Hughes hit by online trial: SC

National snapshot

HEY Dad! star Robert Hughes faced a puerile, contemptuous and malicious social media campaign when he stood trial for the sexual abuse of girls last year, his appeal has heard.

Indeed the campaign was so extraordinary, his barrister says, that he was unable to receive a fair trial and proceedings against him should never have taken place.

“Hang the pedo” was just one of the phrases barrister Phillip Boulten SC said got more than 220,000 “likes” when it was posted on social media in the lead-up to the actor’s trial last year.

Mr Boulten told the Court of Criminal Appeal yesterday that “this was a case where there was poisonous vilification of the applicant not by mainstream media but by very effective social media that involved the most poisonous and vile publication”.

“(It was) designed to ridicule and undermine the appellant’s position before and during the trial,” he said.

Hughes has chosen not to appear at the appeal hearing, which is challenging his conviction and sentence on 10 charges relating to sexual and indecent acts perpetrated on four young girls in the 1980s and 1990s.

The 67-year-old was jailed for at least six years in 2014, with Judge Peter Zahra describing the once popular sitcom actor as a sexual predator who systematically exploited young girls and then relied on his position to ensure his victims’ compliance and silence.

Robert Hughes.

Now Hughes is appealing on a number of grounds, including that the judge erred when he allowed all the counts against him to be heard in a single trial and that he also should have permanently stayed the proceedings against the actor.

Mr Boulten also pointed to numerous paid interviews by one of Hughes’s victims, Hey Dad! child star Sarah Monahan, before his arrest.

This included a paid interview with the Nine Network’s A Current Affair.

“They (ACA) gathered together people they understood would be likely to be complainants of a criminal court case and they told them, ‘Don’t go to the police, go on TV and then go to the police’,” Mr Boulten said.

But Justice Richard Button questioned Mr Boulten’s claim the jury was unable to be impartial because of the nature of the media coverage, adding that they returned a hung verdict on one count.

The hearing continues.