Alan Jones’s barrister argues alleged victim was not groomed because that ‘happens to young children’

Sydney court hears complainant was more than 40 years younger and far less powerful than the shock jock when he started working as his driver

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Alan Jones’s yelling stopped when his “sexual behaviour” began, the broadcaster’s former driver has alleged.

Complainant C told a Sydney court on Thursday that he had been “reprimanded, yelled at and intimidated” when he worked for the former 2GB host as a young man in the mid-2000s.

But after Jones started touching him on the penis and kissing him, the situation changed, the court heard.

“Once the sexual behaviour began, he was nicer to me,” C told Downing Centre local court during his re-examination.

“I was obviously intimidated, but the yelling stopped.”

The 85-year-old has pleaded not guilty to 20 indecent assault charges and two counts of sexual touching in relation to six men.

Asked why C did not try to stop Jones from kissing him in the lifts at work and at the radio host’s Macquarie Street home, he said he could not.

“There is no circumstance I ever would have pushed Alan away given the power dynamic between us, given my role working for him, given the person he was in my life,” he said.

“He was my boss, he was my employer … and he was a very influential person in our industry.

Years after he stopped working as Jones’s driver, C and the radio host continued to text each other.

After Jones announced his retirement in 2020, C said in a text message that he owed his career to the veteran broadcaster and that he had “only ever treated me with great decency” while his “generosity and kindness towards me has never wavered”.

The defence suggested he could have simply congratulated Jones and said nothing more, but C told the court he was “groomed to write in that manner”.

Defence barrister Gabrielle Bashir SC said: “Grooming is something that happens to young children … He never groomed you.”

C replied: “Grooming is a secretive behaviour that makes you feel you need to act in a certain way, and you are taught to act in a certain way.

“[The grooming] used to happen because he used to touch me on the penis.”

The former driver noted Jones was more than 40 years older than him when he started working for him and held vastly more influence and power than a junior staffer.

“Sending a message like that is like paying tribute,” C said.

“If I didn’t, he wouldn’t have liked it. It would have blown back on me at some point in the future that I was ungrateful.”

Earlier in the week C explained other text messages to Jones with intimate and sexual content were the result of grooming . “These are messages consistent with someone who had been groomed for 10 years to think this was an acceptable way to talk with him,” the complainant said on Tuesday.

It is the defence case that it is “inconsistent” that C would text Jones in an explicit manner if the defendant had indecently assaulted him.

Bashir, who signalled in her opening statement that the charges arose in part as a result of rivalry between Jones and fellow shock jock Ray Hadley, suggested to C that Hadley had been chasing Jones’s breakfast slot in 2019 when he put him in contact with a journalist.

Bashir said Jones was “under pressure” at the time C told Sydney Morning Herald journalist Peter FitzSimons he had been indecently assaulted by his former boss.

C, who spoke to FitzSimons anonymously, told the court he did not want his story to be told at that time, nor did he want to be identified.

“It terrified me. For my own welfare, I couldn’t do it,” he said. Asked what terrified him by crown prosecutor Georgina Wright SC, C replied: “The repercussions from Alan.”

He said he only wanted FitzSimons to know the behaviour the journalist was investigating was true.

Bashir asked if he was aware that Jones was under pressure at the time due to a social media campaign against the broadcaster by Mad Fucking Witches and a group called the Sleeping Giants; C said it was “because he said something stupid on air”.

He also said he never thought Jones and Hadley were rivals.

“I knew they didn’t like each other but the word ‘rivals’ is not a word I would have used,” he said.

In late 2019, Jones sent a text message to C saying, “I hope you can understand my profound disappointment at the treachery I have endured over the last 18 months.

“Fortunately I know all the players … for you to be involved I find unbelievable.”

C interpreted the treachery to refer to a “beef” between Jones, Hadley and radio station management.

He said he had not made the allegations public at that time, and said if he had wanted to damage the broadcaster he could have made it public.

Bashir told the court in her opening that “rivalry, treachery, double-dealing, money, hatred, desperation, opportunism and more are all at the heart of this case”.

Complainant C has finished his evidence and the trial before judge Glenn Walsh continues on Friday with witnesses who are relevant to his allegations.