Ben Roberts-Smith’s ex-mistress has broken down in the witness box as she described him punching her in the face after a function at Parliament House.
The war hero’s former lover claimed Mr Roberts-Smith had become angry in their hotel room because she got drunk at the dinner and fell down a flight of stairs.
She claimed Mr Roberts-Smith said it would have been obvious to other diners they were having an affair and she had embarrassed him at the function.
The woman, known as Person 17, is giving evidence for Nine newspapers in the high-stakes Federal Court defamation action brought by Mr Roberts-Smith.
Nine has accused Mr Roberts-Smith of committing or being complicit in the murders of six unarmed prisoners during his service with the SAS in Afghanistan.
Mr Roberts-Smith has denied every war crimes claim made by the newspapers but is equally insistent he did not assault Person 17, or would ever hit a woman.
Ben Roberts-Smith’s defamation trial has taken another turn as his onetime mistress gives evidence about their tumultuous affair. Mr Roberts-Smith is pictured with his wife Emma Roberts, who has dropped the Smith from her surname
Ms Roberts has said she suspected her husband of having an affair during a difficult period in their marriage in late 2017 but he repeatedly denied it. ‘He would constantly be taking selfies of himself and I knew they weren’t for me,’ Ms Roberts told the court
Nine has accused Mr Roberts-Smith of committing or being complicit in the murders of six unarmed prisoners during his service with the SAS in Afghanistan . It also alleges he punched Person 17 after a function at Parliament House. Mr Roberts-Smith is pictured outside court
Person 17 told the court she had attended a dinner with Mr Roberts-Smith in the Great Hall of Parliament House held on March 28, 2108 and hosted by then prime minister Malcolm Turnbull.
The pair had been drinking earlier in the day during lunch and she had continued drinking at the dinner, where she was seated at a table near her lover.
‘I was quite drunk by the time we left,’ Person 17 told the court.
Mr Roberts-Smith had gone ahead of Person 17, who hit her head when she fell down a flight of stairs leading to an underground carpark.
The lovers then got into a car and were driven to a room at the Realm hotel after Mr Roberts-Smith had declined the driver’s offer to take Person 17 to hospital.
‘When we got inside the room Ben got really angry with me,’ Person 17 said. ‘He was sort of up in my face, just against the door.
‘He had me by the shoulder and he was shaking me. He said, “F***, what have you done?”
Mr Roberts-Smith has said he had a six-month affair with Person 17 while he was temporarily separated from his then wife. Ms Roberts has said there was no short-lived separation and she did not know of the affair until it was over. The former couple is pictured in London in 2012
‘He said, “What have you done? You were all over the other men at dinner. They’re all going to know we’re having an affair.’
Person 17 said Mr Roberts-Smith said he should have left her at Parliament House.
‘He said, “I let you into my world and I trusted you and you just treated it like a high school formal”,’ she told the court.
‘I said I was sorry because I new that I had behaved badly at the function. I said to him, “My head’s hurting, can we just go to bed and forget about it?”
Person 17 said Mr Roberts-Smith had been pacing around the lounge area of the room, getting increasingly angry. She held his hand and again said she wanted to go to bed.
‘When I said that my head was hurting he said something like, “It’s gonna f***ing hurt more” or “I’ll show you hurt”, before he punched me,’ she told the court.
Person 17 said Mr Roberts-Smith punched her with his right fist on the left side of her face and she back on an ottoman.
Ms Roberts has told of her confrontation with his mistress when she revealed their affair to him on the front lawn of the marital home. Emma Roberts said she spent three hours reading texts between the lovers
‘I just lay there still because I didn’t know what he was going to do next,’ she said.
The next thing Person 17 remembered was waking up and going to the bathroom. She said Mr Roberts-Smith followed and watched her use the toilet.
‘I said, “My head hurts, I want to go to the hospital” and he said, “No, you’ll be fine, I’ll look after you, its OK”. And we went back to bed.
‘And then later in the night we woke up and we had sex. And afterwards he was just holding me saying its going to be OK and I was just apologising to him and saying I loved him and how sorry I was.’
Person 17 did not claim Mr Roberts-Smith had hit her until she spoke to Nine journalist Nick McKenzie two months later. A complaint she made to police was withdrawn.
Mr Roberts-Smith said Person 17 had apologised for her conduct at the function but it was the end of the relationship. ‘It effectively was the final straw,’ he has told the court.
Mr Roberts-Smith has said he had a turbulent six-month affair with Person 17 while he was temporarily separated from his then wife.
Mr Roberts-Smith had an affair with a woman known in the trial as Person 17 from October 2017 until April 2018. He claims he separated from his wife in September 2017 but Ms Roberts says that never happened. This picture was taken on December 31, 2017
Emma Roberts, who dropped the Smith from her name after the couple split, has said there was no short-lived separation and she did not know of the affair until it was over.
Ms Roberts has said she suspected her husband of having an affair during a difficult period in their marriage in late 2017 but he had repeatedly denied it.
Mr Roberts-Smith, 43, and Ms Roberts, 46, were married on December 6, 2003 and have twin 11-year-old daughters. He left her on January 20, 2020 and in February last year they settled their divorce.
Mr Roberts-Smith says he was in a relationship with Person 17 from October 2017 until April 2018. He says he separated from his wife at the end of September 2017 and met Person 17 the next month.
Mr Roberts-Smith has said he did not initially tell his wife about the relationship with Person 17 and they did not make their separation public.
Mr Roberts-Smith wrote to Person 17 on Boxing Day, 2017: ‘Your amazing, you make me feel like I never have before.’ ‘Em is feeling my lack of affection, it’s getting pretty obvious, it makes me sad but I have fallen for you and there is just no other way to describe it.’
