Rush accuser ‘wanted to avoid limelight’, court told
ERYN Jean Norvill wanted her informal complaint about Geoffrey Rush to remain confidential and desperately wanted to avoid the limelight when it was leaked to the media, a Sydney court has heard.
Her actions were not those of a person motivated to seek publicity or anything else and she’d been an impressive, brave witness during Rush’s defamation trial, barrister Tom Blackburn SC has told the Federal Court.
Mr Blackburn was giving his closing submissions for Daily Telegraph publisher Nationwide News and journalist Jonathon Moran, who are being sued by Rush for defamation over a poster and two articles.
The publications related to a complaint of inappropriate behaviour by Rush toward a costar — later revealed to be Norvill — during the Sydney Theatre Company production of King Lear.
Rush, 67, has vehemently denied the allegations against him and says the Telegraph made him out to be a pervert and a sexual predator.
Nationwide News and Moran are arguing a defence of truth in the judge-alone trial after Norvill, who didn’t speak with the journalist for his articles, agreed in July to testify.
Mr Blackburn yesterday told Justice Michael Wigney the case was essentially a contest between her evidence and Rush’s.
Some of Norvill’s allegations to the court were that Rush made groping gestures and sexual innuendo toward her in rehearsals, that he stroked her lower back backstage and deliberately touched her breast as he grieved over her character’s dead body during a performance.
Mr Blackburn suggested there was nothing in the proceedings for her except stress and anxiety, and someone in her position wouldn’t put themselves through the experience of testifying unless they had a true story to tell.
When Rush’s barrister accused Norvill of telling “a pack of disgusting lies” about the star actor, he didn’t put to her any reason why she would.
Justice Wigney said he was troubled by Norvill’s claim the rehearsal room was complicit, and he had to address the issue of corroboration.
“With the exception of (actor Mark Leonard Winter) ... there’s just no corroborating evidence, but there’s a series of witnesses who said they didn’t see it,” the judge said. Mr Blackburn said Norvill hadn’t told the court that Rush’s actions were “happening all day in front of the cast”.
The trial continues.