SCHOOL TIES OVER PARTY TIES! Former Foreign Minister Julie Bishop went to same private school as alleged rape victim before becoming alleged rapist Christian Porter’s boss at law firm

EXCLUSIVE: The now-dead woman who alleged Attorney-General, Christian Porter, raped her multiple times over one night in 1988 attended the same school as former Liberal Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop, as well as the likes of Amanda Vanstone, Therese Rein and the current SA Minister for Child Protection, Rachel Sanderson. Bizarrely, Ms Bishop would also go on to become the alleged rapist’s boss at a high-flying law firm. Serkan Ozturk reports on this growing moral and political scandal.

With Attorney-General Christian Porter taking mental health leave after fronting a press conference yesterday while making weak denials and shedding ‘poor me’ White Man tears, and also refusing to stand down from his position as the nation’s chief legal officer, it can now be revealed his alleged rape victim attended the same wealthy school as future Liberal Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop, as well as a host of other powerful women.

Saint Peter’s Girls School in Adelaide is located in the suburb of Stonyfell, about five kilometres east of the Adelaide CBD.

The school is also the alma mater of former Liberal Immigration Minister and current rape apologist, Amanda Vanstone, as well as being the school entrepreneur Therese Rein attended.

Rein is also the wife of former Labor Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd.

If you’re wondering where Ms Rein’s sympathies lie over the Christian Porter scandal, she has spent the past few days sharing messages over social media, including from her daughter, Jessica Rudd, about how women are “livid and determined” to put an end to a culture of harassment and sexual abuse.

St Peter’s Girl School also happens to be the same educational institution where South Australia’s current Minister for Child Protection, Rachel Sanderson, attended.

Sanderson was elected to the South Australian Parliament as the Member for Adelaide in 2010. While she was appointed as the Minister for Child Protection by Premier Steven Marshall in March 2018.

The students who attend the Anglican private school are commonly referred to as “Saints Girls’.

Annual fees for a single student to attend the school cost parents and caregivers an eye-watering $35,000 or more per year.

Saints Girl: The alleged rape victim of Christian Porter who died in June 2020 before NSW Police commenced an investigation into her claims

The school’s motto is in Latin, “Pro Ecclesia Dei – Beati Mundo Corde”. Translated, it means “For the Church of God: Blessed are the Pure in Heart”.

The school’s stated vision is all about “inspiring women of character and influence”.

RELATED: FROM MASS DEBATER TO ALLEGED ‘CABINET RAPIST’! The shocking ‘rite of passage’ accusation of sexual assault that has come back to haunt Attorney-General Christian Porter 30 years on

It is situated across four hectares of land with the school now featuring a 700-seat performing arts centre, a 25-metre swimming pool, six tennis and netball courts, a gymnasium, an oval, a chapel, four science laboratories, a chapel, senior and junior libraries, as well as an early learning centre.

The school was originally founded in 1894 in north Adelaide by the Community of the Sisters of the Church, a group of English Christian missionary women.

The school moved to its current Stonyfell site in 1957.

According to publicly available information, Porter’s alleged victim was dux of the school upon her graduation in the late 1980s.

Meanwhile, Ms Bishop, who it is believed attended St Peter’s Girls about a decade or so before the alleged victim did, was the school’s Head Prefect upon her final year.

In a bizarre coincidence, or, perhaps in a prime example of how incestuous and small the Australian establishment can be, Ms Bishop would before her entry into politics go on to become the boss of the alleged rapist, Christian Porter, at a high-flying law firm in Perth in the late 1990s.

Ms Bishop was a partner at Clayton Utz while the company was doing its dodgiest to harass mesothelioma sufferers and heroes such as Bernie Banton and its utmost best to defend construction company and asbestos killers, James Hardie.

Porter worked for the Liberal Party aligned law firm between late 1996 and October 1999.

True Crime News Weekly contacted Ms Bishop by email for a comment to this story.

Among other matters, we asked as to whether she could believe that an intelligent, responsible woman who was dux of the same school she attended could possibly be lying about being raped, as alleged by Porter at his press conference in Perth on the afternoon of Wednesday, March 3.

We did not receive a response from Ms Bishop.

True Crime News Weekly also sent questions by email to the St Peters Girls school in Adelaide.

We asked as to whether the school would have any comment to make about the matters, or, whether it would like to offer its support to the now dead-woman’s friends and family, as well as other victims of sexual abuse.

We did not receive a response to our queries.

We also contacted Minister Sanderson’s office seeking comment but did not receive a response from her either.

It has been alleged Porter – who attended the elitist Hale School in Perth – raped the victim multiple times over one night while the pair were in Sydney for a major debating competition in January 1988. The alleged victim was 16-years-old at the time.

