The ex-girlfriend of an athlete has denied lying about his contemporary report that veteran broadcaster Alan Jones had allegedly indecently assaulted him.
The woman also denied she'd been offered money to give evidence about the matter more than two decades on, as she was cross-examined on Thursday in Jones's criminal trial in a Sydney court.
The athlete, now in his 40s, is one of six men who allege Jones kissed, groped or subjected them to sexual misconduct between 2003 and 2020 across Sydney and the NSW Southern Highlands.
Jones has pleaded not guilty to 22 charges of indecent assault and sexual touching without consent against six men, who cannot be identified for legal reasons.
Nine of those charges relate to the athlete, who testified that he met the longtime shock jock when he was around 14 years old and was subjected to an unwanted kiss at 18 years old.
His then-girlfriend told the court the athlete had confided in her about groping that occurred while he was staying overnight at Jones’s home.
Jones is accused of indecently assaulting the athlete six times while in the NSW Southern Highlands, including while the younger man was driving them to their destination.
“Alan Jones sexually touched me,” she recalled him saying when he came to her house straight after the sleepover.
When she asked if he wanted to report the matter to police, the athlete was allegedly adamantly against it and swore her to secrecy.
During her second day in the witness box, the former girlfriend rejected repeated suggestions from Jones’s barrister Gabrielle Bashir SC that the conversation had never happened.
“No, I remember that clearly,” she said staunchly on Thursday.
She accepted there was a difference between her statement to the court that the alleged touching took place on the NSW south coast and her police statement, which did not mention a location.
But the ex-girlfriend rejected Ms Bashir’s suggestion she had included that detail to support the athlete’s account, saying she knew where he had been.
The couple broke up but later reconnected, with the athlete reaching out to her in relation to the alleged indecent assaults in 2024, after Jones was arrested.
“I’d like to come forward and tell my truth,” he allegedly told his ex-girlfriend.
She accepted her initial statement to police had not included the words “come forward” but insisted he had said something similar during their conversation, which she couldn’t recall in exact words.
After she had given her statement to police, the athlete thanked her for doing “something that will change my life forever and for the better”.
“Once it’s all over, I promise I’ll look after you,” he wrote.
The athlete denied it was a promise to give her with a financial reward for providing a statement in support of his complaint when quizzed about the messages in court.
His ex-girlfriend similarly told the court she didn’t understand the message as an offer of financial assistance.
“It does look like that, but it never crossed my mind,” she told the court.
“I know he didn’t mean that either.”
The ex-girlfriend concluded her evidence on Thursday and was followed in the witness box by the athlete’s former coach.
The court is expected to hear on Friday from a second complainant who alleges Jones indecently assaulted him eight times in a year.
Each alleged assault is said to have occurred at a time when the former Wallabies coach had a stranglehold on Sydney’s airwaves, winning the breakfast slot a record 226 times.
During his 35 years as a radio presenter, Jones became a feared interviewer capable of grilling leaders while sharing his outspoken, conservative views across the country.
He also broadcast to a national audience for years as a regular commenter on Nine’s Today show and a host of a political discussion show on Sky News.
