Australia: Attorney General Christian Porter denies Rape accusation

Australia’s justice secretary Christian Porter on Wednesday denied having had sexual relations with a woman who accused him of raping her 33 years ago when she was a 16-year-old girl, and said he will not resign as the country’s chief justice.

Christian Porter said he would take a leave of absence to take care of his mental health after the allegations were recently made public.

“I’m going to take a couple of weeks off for my own sanity,” he told reporters. “I think I can come back from that and do my job.”

The whistleblower committed suicide last year, and her allegations against Porter were made public last week after they were sent in anonymous letters to Prime Minister Scott Morrison and other lawmakers.

The media had reported that the alleged rapist was one of 16 men in Morrison’s 22-member cabinet, although Porter had been identified as the suspect online.

The 50-year-old former criminal prosecutor said he had decided to speak after police said Tuesday that there was not enough valid evidence to proceed with a criminal investigation.

Prominent attorneys and friends of the woman have called for an independent investigation to review the evidence against Porter.

Morrison has pointed out that Porter denies the allegations and said it should be the police who handle the case.

Porter claimed that the indictment did not justify his leaving office.

“If I quit my job as attorney general because of an accusation of something that just didn’t happen, then anyone in Australia can lose their career, their job, their life’s work, just because of an accusation that appears in the media,” Porter said.

Porter said she was 17 when she competed alongside the complainant, then 16, on a four-person school debate team in January 1988. She said she had not heard from her since.

The case has increased scrutiny over the attitude towards sexual harassment and violence in Parliament, after an employee made an unrelated complaint two weeks ago, claiming she had been raped by a higher-ranking colleague in the office of a Minister.