The victim had first made a complaint about Porter to police in South Australia in November 2019. However, the matter was passed onto NSW Police who then never commenced a proper investigation into the woman’s claims before she died in June 2020, allegedly by suicide. It’s been claimed by some the alleged victim fell into a depressed spiral after April 2020 when the High Court decided to do what many thought was a favour to the Catholic Church and took the exceptional step of quashing Cardinal George Pell’s child sexual abuse convictions despite two other courts finding him guilty.

The morning after Porter’s press conference this week, Prime Minister Scott Morrison maintained he will be standing by his alleged rapist minister and not standing him down or instituting an independent inquiry because the “rule of law” applies and a police investigation into the matter was now closed; even though NSW Police never ran a proper investigation that was worth closing. Police have now claimed they didn’t conduct a proper investigation because the woman had mental health concerns.

The family of the alleged victim have released a statement this week saying they support an inquiry into the circumstances of the woman’s death.

We sure do hope the “rule of law” applies to the secret trials Morrison, Porter and Co have dumped onto patriots and whistleblowers such as Witness J, Witness K and David McBride as well as lawyers like Bernard Collaery.

It’s also no coincidence the Federal Government’s illegal Robodebt scheme which targeted welfare recipients was dreamt up by Porter during his time as Social Services Minister. Wasn’t much “rule of law” there it seems for the vulnerable people on welfare who ended up killing themselves over an illegal debt collection scheme.

Porter was also the minister who failed for more than two years to get any state or territory to agree to the proposal of a single redress scheme for survivors of childhood sexual assault, even though it was one of the key recommendations of the harrowing Royal Commission. One now wonders even moreso about why he was dragged kicking and screaming to do his job on that issue.

Meanwhile, a recent online petition and website launched by a former private school girl in Sydney has attracted national attention after detailing widespread and systemic sexual abuse allegedly perpetrated by elitist private school boys like Porter that continues to this very day.

If you or someone you know is impacted by sexual assault, relationship or family violence, call 1800 RESPECT on 1800 737 732 or visit 1800RESPECT. org.au

About Serkan Ozturk 202 Articles
Serkan Ozturk is the publisher of True Crime News Weekly. He is an investigative journalist and editor with a colourful career spanning across print, online, radio and television. He has had his journalism previously featured by Sydney Morning Herald, Crikey, Australian Doctor, Ruptly, Dopamine Magazine, City Hub and the Star Observer. He is a member of the MEAA.

11 Comments

  1. Thanks Serkan.
    It would appear the LNP/IPA is a protection racket/pack of apologists for the most base and vile of behaviours.
    We owe it to ourselves to support those who will stand against the party.

  2. Thank you for this article. I’m glad I discovered TCNW.

    The alleged victim was white, apparently from a wealthy background, socially well-connected and very intelligent. And this matter is still being swept under the carpet. Imagine how difficult it is for non-white and poor women who are being abused. The government is failing all women and male sexual assault victims.

  3. Sad to read that the High Court decision in the Pell case may have affected the alleged victim. I remember how sick I felt when I heard it. And all the media sycophants trying to protect Pell. It’s so similar. And now we wake up to the news that the Aust gov have ties with the military in Myanmar.

  4. Porter said he’s been subject to wild speculations on social media but claimed he was hearing allegations at the press conference for the first time. None of the reporters asked him anything new that hadn’t been discussed on social media. Who does this guy think he is.

  5. My extended family on both sides is Catholic and I know 5 men who were sexually abused as boys and one other who narrowly escaped by fighting back. One of the abused was 19 who committed suicide after being threatened by a priest just before the case went to court. None of the others have ever reported it to the police. When you see the way women are treated when they come forward you can’t blame people for living in silence.

  6. The MSM care more about losing control over their media empires than they do about what happened to Kate Thornton, Brittany Higgins and others.

  7. Can someone explain to me how allegedly strangling someone is the normal behaviour of teenagers as some in the media would have it. That is really degrading and demeaning to men to think that rape and strangulation is boys being boys. Maybe it is in these exclusive schools. There needs to be an investigation into these little breeding grounds of power.

  8. Over the course of their careers a lot of lawyers get to know criminals pretty well. Be easy enough for a job done.

  9. The sniveling faux press conference was undignified for the first law officer of the commonwealth regarding such a serious matter.

  10. what people might be missing is that there is a bullying and sexual assault culture in a lot of these schools, and the people that survive it wonder why others can’t. They don’t realize that they’ve lost their kindness and decency in the process of surviving the culture of assault.

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