Alan Jones trial: complainant says the broadcaster squeezed his penis as he drove at 80km/h

Warning: this report contains graphic descriptions of alleged sexual assault.

Alan Jones spent Monday in the front row of a closed courtroom at Sydney's Downing Centre while the first of his six accusers gave evidence. The man told the court that Jones reached across the car he was driving and squeezed his penis while he was doing 80km/h on the road to Jones's farm.

Jones, 85, denies all of it. He's pleaded not guilty to every one of the 22 charges, 20 of indecent assault and two of sexual touching without consent. Crown prosecutor Georgina Wright SC puts the case at 22 separate incidents involving six men between 2003 and 2020. The alleged incidents span his Circular Quay apartment, his farm at Fitzroy Falls in the Southern Highlands, his workplace, the Gunners Barracks restaurant at Mosman and a run of Sydney social functions. His barrister, Gabrielle Bashir SC, told the court the case was built on "rivalry, treachery, double dealing, money, hatred, desperation, opportunism and more".

None of the six men can be identified. They're known to the court only as complainants J, C, F, M, A and H, and the law protects the identity of anyone alleging a sexual offence. There's no jury either. Jones elected to be tried by Judge Glenn Walsh sitting alone, in a courtroom the general public isn't allowed to enter, in a trial listed to run for months.

Jones arrived in a black BMW, was helped out by his lawyers and walked into the building with two security guards holding the cameras back. He said nothing to the reporters shouting at him and leaned on a cane the whole way in. Inside, he took notes in a small notebook while Wright read the allegations out.

Jones has put a substantial team around him. Bashir leads the defence alongside barristers Michael Burke and Claire O'Neill, instructed by solicitors Bryan Wrench and Chris Murphy. Murphy is one of the best known criminal defence solicitors in Sydney, has run the firm he founded since the early 1970s, and was with Jones when police arrested him in 2024.

Complainant J says Jones squeezed him at 80km/h on the drive to Fitzroy Falls

Complainant J, a former athlete, was the Crown's first witness and he carries nine of the 22 charges on his own. He told the court he was still a teenager when Jones took an interest in his sporting career. On the drive south to Fitzroy Falls, he said, Jones slept for long stretches, nodding off and waking with a start. Then Jones put a hand on J's leg and moved it onto his penis.

J told the court Jones asked "what's that?", and that he answered "that's my penis". Jones said he'd thought it was his leg, J said, then asked whether it felt good. J told the court Jones undid his belt, pulled his penis out of his trousers, and left his hand there for the next five to 10 minutes. Jones was saying things like "wow that's impressive" and "does that feel good, that is very impressive", J said.

"He was squeezing it. He was squeezing it really tight, to a point I hadn't felt before. To the point where I thought the blood vessels might go. But it was really, really hard, for a couple of seconds, then release, then squeeze hard, then release, his hand on my penis the whole time."

Wright asked whether he'd consented to being touched under his trousers. "No," he replied. Asked why he hadn't done anything to stop it, J told the court there was nothing he could do.

"I didn't, I couldn't. I was trapped in the car. I was driving along windy roads at 80km/h in a Mercedes worth more than my life at the time."

He told the court Jones kissed him twice more once they got there, standing near the car when they arrived and again near a pig pen. In her opening, Wright alleged the night went further. She said that after dinner Jones directed him to shower and change into a robe. J said he was going to bed, and Wright alleges Jones followed him into the bedroom, put both arms around him and delivered what J called a smothering kiss. Wright alleged Jones then undid the robe, pulled him in and swivelled his hips so their penises touched. When J said he'd never done anything like that with a man, she alleged, Jones took hold of his penis while masturbating himself.

J says the payments started at $400 a week, and then came the car

J told the court the money started in 2003, the year he left school, at $400 a week. It meant he could train instead of working. Jones called him "a good boy", he said, and lifted the payment to $500 and then $600 a week by 2006. Jones replaced his car with a Nissan Pulsar when it broke down. J was also a guest on the 2GB breakfast show more than 10 times. Jones brought him into his home and to events, and at one of them he met the then prime minister John Howard.

The money runs through both sides of this case. J says the fear of losing it is why he stayed quiet for years, and Bashir has told the court that money is one of the things driving some of the complainants.

"I love you, mate", then a kiss J says ran from his nose to his chin

J described a series of kisses over several years. The first, he said, followed a Chinese dinner at Circular Quay in 2003 and a walk back to Jones's apartment in the building known as The Toaster to watch the tennis. As he got up to go, J told the court, Jones stood, turned slightly towards him and indicated that he wanted a hug. Jones said "I love you mate", and J said he replied "I love you too" and "you've done a lot for me". Then Jones kissed him briefly on the lips, and when Wright asked whether he'd consented to that, J answered "no, I wasn't given an opportunity".

On another occasion his coach drove him to the same building and Jones told him the coach would have to stay in the car. J went up, was shown into Jones's office, and hugged him on the way out. Jones told him he loved him again and kissed him on the mouth for about half a second, J said. He told the court he didn't consent to that one either.

The kiss he described in the most detail came later, at a hotel in Canberra. Jones told him he loved him again, J said.

"I remember feeling his lips up to my nose and down to my chin. I had to use my shirt to wipe my mouth."

J told the court he stayed quiet because he thought he'd lose everything

Wright asked J why he'd said nothing, given his coach had driven him to Circular Quay and was waiting downstairs the whole time. J said he was scared of what telling someone would cost him.

