Alan Jones arrested over allegations he indecently assaulted young ...
Alan Jones has been arrested at his luxury Circular Quay apartment by NSW Police over allegations the controversial broadcaster and former Wallabies coach indecently assaulted, groped or inappropriately touched multiple young men.
For the past nine months, detectives from Strike Force Bonnefin, run by the State Crime Command’s child abuse squad, have been conducting a top-secret investigation into Jones.
Alan Jones, pictured in Sydney in May, has been arrested at his Circular Quay apartment.Credit: Sam Mooy
About 7.45am on Monday, detectives executed a search warrant at Jones’ apartment and arrested the 83-year-old. The search was ongoing, police said.
The strike force was formed following a lengthy investigation by the Herald and The Age, which revealed in December that Jones had used his position of power, first as a teacher and later as the country’s top-rating radio broadcaster, to allegedly prey on a number of young men.
The allegations of inappropriate behaviour uncovered by the Herald spanned almost 60 years.
Specialist detectives arrested Jones on Monday morning and it is understood he will be taken to Day Street police station in central Sydney. Police are expected to address the media later on Monday.
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In 1965, Jones was a 23-year-old teacher at Brisbane Grammar when he is alleged to have put his hands down the pants of a student and squeezed his testicles. The student said when he was struck in the groin by a cricket ball, Jones - who was teaching English as well as coaching cricket – held his testicles for “maybe 30 seconds to a minute”.
At Jones’ next school, The King’s School in the Sydney suburb of Parramatta, a student also alleged Jones put his hand down his athletic shorts.
During his 35 years as the most successful and feared broadcaster of his generation, Jones is also alleged to have indecently assaulted young men.
One former 2GB employee has alleged he was repeatedly indecently assaulted by Jones.
Detectives arrive at Alan Jones’ apartment building in Circular Quay on Monday morning.Credit: Kate Geraghty
Brad Webster (not his real name) told the Herald last year: “If I went to the police, Jones could be charged. What he did to me was a criminal offence. He cannot die without people knowing what he’s done.”
Jones was 65 when Webster was hired at the age of 20 to do menial jobs including driving the radio star from the station’s Pyrmont studios to his apartment in the Circular Quay building, dubbed The Toaster.
“During those 10 minutes, it would be wandering hands and then it just gradually became him grabbing my dick … you’re driving, you’re absolutely trapped … he’d go the grope, he’d rub my penis,” Webster said.
Jones is also alleged to have kissed him in the lift and exposed himself in the apartment.
Detective arriving at the Circular Quay apartment building known as The Toaster.Credit: Kate Geraghty
Like many others, Webster knew he would be destroyed if he complained.
“Jones was more powerful than the prime minister,” said Webster. “He could pick up the phone to John Howard and demand for things to be done.”
On air, he bullied police commissioners, accusing them of being “soft” on crime, and thought nothing of texting the Australian cricket captain “with the shits if one of his ‘boys’ was 12th man”, said Webster.
One former radio producer, who asked not to be named due to fear of reprisals, said that, while he didn’t see Jones touching anyone’s genitals, “I did see inappropriate behaviour and I saw it on a number of occasions.”
Alan Jones with then-prime minister John Howard in 2007.Credit: Dallas Kilponen
The producer said Jones’ petting and pawing of young men was “uninvited”, “predatory”, “brazen” and “absolutely confronting”.
Jones, he said, “would be all over them - he wouldn’t take his hands off them”.
He said the young men, including staff, waiters and singers on Jones’ show, “would be very embarrassed and very uncomfortable”. He recalled making eye contact “and it was as though they were saying, ‘Can you believe this is happening?’ ”
Several men from the arts community have alleged that Jones assaulted them at his apartment overlooking the Sydney Opera House.
Lawyer Bryan Wrench arrives at the Circular Quay apartment complex.Credit: Kate Geraghty
One, a musician, said he didn’t say anything to anyone because Jones was immensely powerful and no one wanted to risk getting the broadcaster offside. “You get on the wrong side and he’ll ruin you,” he said.
In 2008, a young waiter who was 22 at the time said he was working at a Kiama restaurant when an inebriated Jones grabbed and fondled his penis without consent.
The late tech entrepreneur Alex Hartman, who died in 2019, told four journalists Jones indecently assaulted him as a teenager. “I was his prey … I know I am not the only one, and this will come out somehow.” Hartman also claimed that Jones “forces himself on young men and uses his power in a predatory way”.
In January 2017, a then-schoolboy told the Herald he was invited to spend a weekend at Jones’ Fitzroy Falls property in the NSW Southern Highlands. The broadcaster had taken an interest in the boy’s family following numerous difficulties, including the death of the boy’s sister.
Alan Jones at a press conference in 2021 launching ADH TV.Credit: Janie Barrett
The boy later gave a statement to police in which he alleged that he and Jones, who was 75 at the time, watched a movie before Jones passionately kissed him on the lips and placed his left hand on the boy’s buttocks. After pushing Jones away, he told the police that he went to the bathroom “with my loofah and soap and began scrubbing my mouth, inside and out, as much as I could”.
He later told his mother that someone with “power and money” had done “something to him which he shouldn’t have”.
Jones denied the allegations raised by the Herald in December 2023 and threatened to sue, with his lawyer Mark O’Brien alleging: “Over many years, certain journalists employed by Nine (formerly Fairfax) newspapers have been resentful of our client’s prominence as a commentator on many political and cultural issues, and the malicious and concocted allegations giving rise to the imputations constitute a concerted attempt to destroy our client’s reputation.”
Jones is yet to commence legal action.
In March, he released a video in which he claimed medical ailments had kept him from appearing on the conservative ADH (Australian Digital Holdings) TV, which broadcasts to a small audience via social media platforms.
“The get-Jones campaign is nothing new in my life,” Jones said in the video. “I am not going to dwell, here, on the allegations made about me other than to say that I refute them entirely and the inferences associated with them.”
Although Jones announced in the video that he had “every intention of returning to broadcasting”, he has not been on air since the Herald raised the allegations last year.
Jones joined 2UE in 1985 and later defected to rival 2GB in 2002.
In May 2020, Jones announced his retirement from 2GB on doctor’s advice. Behind the scenes, Jones was being forced out on commercial grounds as advertisers had boycotted his program over controversial remarks suggesting that then-New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern should have a sock shoved down her throat.
In early November 2021, Jones’ contract was not renewed by Sky News, where he had been hosting a nightly television program.
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