A woman who had an affair with Ben Roberts-Smith has told a court she was confronted by a stranger who showed her photos of her having sex with Roberts-Smith in a hotel room, and threatened to make them public if she didn’t confess the affair to the veteran’s wife.
The woman, anonymised before the court as Person 17, gave evidence about the torrid end of her affair with Roberts-Smith to the federal court Wednesday morning, saying she was “scared” he would “seek payback”.
“I was simultaneously in love with him and afraid of him.”
Roberts-Smith, a Victoria Cross recipient 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.
In her evidence Tuesday, Person 17 told the court that after a function at Parliament House on 28 March 2018, Roberts-Smith had punched her in the face in anger, sending her falling on to a bed and giving her a black eye.
Days later, on 3 April, she said she was walking on a beach near her home in the early morning when she was approached by a man she didn’t recognise. The man showed her two hard copy photographs of her having sex with Roberts-Smith in a hotel room in the Brisbane suburb of Milton.
The hotel was one Person 17 and Roberts-Smith visited regularly, and the photographs, the court heard, appeared to have been taken from outside the window.
Person 17 told the court the man, whom she told the court looked like a “bikie” or “an army person”, produced the photographs from an envelope and told her to declare the affair to Roberts-Smith’s wife.
“He said ‘you’ve been seeing Ben Roberts-Smith’. He showed me the photos. I was to tell Emma (Roberts – Roberts-Smith’s then-wife) about the affair or the photos would be made public.”
Three days later, on 6 April, Person 17 drove to the Roberts-Smith marital home on the Sunshine Coast and told Emma Roberts she had been having an affair with her husband.
Person 17 contacted Roberts-Smith in the hours after being confronted with the photos on the beach, but did not mention them to him. Under cross-examination, she was asked why she did not tell him about the confrontation on the beach. Bruce McClintock, acting for Roberts-Smith, suggested his client would have a “lively interest” in photographs of himself engaged in an extramarital affair.
“I didn’t trust him (Roberts-Smith) … I thought he might have been involved with it,” Person 17 told the court.
“Someone had approached me with compromising photographs of us together and I was really afraid of what I was caught up in. I was really paranoid and fearful.”
McClintock put it to Person 17 the “mysterious man on the beach” did not exist and “that incident didn’t occur”.
Person 17 repeatedly replied: “it did happen”.
The court has heard extensive evidence about the tempestuous nature of the six-month affair between Person 17 and Roberts-Smith over 2017 and 2018, which she says was riven by mistrust, deception and confrontations.
Person 17 said Roberts-Smith threatened her. She described to the court “veiled threats”, including that the soldier said he could track her movements, and access her bank accounts and phone, warning he was “not someone you’d want to get on the wrong side of”.
As their relationship foundered, he allegedly told 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.”
Person 17 said she had a black eye when she visited the Roberts-Smith home on 6 April 2018, a little over a week after the alleged assault in Canberra.
She said Emma Roberts’s mother, who was also at the house, asked her “what happened to your face?”, and said “he did that to you,” meaning Roberts-Smith.
Person 17 denied this, and said she had fallen down the stairs in a drunken accident.
“No you didn’t, I’ve seen injuries like that before,” Person 17 said Roberts’s mother replied.
Person 17 said she lied about the cause of the black eye because she feared retribution from Roberts-Smith.
“I knew that I would be targeted by him.”
McClintock said Person 17’s decision to visit the Roberts-Smith family home was a “straight-out act of vindictive revenge”.
“What you really wanted was to end my client’s marriage so you could have him for yourself?,” McClintock said.
“No,” Person 17 said.
McClintock focused on affectionate and explicit text messages sent between Person 17 and Roberts-Smith, which included kiss emojis and declarations of love.
“Looking at those messages, you cannot seriously say you were intimidated by my client?” McClintock asked.
“I was simultaneously in love with him and afraid of him,” Person 17 said.
Person 17 told the court she spoke with the Australian Federal Police about Roberts-Smith’s alleged assault of her, but did not proceed with a formal complaint. She told the court federal police officers suggested she wear a “wire” to record Roberts-Smith when they next met. “That was suggested to me by the Australian Federal Police,” Person 17 said. The proposal did not proceed.
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.
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.
In a further critical development in the case, Justice Anthony Besanko ruled on Wednesday the newspapers could issue a subpoena to a soldier known as Person 56, who had sought to be excused from giving evidence.
Person 56, the trial has already heard, was part of Roberts-Smith’s patrol during the SAS mission to the village of Darwan in 2012, where the newspapers allege Roberts-Smith kicked an unarmed, handcuffed prisoner off a cliff, before ordering him shot.
Roberts-Smith has denied the allegation.
Person 17 remains in the witness box. The trial, before justice Anthony Besanko, continues, and is expected to run several weeks more.
