Ben Smith, a former New South Wales police officer, was accused of sexually assaulting a child under 16 years old in 2016. His wife, Amy Smith, supported him throughout the ordeal, convinced that he was an innocent victim of the MeToo movement.
A woman went to Frenchs Forest Police Station in Sydney and accused Smith of assaulting her over a five-year period starting when she was 14 and he was 16.
Amy Smith conducted her own investigation into her husband’s case, cross-referencing a number of documents and gathering evidence that police had overlooked.
Ben Smith moved to Sydney from the country aged 16 to play rugby league and lived with a local family. The girl who made the accusations lived at that house.
She claimed that Smith sexually assaulted her on 11 occasions over a period of five years. However, Amy Smith’s detective work revealed inconsistencies in the woman’s claims.
She uncovered evidence that disproved allegations that her husband had indecently assaulted the woman three times at the house in 1999.
Mrs. Smith proved that Smith was not living at the property at the time and didn’t visit at any point during that year as he was nursing a broken leg.
This evidence was also backed up by the woman’s brother. The timeline of allegations that had been mapped out by police was discredited by Amy Smith’s work.
However, evidence was ignored as Smith’s case went to trial, and he faced decades behind bars.
Smith fronted two court trials. The first ended with a hung jury. In the second, he was unanimously found not guilty of all charges. The couple has taken the fight to police and demanded accountability for the bungled investigation that cost them $50,000 in legal fees.
Former homicide detective Gary Jubelin said that police had failed to follow up leads and simply accepted the unsubstantiated allegations.
While both Jubelin and the Smiths support the MeToo movement and believe it may have put pressure on investigators to blindly pursue the accusations, they say they are not anti-people making complaints.
They believe that when people do not do their job properly, it is a hard pill to swallow.
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