Former NSW Labor leader Luke Foley has announced that he will no longer be pursuing legal action against the ABC and journalist Ashleigh Raper, after the latter alleged the politician groped her at an event.
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“It’s in nobody’s interest for this matter to be the subject of long running court proceedings and I won’t put everyone through this,” Mr Foley said in a public statement, his first since he resigned as Labor leader.
Raper alleged in a statement which was issued by the ABC that Foley groped her at an event Parliament House back in 2016. “He stood next to me,” Raper said in the statement. “He put his hand through a gap in the back of my dress and inside my underpants. He rested his hand on my buttocks.”
In his press conference announcing his resignation, Foley said that he intended to pursue defamation proceedings against both Raper and the ABC. This was met with heavy backlash from both within and outside of the Labor Party, with new NSW leader Michael Daley saying he was “very unhappy” with how it all went down.
With Foley’s new statement, it seems that has now been put to bed. There will be no defamation proceedings.