Ben Roberts-Smith is suing three newspapers including The Sydney Morning Herald over claims he is a war criminal, bullied comrades and punched a woman in the face
‘I’ve never disputed the fact I’ve had an affair with Person 17,’ he has said. ‘I’ve never had any qualms with using the word affair because… that’s what happened.
‘I didn’t know what I wanted. My wife wanted to keep trying. I didn’t want to throw it away completely. I met somebody else at a time when I didn’t know what I wanted.’
Mr Roberts-Smith has said he told his wife he had begun another relationship when they travelled to Singapore with their two children in January 2018.
The couple had sought counselling after that trip because they both wanted to keep trying to make their marriage work.
‘It certainly wasn’t the end of our relationship,’ Mr Roberts-Smith told the court.
Mr Roberts-Smith and his mistress Person 17,declare their love for each and discuss plans for the future, while Mr Roberts-Smith also admits at the height of the affair he was also still sleeping with his then wife
On December 30, 2017, Mr Roberts-Smith told Person 17 he had still been sleeping with his wife. ‘To answer your question yes I have, I know she feels bad for ignoring me and admitted to just giving up on that side of things’
Mr Roberts-Smith said he tried to break off the affair in February when Person 17 and her husband travelled to London with their children.
Later that month Person 17 had texted him to say she was pregnant and in the coming days they agreed she should have an abortion.
‘I’d just tried to end the relationship and she said she was pregnant,’ Mr Roberts-Smith told the court. ‘I was just sceptical of it.
‘I just didn’t like the timing. It didn’t make sense to me. I believed I was being manipulated for a number of reasons.’
Mr Roberts-Smith asked private investigator John McLeod to follow Person 17 to a termination appointment at Brisbane’s Greenslopes Private Hospital.
Mr McLeod produced a video which convinced Mr Roberts-Smith that Person 17 had not had an abortion. According to Mr Roberts-Smith, his lover admitted she had lied about the pregnancy when confronted.
The pair continued the affair but Mr Roberts-Smith said it ended as a result of the function they attended at Parliament House.
Mr Roberts-Smith left his wife on January 20, 2020 and settled their divorce in February 2021. He is pictured with his girlfriend Sarah Matulin attending the Magic Millions together on the Queensland Gold Coast in January last year
Nicholas Owens SC for Nine newspapers told the court that the day after Person 17 attended a function with Mr Roberts-Smith at Parliament House she exchanged text messages with the former soldier about injuries she had sustained to her head
The formal break-up was done over dinner on April 5 before they spent that evening spent together in Brisbane’s Airport Novotel Hotel.
Mr Roberts-Smith has denied telling Person 17 that night: ‘You’re like crack and I’m going to find it very hard to give you up.’
The next day, April 6, Person 17 turned up announced at the Roberts-Smith home on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast. She was wearing a pink and black dress, a ‘very big’ pair of black sunglasses and was crying.
‘Please remove your sunglasses so I can see your face,’ Ms Roberts said she told her.
‘She took them off and I noticed a black eye. I asked her, “What happened to your face?” She said, “I fell down drunk on a set of stairs at Parliament House”.’
‘I asked her why she came to the house, what was it she wanted. I asked her whether she had come for money or whether she was going to the press.
‘She said, “I’m not a prostitute”.’
On March 2, Person 17 wrote to Mr Roberts-Smith: ‘I don’t suddenly stop loving you just because we aren’t gong to be together.’ Mr Roberts-Smith responded: ‘But that is how I feel and I’ve told you that. I wish we had of met under different circumstances’
Ms Roberts then spent the next three hours reading text exchanges between Person 17 and her husband. There were pictures of the pair together and pictures of the Roberts-Smith children.
‘It was very clear that they were having an affair,’ she said. ‘They were planning to be together.’
‘She told me that she had fallen pregnant during the relationship. She told me that it was definitely Ben’s because I asked if it was her husband’s.’
When Ms Roberts asked Person 17 why she was not going to see her husband any more she pointed to her black eye and said, ‘because of this’.
Under cross-examination Ms Roberts said Person 17 told her she had embarrassed Mr Roberts-Smith at Parliament House.
‘I asked her to leave and to never come back,’ Ms Roberts told the court.
Ms Roberts had initially been on her ex-husband’s side when he launched legal action against Nine newspapers after the publisher accused him of war crimes. She is pictured outside her Brisbane home
Mr Roberts-Smith had come home and discussed the affair with his wife. She asked him how he could ever live with himself.
‘We stayed up until midnight,’ Ms Roberts said. ‘He told me about their relationship.’
Ms Roberts said Mr Roberts-Smith spent that night in the spare room but despite all that Person 17 had told her she still didn’t want to leave her husband.
‘I had made the decision to stay with Ben and try to work on our marriage,’ she told the court.
Mr Roberts-Smith had subsequently sent Person 17 a text stating ‘What have you done? This is outright blackmail.’
Earning the Victoria Cross turned Mr Roberts-Smith into a celebrity solider. Ms Roberts met the Queen and dignitaries including Prime Minister Scott Morrison while accompanying her husband to functions around the country. He is pictured with his then wife and the Queen
Person 17 had responded: ‘No. It most certainly is not blackmail. I’m not asking anything for or expecting anything from you.’
‘I know you will blame me but I hope you’ll also remember that we’re in this position because of what we’ve BOTH done.’
Mr Roberts-Smith has told the court domestic violence was ‘deplorable’ and ‘a disgusting act of of cowardice’.
‘I have no tolerance for anyone who would ever raise their hand against a woman,’ he said.
‘That particular allegation, I feel, combined with being called a war criminal, has ruined my life.’
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