Barry Cable found not guilty in historical child sex abuse trial
Updated ,first published
Former Western Australian champion footballer Barry Cable has been found not guilty of historic child sexual abuse charges dating back to the 1960s.
Cable had consistently denied the charges in a judge-only criminal case in which he was alleged to have molested a girl aged eight or nine at his family’s home.
The 82-year-old man was told his fate by Judge Michael Bowden in the Perth District Court on Monday afternoon.
Speaking to the press outside the court after the verdict was announced, Cable’s son said that the verdict brought some closure to “a stressful and chaotic period for our lives and for the whole family”. He said he was pleased with the court’s decision but “absolutely not surprised.”
“This is the first and only criminal case my father has faced in his 82 years of life, and he has always maintained his innocence,” Cable’s son said.
“He is a father to our family, someone who has always inspired many people through his football, who has devoted his life to community work after football, and the allegations made are absolutely at odds with the Barry we have known and loved our whole lives.
“We hope today’s confirmation will bring some closure, but of course I think the parents, who are both in their 80s, should live out the twilight of their lives with some dignity and we ask that you respect their privacy.”
Prosecutors had alleged that Cable abused the girl at her parents’ home while she and his wife, Helen, stayed with him for about a month.
The woman reported the alleged abuse to police when she saw Cable on television in 2023 and told the court during the hearing that it “brought back memories of what he did to me”.
The abuse allegedly included penetrative sex on multiple occasions while Cable’s wife slept.
Cable denied five counts of improper intercourse with a girl under 13 and two counts of unlawful sexual intercourse with a girl under 13 between 31 December 1966 and 31 December 1969.
During the hearing, Cable’s defense attorney, Tom Percy, KC, accused the woman of fabricating the allegations and maintained the incident never happened.
Percy repeatedly accused the woman of exaggerating the allegations and suggested the woman was out for financial gain after learning her client was found guilty of similar allegations during a 2023 civil trial.
Asked why she didn’t report it at the time, the woman said: “He told me no one would believe me because he was Barry Cable.”
In his published decision, Bowden said he had reviewed and generally accepted the woman’s statements and “found that Mr. Cable had the disposition alleged,” but that he was “not persuaded that she is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in respect of any of the charges in the indictment and acquitted Mr. Cable on each charge.”
A separate civil case in the same court three years ago found that Cable had molested a different girl for five years in 1968, when she was 12 years old. It was decided to pay compensation of $818,700 to this victim.
Cable was a two-time VFL premiership player for the North Melbourne Football Club in the 1970s.
He was also a highly regarded footballer in the Western Australian Football League, winning four premierships and three league best and fairest awards in the 1960s and 1970s.
Cable returned to WA as East Perth captain-coach, winning another WAFL championship and finishing with a record-breaking 379 appearances in all competitions as a player.
He returned to Victoria to coach North Melbourne in the early 1980s and was later named rover in the Kangaroos’ team of the century.
Following a ruling in the civil court in 2023, Cable was expelled from the Sport Australia Hall of Fame and was later also expelled from the Australian Football Hall of Fame and the Western Australian Football Hall of Fame.
North Melbourne revoked the former player’s lifetime membership and also removed him from the club’s hall of fame; East Perth and Perth football clubs also canceled his life membership.
from AAP
