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A
LOWE BLOW
It
all sounds like a Hollywood movie.
Maybe that’s
because one of the main protagonists used to go out with actress
Barbara Hershey.
And maybe because
parts of this saga involve some famous and well known names here
in Melbourne –even though the finale was played out in Sydney.
Names like Eddie
McGuire and Stephen Quartermain and entrepreneur and pub owner,
the large (in more ways than one) Stephen Millichamp.
And the sordid
story involves sex and drugs and secretly filmed intercourse and
a rape charge and a set up and, and…
It all started
one night (or early morning) in 1997 at the home of Stephen Millichamp
after a night of drinking at his hotel.
From memory
mine host Millichamp headed home with two young women and McGuire
and Quartermain.
At some stage
of the night while lying on a waterbed with the other woman and
Millichamp model Bronwyn Davies alleged she was raped.
Before that,
from memory of the court evidence, there had been some coffee table
dancing by Ms Davies, some talk of having a spa and McGuire and
Quartermain testified that they had mainly played a pinball machine
and then gone home.
The alleged
rape occurred later.
Mr Millichamp
was found not guilty last year. But the REAL story, the story that
intrigues me, is what happened AFTER the rape charge was laid and
before Millichamp went to trial.
A few people
don’t emerge from this with much class or with reputations
intact.
It ended with
one of the players – NOT Millichamp --being sentenced to more
than six years in jail this week.
You see Steve
Millichamp’s lawyers, Kalus Kenny, instructed a Millichamp
friend, private investigator Kenneth Gamble, to try (to put it crudely)
to dig up some dirt on the alleged rape victim.
Like find out
if she took drugs.
Flash forward
to Sydney where one Simon Lowe, sometime lover of Lantana star Barbara
Hershey, contrives to be in the same Bondi café as Ms Davies
and some friends.
I’ll keep
it brief. He sends her wine. He joins her table. He spins her a
line that he is a wealthy songwriter. He borrows a friend’s
sport car.
They go nightclubbing.
She declines a weekend at a ritzy hotel. But more flowers, more
wooing and eventually days later sex at her apartment.
Which Simon
Lowe secretly videotaped. And then he threatened to put the porn
tape on the Internet if she did not withdraw the rape charge.
You are entitled
to ask why the defence team for an innocent man would go to these
lengths? Lowe’s defence team argued that Lowe’s actions
were overzealous and opportunistic. Not part of any widespread and
pervasive conspiracy.
But the facts
remain: One member at the lower end of this grubby food chain has
been jailed for more than six years for serious crimes including
attempting to intimidate a witness.
Private eye
Kenneth Gamble plea-bargained his way to a good behaviour bond.
Kalus Kenny solicitors appear to have gone scot free and last seen
Stephen Millichamp was lunching with an attractive young woman at
a trendy South Yarra bistro last weekend.
Presumably he
also picked up the tab for Slimy Simon’s seductive lunches
in Sydney. And his fee.
And hats off
to a brave, humiliated, young woman who stared down a blackmail
attempt and still went to court – even though she lost. Again.
Wednesday, September
18, 2002
©Copyright
Derryn Hinch 2002
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