SYDNEY: Australia has been rocked by allegations of sexual misconduct against an opposition senator.
On Wednesday, Senator Lidia Thorpe accused David Van of sexual assault and harassment – claims he strongly denies, and that she later withdrew.
Mr Van was then removed from the Liberal party by leader Peter Dutton, who said other allegations had emerged.
Mr Van has now rejected a third woman’s complaint of inappropriate touching and says he is “shattered” by the claims.
Mr Dutton told 2GB radio that it would be in “everyone’s best interest” for Mr Van to resign from parliament “sooner [rather] than later” and “seek the help that he needs”.
In an extraordinary exchange in parliament on Wednesday, Ms Thorpe – an independent – interrupted a speech Mr Van was giving about an alleged rape case to accuse him of misconduct.
Mr Van immediately dismissed the allegations. “It is simply not true,” he told the chamber.
Although Ms Thorpe later withdrew her claims in order to comply with parliamentary rules, she then announced she would address the issue further.
She went on to allege she was “cornered in a stairwell” by an unnamed male colleague. “As all women that have walked the corridors of this building know, it is not a safe place,” she added.
Ms Thorpe also said she experienced “sexual comments, and was inappropriately propositioned by powerful men” when she first became a senator.
Hours later, former Liberal Senator Amanda Stoker accused Mr Van of “squeezing my bottom twice” when they were colleagues three years ago.
“By its nature and by its repetition, it was not accidental. That action was not appropriate,” Ms Stoker said in a statement, adding that Mr Van later apologised and said “he would never do it again”.
Mr Van said he had “no recollection” of the incident, and that “it is not something I would ever do”.
On Friday, Mr Dutton revealed he had been told about allegations of inappropriate touching by a third woman. He said he had raised it with Mr Van, but did not give further details.
Mr Van denied the allegation, adding: “I will fully cooperate with whatever process Mr Dutton proposes to determine these matters as quickly and fairly as possible.”
But Senator Thorpe, an Aboriginal woman, has also said the broader reaction to her comments had shown “systemic racism”, and that she had been “demonised”.
“It wasn’t until a white woman stood up and said, ‘yeah, this happened to me, too’, that the media took notice,” she told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Ms Thorpe added that she considered parliament to be a “toxic workplace” for women.
In 2021, a landmark inquiry found that a third of employees in Australia’s federal parliament had been sexually harassed.
The report followed an allegation by a former Liberal staffer, Brittany Higgins, that she had been raped in Parliament House in 2019.
One of her former colleagues, Bruce Lehrmann, was put on trial for Ms Higgins’ alleged rape, but the case was aborted last year due to juror misconduct. Mr Lehrmann has denied sexually assaulting her.
Courtesy: BBC
