Witness claims Robert Hughes touched her whilst on Hey Dad! set

A woman has told a Sydney court actor Robert Hughes inappropriately touched her as a child on the set of Hey Dad! but nothing was done despite her complaints.

The woman, now in her 30s, told Sydney’s District Court Hughes pulled his pants down and exposed himself to her in a Sydney television studio.

She said she was lying on her stomach drawing pictures when Hughes made eye contact with her before pulling his pants and underpants down and began “wiggling back and forth”.

On other occasions she claims Hughes touched her inappropriately but she was told as a child “to sit down and shut up.”

“He was always trying to rub my shoulders … his hands ended up near my chest,” she alleges.

“I always tried to push him away.”

The woman said she told other people around her about the actor’s behaviour.

“I was basically told as a child to sit down and shut up.”

Other witnesses have recently told the court the actor indecently assaulted them or forced them to touch him inappropriately when they were children, and wandered around the house naked whilst in their presence. Another claimed she did a two-week work experience stint in the late 1980s at the Surry Hills agency operated by Hughes’s partner Robin Gardiner, and was asked by the veteran actor to kiss him “as a reward” for his assistance with a computer.

After sending her stemmed roses he allegedly said, “I want you to find a place for us to go so we can have sex because I’m too old to be doing it in the bush.”

“I said [to him] I’m 15, under the age of consent and you play a father on television. If we get caught we could really get in trouble,” the woman, now 41, claims.

When she told him it wouldn’t happen, she alleges he said ”well that’s your loss, you won’t find out how good I am”.

Hughes, 65, is accused of 11 child sexual assault charges allegedly involving five girls aged from seven to 15 and dating back to the 1980s.

He has pleaded not guilty.

The trial continues.

Source: ABC, Daily Telegraph