"I thought if I told someone, I would lose everything, the car he had purchased me, the payments would stop. And I would be embarrassed, I would have to tell my friends and family."

"I come from a small family and we struggled our whole lives," he told the court. He also told the court he was a proud person, that he wasn't inclined that way towards other men, and that he didn't want anyone to know.

The Crown alleges weekly flowers for M, explicit texts to C, and a 17 year old who froze

Wright used her opening to set out what the other five men allege, and none of it has been tested in evidence yet.

Complainant C worked alongside Jones at 2GB. Wright alleges Jones touched him on the leg and the penis while C drove him from the Pyrmont studios to the Circular Quay apartment. She also alleges Jones cornered C in the lifts at both his home and his workplace and kissed him there. Wright told the court that Jones also sent C messages she described as sexually explicit. She said they discussed the size of C's penis, declared love and told him Jones wanted to kiss him.

Complainant M is a champion athlete who came into Jones's orbit young. Wright told the court M once passed a compliment about the fresh flowers at Jones's home, and that a weekly flower delivery then arrived for more than a year. She alleges that at a function in 2015 Jones hugged M, kissed the corner of his mouth and pressed his body against him, then sent him a message about it afterwards. Wright alleges a second incident at the Circular Quay apartment, where she says Jones kissed him on the mouth.

Wright told the court that A was 17 at the time, that Jones had invited him to stay at his property, and that Jones had been supporting A's family financially. She alleges Jones put his tongue in the boy's mouth. "Complainant A froze," Wright told the court. A later handed his mother a letter that said "someone in power did something they should not have".

Complainant F also alleges he was 17. Wright said he spotted Jones across the room at a Sydney social function and went over to talk to him, and that Jones put his hands on F's bottom and squeezed. Complainant H alleges Jones touched him on the backside at an event in 2019, which Wright said left him feeling uncomfortable and helpless.

The Crown is also running what's called tendency and coincidence evidence. In plain terms, prosecutors want Walsh to weigh the six accounts against each other rather than one at a time. Their argument is that Jones was sexually interested in younger men as a pattern, and that he acted on it by touching them at work and at social occasions. Jones denies every count.

Gabrielle Bashir says Ray Hadley wanted the breakfast slot and set out to destroy Jones

Bashir's opening was brief and it was aimed squarely at the media. She told the court innuendo and allegations had been thrown at Jones for years. Four of the six complainants, she said, were "part of a trial by media that was thrashed out before the public", long before any of it reached a courtroom.

"But stories and criminal trials are very different creatures."

She told the court that Sydney Morning Herald columnist Peter FitzSimons and journalist Kate McClymont had been hunting a story about Jones as far back as 2019. The person who delivered it, she said, was Complainant C, a 2GB staffer who worked for Jones's rival Ray Hadley. Hadley "coveted his breakfast spot", Bashir said. She told the court the evidence would show, in Hadley's own words, his resolve to destroy Jones "and one by one tear his supporters apart". She said Hadley passed C's allegation to FitzSimons, and that it made its way to McClymont.

All of that rumour and coverage, Bashir argued, means there's "more than a possibility of contamination of the evidence" the court is about to hear. She said some of the complainants were driven by money and some had told downright fiction. She singled out M's alleged kiss at a function packed with people, saying not a soul saw it. "M's account simply did not happen," she told the court.

"This court will finally see the evidence of what each of these complainants did not tell the police, what they left out of their evidence, and what we have uncovered through court ordered subpoenas in this case. The inconsistencies, discrepancies, improbabilities will be laid bare. The defendant has emphatically stressed his innocence from the beginning."

Ray Hadley, Peter FitzSimons and Kate McClymont aren't on trial here and none of them has given evidence. Everything Bashir said about the three of them is an allegation made by a defence barrister in an opening address, which is the point in a trial where nothing has been tested. One News makes no finding about any of them, and none of them has had a chance to answer it in court.

Judge Glenn Walsh decides this alone, and the public isn't allowed in the room

Jones is being tried without a jury, which means Walsh alone decides whether the charges are proved. The trial is also being heard in a closed court, so members of the public can't sit in. The room at the Downing Centre is small, and it holds the judge, the two legal teams, accredited journalists and child protection officers. Proceedings are streamed, but the stream is cut every time a complainant gives evidence so their identity stays protected. On Monday afternoon, when J took the stand, only reporters were allowed to stay.

Walsh was a magistrate until March this year, when NSW retitled Local Court magistrates as judges.

Jones was arrested in November 2024, and the case has been shrinking ever since

NSW Police set up Strike Force Bonnefin in March 2024, run out of the State Crime Command's Child Abuse Squad. Police arrested Jones at his Circular Quay apartment on 18 November 2024, charging him with 24 offences said to involve seven men and a 17 year old boy. Charges have been withdrawn and downgraded repeatedly since. Four indecent assault charges were dropped in July. Those withdrawals took the number of complainants from eight to six, and the allegations behind the dropped charges are no longer before the court.

Jones has denied the allegations from the day they were laid. Speaking outside the Downing Centre in December 2024, when he first faced the charges, he said they were either baseless or distorted the truth.

"I have never indecently assaulted these people. The law assumes I am not guilty, and I am not guilty. I am emphatic that I'll be defending every charge."

Wright has more than 70 witnesses to call and Bashir has flagged a long list of character witnesses for the defence. The trial is listed to run towards the end of the year.