Australia confronts ‘war hero' myth after Ben Roberts-Smith case
When details of alleged war crimes involving Ben Roberts-Smith first circulated in the Australian media in 2017, many found it unthinkable that their country’s most decorated living soldier with a dedicated display in the Australian War Memorial for his service in East Timor, Iraq and Afghanistan, could be guilty.
After reports appeared in The Age, the Sydney Morning Herald and Canberra Times newspapers, Roberts-Smith launched a defamation case in an apparent effort to clear his name.
But on June 1, he emerged from civil proceedings in a Sydney court with his reputation in tatters after Judge Anthony Besanko concluded he “had difficulty accepting the applicant’s evidence on any disputed issue” and ruled that the newspapers’ allegations were, on the balance of probabilities, true.
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