Courtney Act: “I was really taken aback”

Courtney Act, aka Shane Jenek, this week responded to comments that her reading a story during Play School‘s Storytime was “grooming” children.

Liberal Senator Alex Antic raised the question during a Senate Estimates hearing.

Speaking on The Sunday Project Courtney Act said, “I was actually at a 10-day silent meditation retreat when all of this went down. You hand in your phone, have no contact with the outside world and you always wonder when you’re in there, what’s going on in the outside world? Have I been cancelled?

“I came out to learn this news and I was in the perfect place to sort of receive that ’cause I’d been meditating and feeling my sensations on my body for the last 10 days and I was really taken aback that I would be accused of such a thing ’cos grooming is really serious, right? Like, grooming is the act of an abuser, manipulating a child so they can sexually abuse them. It’s really a serious thing,” she said.

“And to use terms of abuse when no abuse is actually happening really takes away from the occasions when it is happening. And you know, I’m on television, reading a children’s book. There was nothing untoward about it…. yeah, it was really quite a shocking thing to be accused of.”

Courtney Act is hitting back at a Liberal Senator who’s accused her of grooming children while reading a story on an episode of Play School. Courtney joins us at the desk.#TheProjectTV pic.twitter.com/LkAi4yulyT

— The Project (@theprojecttv) November 20, 2022