‘Totally vulnerable’ — court hears testimony of youngest alleged victim of ‘healer’ Joseph Luke Williams

A woman who was 18 when she was allegedly sexually assaulted by self-proclaimed Aboriginal healer Joseph Luke Williams has taken the stand on the third day of his trial. The woman was the fourth alleged victim to give her testimony at the Albany District Court, 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 27-year-old woman, who was 18 at the time of the alleged offences, appeared via video link this afternoon, telling the court she had met Mr Williams through a friend — another alleged victim. She went to Hay River with Mr Williams and a group of girlfriends for a “cultural experience” that lasted two hours sometime in the summer of 2011-2012, the court was told. The woman said she remembered getting undressed and Mr Williams using ochre to paint their borides. She told the court that at time, she was recovering from a personal trauma which happened two years earlier. The alleged victim said she later went to Mr Williams’ workshop, asking him to fix her car, when he suggested the pair have a “one-on-one session” at the same location at Hay River. She said Mr Williams suggested the pair “needed to have a one on one” session to do deeper healing work, describing the decision to go alone with Mr Williams to the Hay River as “spontaneous”. Once they arrived, Mr Williams allegedly told the then 18-year-old to undress and enter the water, where he held her and chanted as she floated. After they left the water, he encouraged her to lay on a kangaroo skin he had put on the riverbank, she told the court. She said Mr Williams was “huffing and puffing” and “charging up” a stone which he placed on the lowest part of her belly. The stone, which was “vibrating”, was placed on her vagina, she told the court. The woman said she recalled “feeling totally vulnerable” as Mr Williams then allegedly penetrated her with his fingers and placed his mouth on her vagina. It was then when she felt the healing ritual had turned into a “sexual act”. When the act was over the woman said she remembered standing up, “wobbly and in shock” at which point Mr Williams “suggested that next time I should remove my pubic hair because it was blocking the healing energy force”. The woman said after the incident Mr Williams drove her home and she did not see him again. During the cross-examination defence counsel Bruno Illari questioned whether it was the woman’s idea to go to the bush with Mr Williams. Mr Illari questioned why the woman did not say anything to Mr Williams as he progressed the sexual act. “I didn’t feel comfortable saying anything,” she said. “I felt the situation was completely in his hands.” Mr Illari asked the victim whether after the incident she had asked Mr William to start a relationship and been rejected. The woman said the suggestion was “completely and utterly not true”. Earlier this morning, a 43-year-old witness gave emotional testimony via videolink asking for several breaks throughout the questioning. The woman said she met Mr Williams after she was advised to consult him as a local elder while scouting for a culturally sensitive spot for a community cinema project. She said Mr Williams had offered to be her “mentor” and “build her confidence back up” after a difficult custody battle. The woman said Mr Williams claimed to be “the medicine man or magic man of his Noongar tribe” and said he had healed other women’s fertility issues. She said Mr Williams had taken her to the rainbow ochre pit for an “initiation”. “It was like an achievement to see the rainbow ochre pit,’ she said, Mr Williams told her to strip naked and lie on her back in the dirt. “He told me that his seed had to be inside of me so I could be under his protection,” she said. The woman said Mr Williams “implied there was a magical quality to his semen”. “One one hand I did consent but he wasn’t fair and reasonable in the way he set up the event,” she said. “I feel he talked and coerced me into it. If I had known that was his plan I would have never have gone.” The 43-year-old said after the first incident she asked Mr Williams for help because a man had been stalking her. She said she went camping with Mr Williams near Bluff Knoll, where he told her they “would need to have sex to keep him away”. She thought he had “some sort of magical abilities” to help her and so consented, describing the encounter as “businesslike”, she told the court. “It was an unpleasant act for me. It was awful. I wouldn’t have put myself through it unless I thought it was necessary,” she said. The trial continues.