Sydney, March 08: A Parishioner has lost his defamation case after a judge found it was true that he sexually harassed female members of a Sydney church congregation.
Bruce Haddon, a 60-year-old, divorced management consultant, sued the Reverend Dominic Steele of St Aidan’s Anglican Church at Annandale and church counsellor and Network Ten journalist Evan Batten for defamation.
In the NSW Supreme Court today, Justice Carolyn Simpson ordered a verdict for the defendants and ordered Mr Haddon to pay their legal costs.
Mr Haddon had been an active member of the Annandale church for several years when he claimed Mr Steele and Mr Batten tried to oust him from the congregation in two emails in February 2008.
Justice Simpson, who heard the case without a jury, found the emails conveyed three “imputations” or defamatory meanings.
These included that he sexually harassed female members of a church congregation by introducing inappropriate sexual topics into his conversation with them.
But the judge also concluded the imputations were substantially true.
She added that the evidence did not establish that Mr Haddon’s motive was seduction.
“I am persuaded that Mr Haddon’s motivation was not physical sexual gratification, but to establish himself as a mentor, or a guide, in a variety of ways, to young women,” she said.
——–Agencies