Mr Ndou, new author of biography “Tough Love”, is a firm believer in not judging an accused until there is proof an actual crime has been committed. After all, he faced wrongful imprisonment under apartheid rule as a young man back in South Africa when a white girl had become interested in him. Despite her objections that nothing had ever happened between the two, he was thrown before bars and attacked. 

With more of an ability to investigate these crimes here in Australia, Mr Ndou said it bothers him that Prime Minister Scott Morrison thinks “nothing should be done about it”, especially as he continues to “just push it under the carpet”. There is speculation Mr Porter will be moved to the backbench, but it is yet to be confirmed. 

“If that’s done, what happened to the rule of law? I think what they should do with the Attorney-General is investigate the same way they did with Justice [Dyson] Heydon and I think it is in the best interest of the Attorney-General for a proper investigation to be done. If people just push it aside, no one is going to have any respect for him,” Mr Ndou said. 

“People will always look at him – and some people have already judged him. If it is investigated properly, then we know where we stand.”

The focus on Mr Porter and his allegations came during the course of a conversation about Tough Love, a look into his early years, his successful boxing career and the transition into family and criminal law. Having watched close family endure assault at the hands of older men and having been accused but never charged of it later in life during a failing marriage, Mr Ndou knows the value of getting to the truth. 

“This has already tainted the legal profession. He should be investigated properly. No one is judging him. Like I said, not everyone that gets charged or accused of a crime has really committed it, but there has got to be some kind of investigation and he should allow that to take place,” Mr Ndou added.  

Sitting somewhere in the middle of his book, Mr Ndou wrote about the sexual assault his sisters had suffered through at young ages, punctuated with the devastating line that there was “no justice for the victim”. He wrote that it was not unusual to watch as his female pupils would drop out of school pregnant with children they could not afford because male teachers had taken a highly inappropriate liking to them. 

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Experiencing this at only a young age himself brings into focus a lot of the cases that he either works through or watches outside of it that deal with the sexual assault and rape of a woman. He said it really bothers him to deal with clients who have been accused of sexual assault because of what his sisters had been through, and especially because his sisters “were never given any justice in the end”. 

“I look back and see [what happened to my sisters], and luckily we had a lot of close family, but I could see there were times when they wished to hurt themselves because of what they had experienced,” Mr Ndou said, turning to the allegations against Mr Porter and the reports that the woman had taken her own life. 

“It really hurts me to think about the whole thing, [because] she didn’t take her life for nothing. Something must have happened in her life, whether it was to do with the Attorney-General or not, something did happen,” he speculated. 

“Personally, I don’t believe people just make allegations unless something has really happened. This is something that happened years and years ago, why would she just come up with these things now? He might not have raped her, but something could have happened between the two of them and it needs a proper investigation.”

The entire interview with Lovemore Ndou is coming soon.