The woman who punched Senator Lidia Thorpe in the head outside the MCG has walked free from Melbourne Magistrates Court with a $300 fine, and the public is only allowed to know about it now because a sweeping suppression order has come to an end.
Ebony Bell, 29, was handed a 12 month community corrections order with conviction on Friday, covering both the May 2024 attack on the senator and two of her friends, and a second violent assault on a pub security guard committed while she was on bail.
Magistrate Jillian Prior ordered Bell to undergo treatment for alcohol addiction and anger management, and said she had taken into account that Bell suffered from "intergenerational trauma", according to reports of the sentencing.
"You need to get some help around this," the magistrate told Bell.
The prosecution had asked for prison. Bell left court with the community order, the fine and a treatment plan.
Lidia Thorpe brought the gag order in February 2025, and the reason still can't be published
Ms Thorpe was attacked in May 2024. For most of the time since, reporting on the case was banned outright.
The senator brought an interim suppression order in February 2025 banning all reporting on the case, AAP reported, and the order was extended until the matter was finalised. It ended on Friday, more than two years after the attack.
The case wasn't always secret. Bell was named publicly on 28 October 2024, when The Australian reported that the woman accused of attacking the senator said she'd received a barrage of threats from the public.
The next month, the Herald Sun reported that Ms Thorpe had applied for a suppression order after receiving a barrage of online abuse.
By then the case had become a spectacle. The Daily Mail reported that Bell was trolled by a clown in a bizarre incident as she faced court in February 2025, the same month the interim order was made and the blackout began.
Behind that wall, the case kept moving. Bell pleaded guilty in September 2025 to recklessly causing injury to Ms Thorpe and unlawfully assaulting two others. She was handed a deferred sentence and ordered to complete an anger management course on 13 October 2025. She picked up fresh charges for attacking a bouncer while on bail. None of it could be reported.
Even now the secrecy hasn't fully ended. The Noticer reports that the reason the gag order was made still cannot be revealed, and Magistrate Prior refused to release the full CCTV of the attack to the media.
"I'm not minded to release the rolling footage. There are matters sensitive to the complainant," she said, according to AAP.
Victorian law starts from the opposite default. The Open Courts Act 2013 puts a presumption in favour of open justice, and suppression orders are supposed to be the exception. An ordinary assault case runs in open court from the first mention. This one ran in silence for 17 months, and the public still can't be told why.
Bell punched the senator in the head and jaw outside gate 1 after Dreamtime at the 'G
The attack happened at about 10pm after the AFL's Dreamtime at the 'G match between Essendon and Richmond in May 2024, the court was told.
Bell and Ms Thorpe had a verbal altercation outside the ground's gate 1. The senator and her friends walked away, but Bell pursued the group, with CCTV capturing what followed.
Bell punched Ms Thorpe twice to the head and once to the jaw, punched a male friend of the senator in the face, and pulled the hair of a woman who was trying to restrain her on the ground.
Photos of Ms Thorpe's injuries, including a bruised lip and neck, were handed to the court. In her victim impact statement the senator said the assault left her with deep and "long-lasting" impacts, and that her trauma was compounded by not understanding why it happened.
The court heard the two women had never met, though their families knew each other, the Noticer reported.
Bell's barrister, Carmendy Cooper, told the court her client acted because Ms Thorpe had allegedly made a derogatory comment about Bell's mother that was "incredibly distressing". Ms Thorpe has denied making any such comment, the ABC reported.
"It was a bad choice but she made that choice because her mother, who she adores, had been disrespected," Ms Cooper said.
What Ms Thorpe is actually alleged to have said hasn't been made public in any of the court reporting.
Six days after facing court over the senator, Bell kicked a Warrnambool bouncer in the head
By the time Bell received that deferred sentence, she had already reoffended.
In August 2025, six days after facing court over the Thorpe attack, Bell was refused entry to the Whalers hotel in Warrnambool. CCTV showed her hitting a security guard in the head with her phone three times, dragging him to the ground outside and kicking him in the head as he lay on the pavement, the court heard.
Prosecutor Bianca Moleta argued Bell should be jailed, calling the pub attack another "gratuitous act of violence".
"She's a woman on a mission, she's got her sights set on this victim just like the other three victims," Ms Moleta told the court in June.
Ms Cooper urged a community order instead, telling the court Bell had good prospects of rehabilitation and alleging the guard's refusal to let her in was "motivated by racism".
Magistrate Prior declined to jail her.
Thorpe says she argued against prison time for Bell
In a statement after the sentencing, Ms Thorpe said she was thankful the matter had been finalised.
"This has been a difficult experience, made harder by public speculation and imputations that did not reflect the facts ultimately established by the court. Throughout this process I have consistently advocated against a prison sentence for the person involved. I also want to reiterate that I had never met this person before the incident. I had no idea who they were. I will not make a full recovery from my injuries, however I want to move on from this and will not be commenting further," she said in a statement reported by the Guardian and the Noticer.
For most of the period she describes, the facts the court ultimately established couldn't be reported at all. The suppression order she brought meant the record that would have answered the speculation stayed sealed until the case was over.
Bell told reporters outside court she was relieved the case was over. Asked whether she wanted to apologise to the senator, she replied "no".
"It is what it is," she said as she left.
Bell's community corrections order runs for 12 months. The full CCTV from gate 1 stays with the court.
