Ben Roberts-Smith’s alleged mistress has sobbed in court claiming the SAS veteran struck her in the face during an “all-consuming” affair in gut wrenching claims denied by the decorated former soldier.
Mr Roberts-Smith is suing Nine newspapers over a series of articles that claimed he killed unarmed Afghans while deployed with the SAS and was a domestic violence abuser.
The Victoria Cross recipient denies every claim and has spent weeks facing his critics within the SAS in the defamation trial in Sydney’s Federal Court.
But the long-running trial changed gears dramatically on Tuesday afternoon when a woman, known only as Person 17, took the stand for Nine.
Nine claimed Mr Roberts-Smith had cheated on his now ex-wife with the professional, married woman, who cannot be identified, in late 2017 and early 2018.
The celebrated soldier denies that claim and said his turbulent relationship with the woman occurred while he was separated from his wife.
Person 17 told the court she and her husband met Mr Roberts-Smith on Friday the 13th of October, 2017, at a charity lunch.
Person 17 said her husband left to pick up their children and she went with the other guests to an afterparty where everyone became drunk.
The woman told the court she saw Mr Roberts-Smith watching her on the dancefloor, they flirted and became “close” over the evening and then secretly left together for the SAS soldier’s hotel room.
Person 17 said she told her husband the next day she had cheated on him and he was “surprised”.
But, she told the court, the troubles in their marriage stemmed from his own affair so their marriage continued.
As did the affair, Person 17 said, and it became “all consuming” and “intense” in the following months.
“(Mr Roberts-Smith) said he wished he met me 20 years earlier before he met his wife, that he didn’t want to stay in an unhappy marriage for the rest of his life, he wanted to start again and get it right,” Person 17 told the court.
“I said I was falling in love with him and it sounded crazy… He said you don’t want to fall in love with me, I’m not the greatest guy. I thought he was just being humble because he seemed perfect to me at that point.”
Person 17 told the court her husband found out when he went through her phone on Boxing Day and they agreed they would divorce after a family holiday to the UK.
While away in London, Person 17 said, Mr Roberts-Smith called to tell her about a counselling session with his wife Emma Roberts that left him “confused”.
“He was thinking about the enormity of what we were doing, he said feelings toward me hadn‘t changed but it may not work out the way we thought,” Person 17 told the court.
But Person 17 said she returned to Australia with a cold and her doctor asked if she could be pregnant – a test confirmed she was carrying a child.
Person 17 told the court she knew it was Mr Roberts-Smith’s because her husband had a vasectomy and the married couple had not slept together.
The woman told the court she told Mr Roberts-Smith over the phone and they agreed to terminate the pregnancy in Brisbane.
“I started having second thoughts about all of it; whether to keep seeing him, going through with the termination – it‘s not something I really believe in personally,” Person 17 said.
“He got angry with me, my indecision, my failure to do anything.”
Person 17 told the court she miscarried before the termination which was booked at Brisbane’s Greenslopes Clinic in early March 2018.
But Person 17 did not tell Mr Roberts-Smith and travelled instead to the Brisbane clinic, she told the court.
The court has previously heard Mr Roberts-Smith dispatched his private investigator to film Person 17 going to the clinic as he was beginning to mistrust her – the video appeared to confirm his suspicions.
Person 17 said she met Mr Roberts-Smith at the four-star Milton Hotel in Brisbane where Mr Roberts-Smith confronted her with the video.
“He said ‘what’s going on you haven’t had a termination this morning have you?’,” Person 17 told the court.
Mr Roberts-Smith, in his own evidence last year, said he feared Person 17 was manipulating him to stay in the relationship.
Person 17 broke down in tears saying Mr Roberts-Smith made her do a pregnancy test in front of him in the hotel.
When the test failed to produce a result, she said, they went to get another from the shops which came back positive.
Mr Roberts-Smith looked out the window of the Federal Court, slightly shaking his head, clearly uncomfortable as the woman cried throughout the testimony speaking of her “fexjmtzywar” of him.
“I was just crying and told him what had really happened. I told him I’d had the miscarriage,” Person 17 said.
The court has heard Mr Roberts-Smith and Person 17 were picked up by a Commonwealth Car and driven to a black-tie dinner in Canberra in April 2018.
Mr Roberts-Smith sat on a table with the Prime Minister while Person 17 sat with top military officials, she told the court.
Person 17 told the court Mr Roberts-Smith had been shaking his head and glancing at her as she spoke to the other men.
While leaving the function she fell down the stairs and injured her head, the court heard.
Back at the Hotel Realm, Person 17 told the court, Mr Roberts-Smith was furious she could have exposed their affair.
“He said ‘I let you into my world, I trusted you, and you treated it like a high school formal’,” she told the court.
“I was saying I was sorry, I knew I had behaved badly at the function, I knew that I was drunk.”
Person 17 sobbed as she told the court Mr Roberts-Smith, pacing around the room angry, punched her in the face and she fell backward over an ottoman and onto the bed.
“When I said my head was hurting he said something like ‘it’s going to f***ing hurt more’ or ‘I’ll show you hurt’,” Person 17 said.
“I said ‘my head hurts, I want to go to the hospital’ he said ‘no you’ll be fine I’ll look after you’.”
Person 17 said she Mr Roberts-Smith instructed her, the next morning, to tell her husband she fell down the stairs while drinking alone in Brisbane – and that he wasn’t there.
He had taken photos of her naked in bed, she told the court, and she agreed to lie to her husband.
Mr Roberts-Smith denied in evidence that he ever struck Person 17 and he abhors domestic violence.
“My mother and father brought me up with a good set of values… l have no tolerance for anyone who would raise a hand against a woman. I find it a disgusting act of cowardice,” he said last year.
Person 17 said she spoke with Mr Roberts-Smith over the phone after Easter 2018 where they agreed it was a toxic and “dangerous” relationship – but she wanted to see him once more.
The woman said she met with Mr Roberts-Smith at a Brisbane hotel and they spoke about their relationship being hard to give up “like crack”.
She claimed the former father of the year threatened “if you turn on me I’ll burn your house down” and people she loved could be the ones who get hurt.
The woman told the court she looked at Mr Roberts-Smith’s licence while he was in the shower the next morning and drove to the soldier’s marital home.
She buzzed the gate, she said, and introduced herself to Mr Roberts-Smith’s wife.
Person 17 told the court Ms Roberts asked if her husband had given her the black eye – but the mistress repeated that she fell down the stairs.
“I just had gone there to make sure it was the end of the affair, I didn’t want to tell them anymore than that because I knew I would be targeted by him,” she told the court.
Mr Roberts-Smith, throughout his own testimony, said the allegation of domestic violence was false and it ruined his life.
Person 17 will be cross-examined by his lawyers in the coming days.
