The Victorian Liberal Party’s state executive revoked Moira Deeming’s preselection as lead upper house candidate for Western Metropolitan Region after she refused an unconditional apology to Matthew Guy over an alleged assault at a May 23 community event.
CCTV showed Guy placing his hand on her shoulder and neck, which Deeming described as painful in texts and a police complaint; police reviewed it and found no offence.
Deeming remains a Liberal MP until the November 28 election but must now run without party backing, amid her history of party room expulsion and a won defamation case. Party leaders called the matter resolved to focus on the campaign.
Well she was nothing more than a trouble maker, so good riddance to her. Next time she might want to find out what a head lock is before making false accusations and then not apologising.
FROM MIORA:
Just so you know- because I care about your opinion-
I never refused to apologise.
I refused to say I made a false police complaint or that I defamed Matthew Guy.
Both allegations were levelled at me publicly. Guy called a press conference and pretty much told the world I was a liar and a man hater, also not true.
Unlike his, my allegations were made in private, I was afraid of escalations beyond what had happened- but I kept them private & going to the police was a last resort at the direction of the party.
But also my PTSD from being raped is not the main issue- I have serious trauma and fear of about several men in our party due to the last 4 years where they whipped up hatred & violent death and rape threats against me and almost made me homeless… Guy himself has a 4 year history of targeting me with hostility- so there was no world in which he could ever grab me, feel me pulling away, override my strength -causing me pain and fear- and pull me towards his face over and across another man’s lap- and have me consider that ‘friendly’.
Party rules & senior Libs said physical contact is possible assault so go to the police.
Media kept reporting edited snippets of my emotional confidential texts to senior libs taking my complaint- but they are not the same as my sworn police report.
I never accused Guy of “violent” assault or attributed intent to him in my actual police statement- on purpose.
I told the policeman I couldn’t see what he did exactly, or even if he used one arm or two but that I thought it was just one, but it felt like my head was controlled, like some kind of “headlock”- that’s clearly not someone fabricating things out of thin air. It’s someone struggling to describe how something felt.
Ignoring the unique relationship between me & Guy, the targeted severe hostility toward me over the last 4 years in general, that I was fearful of future escalations & that I was told to go to police by the Party- but hyper focusing on one wrong word in my emotional text messages & 20 seconds of poor quality footage has been incredibly bad faith, unfair reporting.
I predicted the police would say there’s not enough here to move forward, and I had planned on going back to the party afterwards and saying, see it’s not a criminal threshold. You need to help me and call off the bullying.
AND- once I finally saw the footage and watched it over and over- I realised there might be another reason for how it all felt to me, even though he loathes me- the footage seemed to suggest that he may have been impacted by alcohol and off balance himself, and gripping me so hard because of that.
And I did the right thing by correcting a term I got wrong and publicly stating I didn’t attribute intent to Guy for what I experienced, in preparation for the meeting Jess had called for when I returned from overseas.
But they cancelled the meeting and called for a disendorsement instead..