Roberts-Smith denies the charge and told the court he attended to the woman’s head with ice.
A former army officer at the dinner, who did not know Roberts-Smith personally, gave evidence that he witnessed Person 17 fall down the stairs and suffer a “very large bruise on the left side of his forehead above the eye”.
Richardson said Roberts-Smith would have had to punch Person 17 either “right where he had that egg-shaped lump from the fall, or very close to it.”
“Of course, it would be possible for a man to wait until his partner accidentally suffered an injury from a random fall and then commit an assault,” he said. “It’s possible, but I leave it…that [the likelihood of] that course of events is something far less than likely.”
Richardson said Person 17 had told both his doctor and Roberts-Smith’s estranged wife in the days after the alleged assault that the injury was caused by the fall down the stairs. He said these statements were true.
Lyndelle Barnett, acting for the newspapers, submitted to the court last week that the August 2018 media report did not claim that Roberts-Smith was guilty of an act of domestic violence, but reported that a complaint had been made.
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“The ordinary and reasonable reader could not reasonably conclude that Mr Roberts-Smith had actually engaged in the act of domestic violence,” he said.
“The ordinary and reasonable reader may suspect that he did it, possibly even strongly suspect it, but they do not reasonably conclude that he must have done it and is guilty of it.”
Should the court find that the newspapers claimed that Roberts-Smith assaulted the 17th person, the media is trying to rely on a defense of truth.
The court heard Roberts-Smith hired a private investigator, John McLeod, to follow Person 17 to an abortion clinic in Brisbane in early 2018. Roberts-Smith said he wanted to check whether she was telling the truth about a pregnancy because I suspected I was lying. Ultimately, Person 17 told the court that she did not have an abortion, but rather had a miscarriage.
Richardson submitted to the court that Person 17 pretended to have a layoff, “and clearly would have maintained that pretense unless they had caught him.”
The trial continues.