Ms Charmaine Slater, senior journalist and online editor at the Bedfordview and Edenvale News, took to the stand today to defend her article regarding Suellen Sheehan.
Ms Slater appeared in the Palm Ridge High Court, along with another journalist, Shaun Gillham. Mr Gillham is a journalist for the Weekend Post and Times Media.
Both received subpoenas to appear in court and both journalists defended the accuracy of their work following claims of incorrect reporting from Ms Sheehan.
Ms Sheehan claimed sexual abuse from her former tennis coach, Mr Bob Hewitt. She also claimed Ms Slater and Mr Gillham quoted her incorrectly in their articles.
State prosecutor, Carina Coetzee, questioned Mr Gillham regarding his work and asked if his notes from the interviews were available.
Mr Gillham replied that his notes from an interview, just over three years ago, were unavailable.
Mr Gillham said his article was an accurate representation of what he was told by Ms Sheehan.
“I stand by what I have written,” he said.
Prosecutor Coetzee also asked Mr Gillham if he had ever met Ms Sheehan in person. He replied that all his interviews with her were telephonic.
Ms Coetzee then asked Mr Gillham if it were possible he had spoken to someone pretending to be Ms Sheehan on the phone.
At this point the defence for Mr Bob Hewitt objected, saying it was a matter of public record that Ms Sheehan had indeed spoken to Mr Gillham.
Following a short recess, Ms Slater was called in to testify regarding the accuracy of her article.
Advocate and Senior Council (SC) for the Defence, Terry Price, asked Ms Slater if she contacted Ms Sheehan for an interview.
Ms Slater replied no, Ms Sheehan had contacted her.
Ms Slater also informed the court that she had met with Ms Sheehan in person for the interview. The interview was held at Greenstone Shopping Centre in November 2011.
SC Price asked Ms Slater if she had notes available following the interview, which she did. The notes were copied and handed to the court as evidence.
SC Price went through the articles published in January 2012 by Ms Slater, confirming if the comments attributed to Ms Sheehan did indeed come from her.
“Yes, the comments from Ms Sheehan are present in my notes,” said Ms Slater.
SC Price then asked if Ms Sheehan had seen a copy of the article which was published.
“Yes, I emailed a copy of the article to her. She replied, after receiving my email, and said I did a fantastic job,” said Ms Slater.
Proof of this exchange was requested and Ms Slater produced printouts of the emails, with Ms Sheehan’s replies.
These documents were then also entered into evidence to the court.
The defence finished questioning Ms Slater and Prosecutor Coetzee asked for a brief recess to study Ms Slater’s notes.
After a short delay, court resumed.
Prosecutor Coetzee asked Ms Slater if it were not true that she had in fact contacted Ms Sheehan on Facebook first, requesting an interview.
Ms Slater denied this, saying Ms Sheehan had contacted the NEWS, wanting to tell her story.
The prosecutor then asked Ms Slater if there were any overt errors with the article, to which Ms Slater said yes, as the photo published of Ms Sheehan and Mr Hewitt was incorrect. It was not Mr Hewitt in the photo.
“A correction was printed the following week,” said Ms Slater.
Prosecutor Coetzer then asked Ms Slater how she obtained the photo, again asking if she had procured the photo from Facebook.
“That is not correct, Ms Sheehan sent the photo to me,” said Ms Slater.
The prosecutor proceeded through Ms Slater’s notes, drawing the court’s attention to the fact that some words, present in the article, are not present in her notes.
“In fact, you added one word,” said Prosecutor Coetzee.
“Yes, I did. But these are short notes from an interview. We do not write every single word spoken during an interview,” said Ms Slater.
The prosecutor also highlighted the comment from Ms Sheehan, telling Ms Slater she had done ‘an excellent job’.
“But she did not actually state that there were no errors,” said Prosecutor Coetzee.
The prosecution closed and Ms Slater was excused.
Speaking to Ms Slater after she had appeared in court, she said; “To date, neither my editor nor myself, have been contacted about an error in the article,” said Ms Slater.
“In addition, we only found out that Ms Sheehan was a former Edenvale resident when she phoned us. Until that point, no other stories regarding her claims indicated that she used to live in Edenvale,” she said.
Mr Hewitt is a former Wimbledon winner and holds a host of other titles from a successful tennis career.
“This has been a very trying time for my family and I. I would rather be in Centre Court facing Nadal and other professional tennis players,” said Mr Hewitt in his first comment to the NEWS. The NEWS never received any response from Mr Hewitt to the 2012 enquiries.
