Belfield’s evidence finishes
The Foundation for Humanity’s Adulthood CEO Sam Belfield today concluded a long and challenging period of cross-examination, ten days after first entering the witness box in biologist Jeremy Griffith and mountaineer Tim Macartney-Snape’s defamation trial against the ABC.
During four days of cross-examination from counsel for the defendants, Bret Walker SC, which finished this afternoon, Mr Belfield endured intense scrutiny of his two decades of involvement in the FHA. This preceded a brief re-examination by counsel for the plaintiffs, Kieran Smark.
Over the course of his testimony, Mr Belfield traversed a myriad of issues from how his interest in Mr Griffith’s biological treatise developed in the early 1990s, how his involvement in the FHA deepened, how the Four Corners program came about and the fall-out that followed, to his current role as FHA CEO and personal effects he experienced along the way.
In particular, he was pressed at length about the cause of his estrangement from his parents, Charles and Gillian Belfield, who had been highly critical of their son’s involvement in the FHA in an interview contained in the Four Corners program. Under persistent cross-examination by Mr Walker, Mr Belfield repeatedly refuted that he had written to his father in a hostile and disrespectful fashion on account of his father disagreeing with Mr Griffith’s ideas.
In the course of re-examination this afternoon, Mr Smark asked Mr Belfield to explain why he had written to his father as he had. Mr Belfield said there were a number of aspects, including a conversation he had with his father following the Four Corners program, in which his father gave “an ultimatum that he was going to sell his soul to destroy the Foundation”.
“In the period shortly thereafter, my father made what, in my view, were shocking allegations of a personal nature about Jeremy Griffith, and in fact, other directors of the Foundation … he also made allegations to me about my relationship with [my girlfriend] Susan”, Mr Belfield added.
Mr Belfield then recounted how, in late 1995, he refused his father’s request to cease working for the FHA.
“In the conversation that ensued, I was provided with what I understood to be a legal document and I was asked, in the light of my decision not to cease working for the Foundation, to sign that which would have the effect of excluding me from any right or entitlement to the family enterprise. Although being very upset, I acceded to doing that”, Mr Belfield said.
The Court heard how he tried to raise the issue again with his parents the following year, in April 1996.
“I said to my mother at that time, ‘I think we need to talk about what’s happened in 1995’. A lot of things were said and done that I felt we needed to work through. Raising that issue had the effect of precipitating a letter from my father shortly thereafter where, amongst other things, he said to the effect, ‘I’m going to have to purge all things to do with the Foundation from our lives and so long as you’re a part of the Foundation, we don’t wish to be involved with you so long as that remains the case,’ ”, Mr Belfield recounted.
After Mr Belfield’s evidence finished, the plaintiffs called Sandy Cullen-Ward, mother of FHA members Em, 33, and Fi, 31, who outlined how she supported her daughters’ interest in Mr Griffith’s ideas, which began in the early 1990s.
Mrs Cullen-Ward said her daughters’ involvement in the FHA had been beneficial to them and described how she and her husband held an FHA open day at their home in Brisbane in 1994, attended by almost 100 people with an interest in its work.
She went on to explain how, prior to the defamatory Four Corners broadcast, she became one of the signatories to an open letter that was sent by a group of parents of FHA members to Brian Johns, then Managing Director of the ABC.
“Having recently read a transcript of a radio interview with Dr Millikan, we, as concerned parents, wanted to just let Mr Johns know that we were most unhappy with the way the program was being put together and the way Dr Millikan was presenting his ideas,” Mrs Cullen-Ward told the Court.
A copy of the 18 April 1995 letter to Mr Johns tendered to the Court set out the parents’ concerns:
“In the radio interview, Dr Millikan claims that “…he (Jeremy Griffith) is surrounded by parents and families who are really quite distressed.” We are writing to tell you that there are many more parents who are either supportive or tolerant.
“If the views expressed by Dr Millikan in the radio program are an indication of what the Four Corners program is about then we strongly object to this mish-mash of half truths and prejudices being put forward as serious investigative journalism. It is an affront to the proud history of the ABC and a slur on the directors and members of the FHA.
“We ask you to look at the program and satisfy yourself of its truthfulness and balance”, the letter concluded.
The case continues tomorrow in the Supreme Court.
