CANBERRA, Australia (AP) –
Australia’s attorney general denied having sex with a 16-year-old man who had accused him of raping her 33 years ago and said on Wednesday he would not give up being the nation’s top lawmaker.
Christian Porter, on the other hand, said he would take permission to take care of his mental health after the allegations were made public recently.
“I’m going to take a couple of short weeks off just for my own sake,” Porter told reporters. “I think I’ll be able to come back from that and do my job.”
The prosecutor ended her life last year and her allegations against Porter were made public last week when they were sent anonymously to Prime Minister Scott Morrison and other lawmakers.
The media reported that the alleged rapist was one of 16 men in Morrison’s 22-member cabinet, but Porter was widely identified online.
The 50-year-old former criminal prosecutor said he decided to speak after police said on Tuesday that there was not enough evidence to proceed with a criminal investigation.
Prominent lawyers and friends of the woman have called for an independent investigation to prove the evidence against Porter.
Morrison noted Porter’s denials and said the charges should be left in the hands of police to handle.
Porter said any investigation into the allegation would require him to “disapprove of something that did not happen 33 years ago.”
Buy Michael Bradley, the alleged lawyer for the alleged victim, said there would be “media trial” in the absence of a formal investigation.
“We shouldn’t want this to happen, but it will happen if the allegation and its response are not put to the test in a proper formal process,” Bradley said.
Porter said the rape complaint did not justify retiring from his job.
“If I stay out of my position as Attorney General for a complaint about something that just didn’t happen, anyone in Australia can lose their career, their job, their job based on nothing more than an indictment that appears to print, ”said Porter.
“If this happens, anyone in public life can be removed simply by printing a complaint,” he added.
Porter said she was 17 when she competed alongside the then-16-year-old prosecutor on a four-member school debate team in January 1988. She said she hadn’t heard from her since.
“I did not sleep with the (alleged) victim. We didn’t go through anything of this nature between us, ”Porter said.
“I remember the person as a smart, bright and happy person,” he added.
The woman has not been named. Police are preparing evidence to help a coroner determine the cause of his death.
The case has been added to an intense scrutiny of attitudes towards sexual harassment and violence in Parliament after two weeks ago a member of the staff made an unrelated complaint of having been raped by a senior colleague of ‘a minister’s office.
This week, the government has communicated to the staff of the House of Parliament by e-mail a new confidential hotline of complaints for the notification of serious incidents in the workplace.