,” she said Roberts-Smith responded.
Person 17 was asked in court, “Why did you say you couldn’t remember?”
“I was afraid of what he might do if I didn’t say that.”
On Tuesday afternoon, Person 17 began giving evidence about later arriving unannounced at the Roberts-Smith’s family home, and also said she lied to her doctor about the cause of the black eye, saying she drunkenly fell down the stairs. Person 17 will continue in the witness box Wednesday morning.
Roberts-Smith was questioned on the alleged incident at the Canberra hotel during his testimony before the court last year. He denied all allegations of violence or threatening behaviour, saying the allegations were “completely false”.
“The whole story is a fabrication,” he told the court.
“I’ve never hit a woman. I never would hit a woman. And I certainly never hit Person 17.”
Roberts-Smith said Person 17 sustained the injuries to her face and side when she fell down the stairs at Parliament House. He said he did not believe she needed to go to hospital, and he took her to the hotel room where he undressed her, put an icepack on her head, and put her to bed.
He said he checked her respiratory rate and pulse and stayed awake all night checking she was OK.
He denied ever taking naked photos of her, saying that was a “disgusting” allegation.
Roberts-Smith has previously told the court he and his wife were separated at the time he and Person 17 began their affair. His now ex-wife told the court this was not true, that they were not separated, and he pressured her to lie.
“I’ve never had any qualms with using the word affair,” Roberts-Smith told the court.
The trial, before Justice Anthony Besanko, continues.
