Hey Dad! actor found guilty of sexual assault

Few people in Singapore would recognise him as a former actor from Australia.

Robert Hughes led a nondescript life here in 2010 as a voice talent.

But all that unravelled that year when allegations of him being a paedophile emerged in Australian media.

One of his co-stars, then only nine, revealed to Australian magazine Woman's Day that she had been abused while acting in the TV series Hey Dad!, which ran in Singapore in the late 1980s.

Although Ms Sarah Monahan did not name the man responsible, those in the industry said it confirmed what they had suspected for 20 years.

More women then stepped forward with similar claims. Among them, the childhood friend of Hughes' own daughter.

Hughes, 65, then left for London, but was arrested in 2012 and extradited to Australia, where he faced his accusers.

In the TV series, he played a father to two girls, but in real life, the former TV actor was anything but paternal towards the girls.

In a Sydney court this month, Hughes faced multiple charges including sexual and indecent assaults and committing an indecent act.

After a six-week trial, a jury found Hughes guilty of nine of 11 counts of sexual assault involving the girls, aged between seven and 15, reported Sydney Morning Herald.

On Thursday, as he was led away, Hughes cried out: "I'm innocent!"

His wife and daughter have always protested his innocence.

In 2010, while in Singapore, Australian journalists from A Current Affair confronted him, but he denied any wrongdoing.

And his supporters wondered why Ms Monahan, now 37 and living in the US, was breaking her silence after 20 years. She even had to deny that she had been paid for the interview.

In a post on her website, she explained why she finally decided to speak up.

"I know I was not the only person affected by inappropriate behaviour in the entertainment industry. Many other child stars are abused, many far worse than I. But through a fear of not working, they don't speak up. Instead, they end up on drugs or bad pornos."

After the article emerged, four other women stepped forward with similar allegations against Hughes. Even his daughter's childhood friend claimed he had molested her as a child when she was at his home for sleepovers.

Vile acts

Ms Monahan, the only victim who agreed to be identified, was only nine when she acted in the series.

She told Woman's Day: "This person used to sit me on his lap or tickle me, but then he started putting his arm around me and trying to do this reach-around and grabbing me, but at the same time trying to feel me up.

"He was always there flashing me or trying to cop a feel. I quickly learnt never to be alone in private with him, especially when he started flashing me."

Once, while she was lying face down on the floor and drawing, Hughes walked up to her and dropped his pants.

Ms Monahan did not report him because she was then the breadwinner of the family after her father's death. But her co-stars suspected Hughes was behaving inappropriately towards young girls on the set and had to often rescue them.

Sydney resident Paul Tabowski, 46, who watched the show as a child, said: "It's sickening to think I had looked up to him as a cool role model father."

The Hey Dad! series hit Singapore TV screens in 1987, but was panned by a critic in The Straits Times for trying too hard to be like an American sitcom.

Hughes is appealing his conviction.

What he did

He dropped his pants on the set of Hey Dad! in front of a child actress who was lying on her stomach and drawing on the floor.

While putting ear drops for a young girl, he got her to lie on his lap so she could feel him.

At the beach, he got a young girl to swim between his legs so that he could expose himself to her.

He made a young girl perform a sexual act on him and upon completion, called her a "good girl" and handed her a teddy bear.

His daughter's childhood friend said that during sleepovers, he would go into his daughter's room and get one of her friends to touch him inappropriately.

This article was published on April 10 in The New Paper.

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