Court out there

This week I was sent to report on an inquest that turned out to be the most bizarre I have ever covered.

In many respects it was a deeply tragic story: about a troubled teenage boy who became a prostitute in the Kings Cross area of Sydney and disappeared before he was due to give evidence against a number of alleged paedophiles. His body was found three-and-a-half years later buried in a shallow grave on the side of a canal.

But the case had a surreal humour that left the court in hysterics at times. The boy had been befriended and taken in by Ian Roberts, a very well-known retired rugby league international (probably the equivalent of Gazza in UK fame terms) who also happens to be Australia’s first openly gay high-profile sportsman. This week Ian Roberts was giving evidence, and he was also cross-examined by a 78-year-old man who allegedly sexually abused the boy and is one of the prime suspects in his murder.

There is a twist: Ian Roberts revealed in court that he had himself (allegedly) been sexually abused by this 78-year-old man when he was a teenager. (Under Australian law this can be reported.) He had to sit in the witness box and answer virulently homophobic and offensive questions posed directly by his alleged abuser, stood just a few metres away from him.

Another twist: the old man made sensational allegations in open court that an internationally-known Australian figure was part of a paedophile ring. (His name can’t be reported, and there’s no evidence that it’s true anyway.)

The case had me gripped, especially when the feisty coroner threatened to put the old man in the cells if he didn’t shut up. And when, in response to a witness explaining that south Sydney girls in the early 90s “didn’t put out”, the coroner said, “Good on those south Sydney girls.”