Sarah Monahan, who played Jenny Kelly on the Australian sitcom Hey Dad..! from 1986 to 1993, said in March 2010 interviews with Woman’s Day and A Current Affair that actor Robert Hughes sexually abused her while she was a child performer. Hughes denied the allegations and said he had engaged defamation lawyers. In a March 2011 television interview, Monahan also alleged that television executives knew about Hughes’s conduct and failed to act, though the supplied source does not establish those executives’ identities or a separate finding against them.
Hughes was arrested in London on 9 August 2012, and Australia’s extradition request was approved on 28 September 2012. In early April 2014, he was found guilty of sexually abusing young girls. Monahan subsequently campaigned for child-actor protections and sexual-assault victims, joined advocacy efforts including Bravehearts and A Minor Consideration, and supported an Australian sex-offender registry. The case became a prominent example of the vulnerability of child performers and the consequences of alleged institutional failures on a television set.
