Mining employee accuses lawyer of being ‘mere mouthpiece’ on rape accusations

The lawyer of a mining company has been accused of being a “mere mouthpiece” over her response to an employee’s rape allegation.

Just short of 12 months after the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia (FCFCOA) tossed her application, former mining employee Amy Chapple again failed to restrain a Hall & Wilcox partner from acting for Rio Tinto subsidiary, Pilbara Iron, in an unfair dismissal case.

In the substantive matter, Chapple claimed her employment came to a premature end because she complained about inadequate responses to an allegation of sexual assault by a contractor at a residential village.

As part of that claim, Chapple alleged the Hall & Wilcox partner was dismissive of the allegations and acted as a “mere mouthpiece” for Pilbara Iron, rather than exercising her independent judgement to “get to the bottom of whether there had been an incident”.

In an exchange with FCFCOA’s Judge Antoni Lucev, Chapple claimed the partner should have disregarded Pilbara’s instructions and taken a more “forensic approach” to the investigation of the allegations.

According to Pilbara Iron, this allegation was confused with an earlier brief to suppliers about a sexual assault that occurred a year earlier. The court was told a person unknown to the proceedings had sent an “altered” version of this brief to Chapple, which prompted her complaint.

The partner explained in an email to Chapple that Rio Tinto “was unaware of what was in fact a single incident of sexual assault”.

Judge Lucev said the partner had been “quite correct” in her communications with Chapple about the rape allegation.

“It follows that no fair-minded informed member of the public might, or would, have concluded that the proper administration of justice requires that [the partner] be stood aside,” Judge Lucev said.

Chapple has since raised 22 separate grounds of appeal, including denial of procedural fairness, apprehended bias, and incorrect factual findings.

She again asserted that the partner has engaged in “inappropriate conduct” and that Judge Lucev’s failure to make such an order involved error.

In documents seen by Lawyers Weekly in April, Chapple alleged Judge Lucev erred in his consideration of what a fair-minded, reasonably informed member of the public “would” or “might” conclude that the proper administration of justice required when a lawyer was restrained.

In his judgment, Judge Lucev wrote: “That is because the misrepresentations alleged by Chapple to have been made … were simply not made, and there is no factual basis to apply the test.”

Chapple said this excluded the fact that the partner did not provide evidence to defend herself against the allegations.

In a decision published on Monday (1 December), Justice Cameron Moore of the Federal Court was not satisfied that the balance of the grounds supported granting leave for Chapple to appeal the FCFCOA decision.

However, Justice Moore acknowledged the partner’s email to Chapple was “perhaps unfortunately dismissive”, and it “might have been preferable” had she provided an explanation for why Pilbara Iron had not explained the incident complained of was already known to it.

The case: Chapple v Workpac Pty Ltd [2025] FCA 1487.