At a press conference in Perth on Wednesday, Porter firmly denied the allegations against him. “Nothing in the allegations that have been printed ever happened. Even now, the only information I have about the allegations is what is circulating online,” he said.
During the press conference, Porter responded to journalists’ questions about the details of the accusation by saying it “just didn’t happen.”
Porter said he would not step down as attorney general, but would take “a short period of leave”.
“If I step down … on an allegation about something that simply didn’t happen, any person in Australia could lose their career, their job, their life’s work on nothing more than an accusation,” he says. said.
The allegations came to light after statements by the alleged victim were anonymously sent to the office of the prime minister and two female politicians from the opposition Labor and Green Party last week.
Senator Sarah Hanson Young of the Greens, who received a copy of the statement, told CNN it accused the minister of raping the woman when she was 16 years old. The alleged victim died in June 2020 at the age of 49.
CNN has not seen the statement and could not independently verify its contents.
The allegations sparked calls from women supporters and opposition politicians to Prime Minister Scott Morrison to ask the minister to step aside and for an independent investigation into the allegations.
“We can’t have a situation where just making an allegation and publishing through the media is a reason for, you know, governments to simply beat people up on that basis,” Morrison said. “We have a rule of law in this country.”
The historic allegations came less than two weeks after a former employee of the ruling Liberal Party came forward and claimed she had been raped by a colleague in Parliament House in 2019.
Prime Minister Morrison apologized to Higgins in February and promised an investigation into the alleged rape.