Who is Christian Porter? Aussie AG accused of 1988 rape in letter to PM after victim killed herself in 2020
Australia's Attorney-General Christian Porter has identified himself as the 'unnamed cabinet minister' at the center of a rape accusation that had been made public over the past week. A letter sent to Australia's Prime Minister Scott Morrison alleged that Porter raped a 16-year-old girl in 1988 when he was 17 years old. The unnamed woman took her own life last year.
Porter, who is now 50 years old, said that the allegations were against him and that he retained Morrison's support as attorney general. He also said that he will be taking a "short period of leave." He denied the allegations saying, "Nothing in the allegations that have been printed ever happened. Even now, the only information I have about the allegations is what has been circulating online."
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Porter also said, "If I stand down from my position... because of an allegation about something that simply did not happen, then any person in Australia can lose their career, their job, their life's work, based on nothing more than an accusation."
What are the allegations?
Australian media began reporting the allegations against the then-unnamed cabinet minister last week when statements by the alleged victim were anonymously sent to the prime minister's office and two female politicians from the opposition Labor and Green parties. The statement sent to Morrison includes a detailed account of events and references diary entries from the years following the alleged assault.
A photo obtained by news.com.au also shows the alleged victim with the minister, with both faces blurred out. The photo is claimed to help prove that they were together earlier on the night of the alleged incident. In the photo, he is seen wearing a pinstriped shirt, which the victim claimed, in an unsworn affidavit, she was made to iron for him while he told her that she would "make someone a wonderful wife" one day. He also told her that she was "not only smart and so pretty," but could do "good housewife things." The victim said that the minister went on to say he would need a “smart, pretty wife to help his political career, then boasted that he would be prime minister one day. By the age of 50, he predicted."
On the night of the incident, they went out drinking and dancing in Sydney's Kings Cross district. While she consented to a sexual act in 1988, she had not done so to sex or oral sex. However, the woman claims that he then forced her to have oral sex and raped her. She said, "I did this repeatedly by saying ‘Please don’t make me’ and ‘No, I don’t want to.’”
The woman said the man put her in the bath after she vomited on her dress. She said that she then woke up to him raping her and claims that the only thing she remembers when he was raping her was that he said “I don’t want to get you pregnant.”
She also said that she was shocked and embarrassed the next day and was bleeding, saying, "I told no one what happened. All I could cope with, as I remembered parts of the evening gingerly, was the idea that things had gone ‘a bit too far’. But it was OK, I reassured myself, because we were going to get married one day.”
The woman also reveals in the unsworn witness statement that she had known the man for several years in the lead-up to the incident and that he had made many sexist and belittling comments to her over the years. At one social event, she claims that he told her, "You should be wearing a bikini. Pity your tits are too small.” She also said that when they had gone to a Thai restaurant with friends in Sydney, the woman who had eating disorders ordered a salad with alfalfa sprouts. She claimed that the man said to her, "Oh look (the complainant) is eating sperm."
Australian police ruled that they would close the investigation into the incident, saying, "For various reasons, the woman did not detail her allegations in a formal statement to NSW police," and said that there was "insufficient evidence" to proceed. The woman, who has not been named, took her own life in her hometown of Adelaide in June 2020 at the age of 49.
Who is Christian Porter?
Christian Porter is an Australian Liberal Party politician and lawyer who has been serving as the Attorney General of Australia since 2017. Before this, he served as a member of Parliament since 2013 and was appointed the minister for Industrial Relations and leader of the House in 2019. He taught law at the University of Western Australia before he entered parliament.
Porter, who is from Perth, attended Hale School, the University of Western Australia, and then the London School of Economics. Porter is the son of the 1956 Olympic silver medallist for high jump Charles "Chilla" Porter who later served as the general secretary of the Liberal Party of Australia (Western Australian Division) from 1978 to 1987.
Porter's grandfather was Charles Robert Porter, who was a member of the Queensland Legislative Assembly from 1966 to 1980. He was also an author, playwright, and broadcaster. He was born in London, England, in 1910 and emigrated to Australia when he was four years old.
In 1999, Porter was listed as a contender for Cleo magazine's eligible bachelor of the year. In the mid-2000s, he married Lucy Gunn, whom he divorced. In 2008, he married Jennifer Negus, a former colleague, and granddaughter of a former senator. Porter and Negus separated in January 2020. In November 2020, during a television report, he was accused of kissing and cuddling a colleague's political staffer in a public setting while he was married. Porter denied the allegation and claimed that the staffer had also denied the allegation, however, the staffer's denial was not mentioned in the television report.