Attorney-General Christian Porter, accused of a historical rape, fronted the media visibly anguished and vehemently firm.
He did not do the things of which he is accused in the summer of 1988.
Attorney-General Christian Porter speaking at a press conference in Perth on Wednesday.Credit:Trevor Collens
He began by addressing the family of his accuser, a 49-year-old Adelaide woman who died by suicide last year.
“You have suffered a terrible loss, and you did not deserve the frenzied politicisation of the circumstances of your daughter’s death,” he said. “I hope that…you will understand…that the things that are being claimed to have happened did not happen, that I did not mean to impose anything more upon your grief.”
Mr Porter said he had known the woman when he was 17 and she was about 16, and they had been champion debaters together. He did not know her well.
At times close to breaking down, Mr Porter said that prior to the story of the rape allegation breaking on the ABC last Friday, no one in the police, politics or the media had put “any substance of any specific allegations to me”.
He had not read the statement written by the woman detailing her account of Porter’s alleged attack on her.
But, he said, “nothing in the allegations that have been printed ever happened”.
He had not raped the woman who accused him.
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