New South Wales Police have laid more charges against veteran broadcaster Alan Jones relating to a ninth alleged victim. Mr Jones’ lawyer has criticised comments made by the assistant Police Commissioner in a public press conference.
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00:00These are two new charges relating to, as you say, a ninth alleged victim, and they
00:07were laid by police yesterday, but weren't made public.
00:11Now following legal advice that New South Wales police has sought, they've been able
00:16to lay these charges, or at least publicly reveal that these charges have been laid.
00:20And so we've gone from now eight alleged victims to nine alleged victims and 26 alleged criminal
00:27allegations.
00:28They deal with historic sexual offences dating from 2001 right up to 2019, involve touching
00:34without consent, as well as assault in some instances as well.
00:39Now of course, Alan Jones has at every stage denied that he's done anything wrong here
00:45and he's made that very clear through his lawyers as well, Mel.
00:49And Miles, yesterday during the developments, Alan Jones' lawyer raised some concerns about
00:54comments made by police.
00:56What did they say?
00:58Essentially they dealt with comments from Assistant Commissioner Mike Fitzgerald, who
01:02had spoken to the media in a briefing yesterday afternoon that he had described some of the
01:08alleged victims as being brave.
01:10Now Chris Murphy, one of Alan Jones' lawyers, took particular exception to this saying that
01:16describing someone as brave could be contemptible of court and was inappropriate for the police
01:21to say so in a public media conference.
01:25I think it's totally contemptible of the Assistant Commissioner of Police to be praising
01:32the witnesses who he might like to call victim.
01:35This is a matter for a courtroom and I believe that he's in terrible breach doing that.
01:40But Mr Jones will be defending this case.
01:43And so that's Chris Murphy there, Alan Jones' lawyer, saying that not only does he deny
01:48wrongdoing but that he took umbrage with some of the comments made by New South Wales police.
01:52Police have not responded to requests for comment from the ABC regarding these criticisms
01:57from Mr Murphy on behalf of his client Alan Jones.
02:01This matter obviously is one that has developed over the last two days and really captured
02:05a significant amount of public attention.
02:08That's in part due to the prominent role Alan Jones held in public and media landscapes right
02:13across this country through his career as a radio broadcaster and TV broadcaster as
02:18well.
02:19Now the matter does appear in court for the first time at the Downing Centre in Sydney
02:23in December, on December the 18th, where Alan Jones is expected to appear publicly there.
02:29Of course, Mel, we can expect significant attention to be paid to that first mention.