Spotlight on: Jacqueline Maley and Kate McClymont
“If there is one thing that I hope from our story, it’s that it puts men on notice that you cannot use your seniority or your power to advance your own interests over the welfare of your young female associates, junior officers.”
Winner of Print/Text News Report at the 2020 Walkley Awards
Jacqueline Maley and Kate McClymont, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, “‘Dirty Dyson’: A Harasser on the High Court”
Putting pen to paper for an explosive report that tears at the reputation of an Australian legal titan requires courage and meticulous research, especially when the target is eminent judicial figure and former High Court judge Dyson Heydon.
Jacqueline Maley and Kate McClymont spent two years investigating claims that the former High Court judge had sexually harassed a number of young female associates during his tenure. They conducted more than 100 interviews to reveal the truth about the dark side of one of Australia’s pre-eminent jurists and the institutions that enabled his conduct.
We interviewed Maley and McClymont shortly after their Walkley win about how they found and corroborated the story and the impact it has had.
How did you find this story?
Kate McClymont: It was in late 2017 and the Harvey Weinstein story had just broken in the US, and at the time I was heavily involved in looking at Don Burke and Craig McLachlan when information came in about Dyson Heydon. I put it to one side and after those stories I started working on that full-time, going through all Dyson Heydon’s former associates, contacting them. I think in the end I had about 50 names stretched out from every state in Australia, London, and the USA.
And I had two people willing to go on the record and corroborative material, but at the time the Geoffrey Rush lawsuit was happening. We were taking on the most powerful judicial figure in Australia and being aware of the defamation laws, we just didn’t have quite enough. So scroll forward some two years [to early 2020]. Two of the people that I had originally spoken to had taken their complaint to the High Court itself. And so they let me know that a report was coming down. In the meantime, Jackie gives me a call…
Jacqueline Maley: I had heard that Dyson Heydon was being investigated for sexual misconduct, at the highest level. And that something was imminent. And I rang up Kate, basically to ask for advice as the goddess of Australian journalism that she is.
McClymont: (laughs)
Maley: And I said, “You know, it’s-” I didn’t mention him by name, but I said, “It’s a former High Court judge, so obviously it’s very sensitive.” And she was like, “Oh, you mean Dyson Heydon.”
McClymont: (laughs)
Maley: I was, like, “Of course McClymont’s onto this already”. And then we shared notes. Kate had obviously had a period of intense work on it and then the trail had gone a little bit cold. And it was heating up again because we knew that this report was forthcoming. So then we just went into a period of very, very intense work. We knew that his alleged activities were not just confined to his associates on the High Court. We knew that there were reports of him behaving in the same way across a variety of institutions.
McClymont: Including Oxford.
Maley: So then we just hit the phones. We made so many phone calls. And every time we called one person we asked if they had someone else that we should call. It was quite old-fashioned in that sense.
McClymont: It’s interesting too how, people also then get wind that you’re looking at something, so other people ring up and volunteer. “I’ve heard that you’re looking. I’ve got a friend, and this happened to her.” So as a result we spoke to a current judge who had been harassed. In fact hers, as she said, it was the criminal offence of sexual assault.
But she said — and this was common to a lot of the people that we spoke to. Coming out and talking about these sort of things, they know that women in the profession will be branded as a whinger, a troublemaker. And this judge said, “If my identity is revealed, every male barrister will say, ‘I don’t want her sitting on my sexual assault case because of her experiences.’”
If there is one thing that I hope from our story, it’s that it puts men on notice that you cannot use your seniority or your power to advance your own interests over the welfare of your young female associates, junior officers. And I think the fact that we unveiled this about a High Court judge gave a lot of people faith that even the highest judicial figure in the land can be held to account for what they have done.
Maley: The fear of the women that we spoke to was very real. There were a lot that we couldn’t quite get to the stage of wanting to tell their story, or wouldn’t give us permission to tell their story in print. There was one woman in particular, who I was talking to the whole way along and really trying to coax her onto the record, because her story was quite a bad one. I just couldn’t quite get her there. And you could never blame a woman in that situation, and I completely understood where she was coming from.
