SYDNEY, Australia — One of Australia’s most prominent television and musical performers, Craig McLachlan, has been charged with assault and eight counts of indecent assault relating to events reaching back to 2014 — a potential breakthrough for the media companies he has sued for defamation, and for the country’s nascent #MeToo movement. Mr. McLachlan, 53, a familiar face in Australia for starring roles in TV favorites like “Neighbours” and “Home and Away,” has been charged by the Victoria Police for indecent acts said to have occurred in Melbourne around the same time as his now-scrutinized performance in a stage version of “The Rocky Horror Show.”His interactions with women during that show’s run at the Comedy Theater in Melbourne were the subject of an investigative report from The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, and ABC, Australia’s public broadcaster, revealing that several female co-stars accused him of indecent and inappropriate behavior. Australia’s secretive judicial system — its strict privacy laws and restrictions on the sharing of information about individual cases — make it impossible to declare that the criminal charges directly relate to the “Rocky Horror Show” allegations.

Source: New York Times January 11, 2019 06:22 UTC