Vanessa Scammell

This story contains nuance and detail that has otherwise been neglected in the black and white telling of this story.

A story that has so very many shades of grey.

On January the 8th, 2018, my life partner was accused of bullying, intimidation, sexual harassment and indecent assault in the workplace by three female performers, castmates, who had shared the stage with him four years earlier in the 2014 Australian production of The Rocky Horror Show, in which he had starred as the transsexual from Transylvania, Dr Frankenfurter.

The allegations were sensationally published as front-page news across the nation.

Television breakfast shows ran the story repeatedly on a 30-minute cycle for hours on end.

And that evening, the Australian national broadcaster, the ABC, kicked off its new ratings season with a half-hour special dedicated to the shocking revelations.

Those allegations equated to an immediate personal and professional demolition.

In an instant, his hard-earned career was vaporised.

Those allegations also led to him being criminally charged.

After a protracted legal battle, he faced those charges in the Melbourne Magistrates Court and on December 15, 2020, three years after the initial allegations were made, he was found not guilty.

He was acquitted of each and every charge.

My partner's name?

Craig McLachlan.

Many of you listening may know Craig from his early years on Neighbours during the show's golden era, where he rose to stardom playing the role of the lovable larrikin Henry Ramsey.

Or perhaps you know him as the inimitable Dr. Frankenfurter from the Rocky Horror Show, as a Gold Logie winner, or as the award-winning 1950s mystery-solving doctor from the Dr. Blake Mysteries.

Or perhaps you don't know him at all.

Either way, none of that matters.

For in this instance, rather than this podcast being a celebration of an artist's stellar career, this is a story of what can happen when allegations are taken to the press before police, when page one guilt is assumed and due process is relegated to a distant second place.

This story shows what happens when a so-called public interest story is carved in stone and a narrative is set before it enters a court system.

when a public trial is carried out without the necessary considerations and observations of any rules and regulations of the law.