You almost feel a conflict of interest between your journalism and your humanity because, if it was me or if it was my daughter I’m not sure that I would tell you that this is a consequence-free action that you’re gonna take, putting your name in the paper like this.
Then you have people like Noor Blumer.
McClymont: She was the former head of the Law Society in the ACT.
Maley: Who had a story that really amounted to indecent assault. It showed how indiscriminate the behaviour was because he had harassed her at a law ball where there were a lot of people around.
McClymont: One of the good things about Noor Blumer was that she had taken contemporaneous notes. And for journalists, you know, having something like that with contemporaneous notes … Without that High Court report coming down where the Chief Justice, Susan Kiefel, said basically, “I’m ashamed of what has gone on in our court regarding Dyson Heydon.” That gave us confidence with our lawyers that we could do the story. And I think if that report hadn’t been handed down, I’m not sure, even with Noor Blumer, that we might’ve been up to get this over the line.
Maley: And I also think, an interesting aspect to this story, when you’re thinking about it in the context of Me Too, is this idea of a good victim or of a perfect victim and that some women are more believable than others. And some victims behave better than others and therefore, their stories are more credible. And, I’ve gotta say that in this case, I think there was a slight class element to it in that our victims were well-spoken, mostly middle class-
McClymont: Mostly university-educated.
Maley: They were highly credible people who could answer and speak very well for themselves. And it worked well for us. But it also, I think, reflects on other journalists who were trying to uncover other stories that involved women who perhaps haven’t had such a privileged running life. And it would be much harder, I think, to get up some of those stories. These are people who know the full legal implications of what they’re doing. Who will look good for you if your lawyer has to put them on the stand to be cross examined in a defamation action. There’s that element to it, right?
It’s had an enormous response, your story. Can you talk about what the feedback’s been?
McClymont: I think one of the most important feedbacks has been in the actual institutions themselves. Every judicial authority, the New South Wales Supreme Court, and Supreme Court etc, have all introduced sexual harassment policies. They’ve all created pathways for people to be able to complain. And the thing about this story was those women had nowhere to go.
Maley: There’s a lot of female barristers who are coming through who are strong feminists. Who, obviously completely opposed and were disgusted by this culture that does exist at the bar. There was a group of female senior barristers in New South Wales who put a formal complaint into the professional body that registers barristers. Dyson Heydon didn’t reapply for his practicing certificate, so he sort of moved himself out of the purview of that body. But, it was a very, very strong statement. And they were able to do that because our journalism was strong.
What does it mean to win a Walkley Award?
Maley: It’s really exciting. (laughs) It’s really nice.
McClymont: It is so wonderful to be recognised by your peers. And, you know, the Walkleys are the pinnacle of Australian journalism, so nothing could make you prouder. And it’s also nice to share. (laughs)
Maley: The fact that we were recognised and had this award together, I feel really proud and privileged to share that with Kate. And it’s just really exciting. You get all this feedback and people outside the field of journalism notice it. It’s very meaningful and it’s prestigious.
McClymont: And it’s also been lovely for our two women, Chelsea and Rachael, that came to us in the first place. They have said how much they appreciated the way that we told the story. And that we gave them some of the dignity that had been stripped by what they had gone through. So, that was really nice.
Jacqueline Maley is a senior journalist and columnist with The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. She was formerly the Canberra press gallery sketch writer for The Sydney Morning Herald. She won the Peter Ruehl Award for Outstanding Columnist at the Kennedy Awards in 2017.
Kate McClymont is an investigative journalist with The Sydney Morning Herald. She has won eight Walkleys, including the Gold Walkley for her coverage of the Bulldogs salary cap rorts. She has received numerous other honours, including six Kennedy Awards. McClymont was inducted into the Australian Media Hall of Fame in 2017.
