‘Healing’ stones at centre of woman's disturbing allegations against Denmark man Joseph Luke Williams

A second alleged victim of self-proclaimed Aboriginal healer Joseph Luke Williams has spoken about how “the veil was lifted” when she was allegedly sexually penetrated without consent at a salt lake in Stirling Range National Park. The woman took the stand on the second day of a District Court trial in Albany today, where Mr Williams is fighting 12 charges of sexual penetration without consent and two charges of indecent assault. The 58-year-old allegedly assaulted six women between 2010 and 2014 in Denmark, Stirling Range National Park, Perth and Broome, with some of the allegations involving penetration by rocks which he claimed had supernatural healing powers. The State has alleged Mr Williams, who lives in Denmark and ran the award-winning Poornarti Aboriginal Tours, abused his cultural knowledge, manipulating young women between the ages of 18 and 34 for his own sexual gratification. The State’s second witness took the stand this afternoon via video link, telling the court she first met Mr Williams in 2014 when she wanted to “pick his brain” about his culture. The woman, who was 28 at the time of the alleged offences, said she suffered from sexual abuse trauma and anxiety, which Mr Williams had claimed he could heal. “He sensed I was sexually abused, that is something I don’t tell many people, so I thought this guy must be a spiritual healer, a medicine man who could help me,” she told the court. Deciding to pursue his offer of traditional healing, Mr Williams allegedly asked her “to come on a journey” with him before he took her a significant women’s place. The alleged victim said the next bush meeting at Hay River in Denmark involved Mr Williams showing her Aboriginal artefacts in what she said “was a display of power” and reaffirmed he was a “legitimate medicine man”. The woman claimed the pair were both naked in the river when Mr Williams asked her to float while he supported her, producing a “small, black, smooth stone” which he placed on the base of her spine. She believed the technique was a “vibrational ceremony” to realign her spirit. The woman said she felt the stone vibrate and had never experienced anything like it in her 10 years of remedial massage and healing. “It defied science, there was no explanation from Joey...I felt amazing peace,” she said. However it was on another occasion, two weeks later at Mt Lindsay in Denmark, when Mr Williams allegedly took things to a sexual level. The woman said Mr Williams gave her an elongated yellow quartz stone, then asked her to get naked and lay down on the ground at a granite outcrop. “Using his oils, he started rubbing the stone on my body, without explanation he rubbed it around my vagina and then inserted into my vagina,” she told the court. She said the sexual interaction was unexpected and she had not given him consent. She told the court that although she now recognised her naivety, she had trusted Mr Williams at the time because he said he learned “women’s business” rituals from his father and had a “bloodline to the witch doctor”. “I believed he had the techniques to heal me,” she said. It was when Mr Williams is alleged to have sexually penetrated the woman with a stone again — this time at a salt lake in the Stirling Range National Park — that the “veil was lifted”. “I felt conned...the veil was lifted and I realised he was using these rituals just to get sex,” she told the court. In cross-examination, defence counsel Bruno Illari said Mr Williams and the woman had consensual sexual intercourse. The alleged victim had initiated the trips into the bush, he said. Mr Illari put it to the woman that she smoked cannabis, prompting her to admit she was a “mild smoker” in 2014. But she denied having sex with Mr Williams. When asked whether she had clear memories of the allegations, she said she kept journals of everything that happened. “If I knew what his motives were I wouldn’t have gone with the bloke,” she said. The trial continues.