Warning: Graphic content

Hello and welcome to our live coverage of day nine of Alan Jones’ lengthy criminal trial on charges of indecent assault and sexual touching. My colleague Clare Sibthorpe will be bringing you the latest from the courtroom today.

The NSW Local Court in Sydney’s historic Downing Centre court building will hear further evidence today from complainant “C”, the second of six men who have accused the former 2GB host of unwanted touching and kissing over a 20-year period.

Jones denies the claims and is entitled to the presumption of innocence.

Jones is charged with indecently assaulting “C” eight times over a five-month period by touching and kissing him without his consent.

“C” told the court on Friday that Jones bombarded him with “love-bombing” in text messages before the alleged incidents started.

He said he told Jones “no” repeatedly before the then 2GB host kissed him for the first time in the lift of the broadcaster’s harbourside apartment, but the “extraordinary” power imbalance stopped him speaking out as the alleged assaults continued.

He also told the court that Jones touched him under the table on the penis over his clothing at a lunch in Sydney in front of other guests. He said one guest asked him after the lunch if he had “copped a feel”, a remark that left him “deeply embarrassed”.

The Crown alleges that Jones indecently assaulted or sexually touched six men without their consent between 2003 and 2020, and is seeking to prove 22 charges against him.

Jones’ barrister, Gabrielle Bashir, SC, said during her opening address to the court that the credibility and reliability of the complainants’ evidence would be tested.

Support is available from the National Sexual Assault, Domestic Family Violence Counselling Service at 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732) or the Men’s Referral Service on 1300 766 491.

Defence barrister Gabrielle Bashir, SC, has continued pressing “C” on messages exchanged with Alan Jones over several years.

In a text too graphic to detail, which was read out in court, “C” answered an intimate question Jones asked about the complainant’s penis.

“C” agreed with Bashir that by answering Jones’ question in that way, he was not “shutting it down”, but the complainant maintained it was how he had to engage with Jones to “keep him at bay”.

“I hate that I wrote that message and there is not a chance in hell I wanted to write that to him,” the man said.

“I feel physically sick reading what I wrote back and even sicker reading the questions he asked me. I was extremely intimidated by this man; I was scared.”

Bashir suggested his response was not consistent with him being scared or of being worried about what Jones would do with the messages.

Defence barrister Gabrielle Bashir, SC, has asked “C” if it is his evidence that he was flirting in text messages with a man he says kissed and touched him without his consent. He agreed.

“Were you flirting with him because that never happened?” Bashir asked.

“I was flirting with him because he was the most powerful person in Australia,” he answered.

Earlier in his evidence, “C” said he had an array of “template” answers which he would send Jones in to keep him on his side when Jones would send sexual or romantic messages.

The evidence-in-chief of complainant “C” has concluded.

He told prosecutor Georgina Wright, SC, that police contacted him in December 2023 following the publication of a Sydney Morning Herald investigation into Jones, but he declined to make a statement. He agreed to make a statement in May 2024, he said.

“C” was asked if journalists from other media organisations contacted him following the Herald’s story. He said that they did, and he provided statements to several journalists.

Asked if he received any benefit from any journalist he provided information to about Jones, he said: “Absolutely not.”

Now, defence barrister Gabrielle Bashir, SC, has begun her cross-examination of “C”.

While court takes a lunch break, here are some of the key pieces of evidence from complainant “C” this morning.

• “C” said he spoke to then-2GB host Ray Hadley about Alan Jones after he heard The Sydney Morning Herald’s Peter FitzSimons was looking into similar allegations against Jones.
• His purpose in speaking to FitzSimons was not to reveal his own allegations publicly, he told the court, but “just let him know it’s true … [or] at the very least it happened to me”.
• He said he “broke down sobbing” after Hadley asked him if he was OK following his conversation with FitzSimons, because he had never spoken about the alleged incidents of unwanted kissing and touching in detail. “He offered to go with me to the police and I said, ‘no, I don’t want to do anything like that’.”
• “C” said that he agreed to meet the Herald’s chief investigative reporter Kate McClymont at a later date and gave her permission to write about his allegations in any anonymised form.
• He said that he responded to intimate messages from Jones in a flirtatious way on some occasions because he was trying to defuse the situation.
• “C” said he received a mixed response from friends and others in whom he confided about the alleged indecent assaults, and that some of his friends would “make jokes about what I told them Alan did to me”.

Jones denies the allegations and is defending the charges.

A routine developed where “C” would text Jones “in a flirty way” in response to Jones’ sexual and romantic remarks, as his way of trying to defuse them, he told the court.

“C” said this in response to the Crown asking why he wrote to Jones that he could not sleep because he was thinking of him.

“[It was] to curry favour,” the man said. “As I said, and I’ll say it again, I hate reading these messages.”

“C” was taken to another text where Jones referred to his penis and “C” responded saying: “Haha, the c--- is our secret, I don’t want to make people jealous.”

Asked by prosecutor Georgina Wright, SC, why he wrote this, he said he was trying to defuse Jones’ initial message.

“C” has described receiving an email from The Sydney Morning Herald’s chief investigative journalist Kate McClymont.

He said she asked if he could call her, and he did. McClymont told him she’d been given his name and details from someone, he said, though she didn’t say who. She said she was investigating allegations about the behaviour of Jones and someone had suggested she contacted him, “C” said.

“C” said he recalled asking for 24 hours to think about it and then agreeing to meet with McClymont.

When they met, he said, he told her about his experience with Jones and agreed for her to use a pseudonym in her story.

Asked why he did not want her to use his real name, he said he did not want people knowing, and he did not want to be connected to this story.

“A lot of this stuff was deeply embarrassing from a reputation point of view,” he said.

“Putting my family through it was just not something I wanted to be identified with.”

Asked why he told Peter FitzSimons he did not want the allegations he’d made to become public, “C” said: “Because what he’d told me he was looking into had very strong similarities to my experience with Alan.

“The purpose of my conversation with Peter was to just let him know it’s true, that what you’re looking into is true, at the very least it happened to me.”

“C” said he broke down when discussing the allegations against Jones in more detail with Ray Hadley.

He said Hadley asked if he was OK after he spoke to Peter FitzSimons, causing him to become emotional.

“I said, ‘he’s a f---ing grub, he used to grab me on [the] c---, used to kiss me in the lift’,” he said.

“Ray just listened. I just broke down sobbing. I said, ‘he’s a f---ing c---, he’s just a c---’.”

The man said he thought about his family, and it had hit home that he had never spoken about his experience in a detailed way which was not an “off the cuff conversation”.

Complainant “C” has recalled telling radio broadcaster Ray Hadley as well as author and Herald columnist Peter FitzSimons about what Jones allegedly did to him.

“C” told the court he’d heard FitzSimons was researching a story about allegations against Jones, which he agreed prompted him to speak with Hadley about himself.

He had met Hadley in a professional context and had grown close to him, the court heard.

“I said, ‘you know we joke a bit about it, but you know some of the stuff [Jones] did to me was quite f---ed up’,” he said he told Hadley.