THe Angmo charbo husband is a pedophile too. Wonder if our high standards government do any back ground check on these people.
The private hell of Cate Blanchett's agent: How Robyn Gardiner's world came crashing down as her husband Robert Hughes is finally convicted of child sex offences
By Candace Sutton 04:12 13 Apr 2014, updated 17:38 13 Apr 2014
Friend claims she told celebrity agent Robyn Gardiner 20 years ago of actor husband's child sex allegations
Gardiner is Oscar winner Cate Blanchett's much-loved representative
Spouse of 40 years Robert Hughes awaits sentence for molesting girls aged seven to 15
One-time high flying couple's glittering world has turned to dust
Gardiner's denial cost her friendship, casting agent Liz Mullinar claims
It should have been a time to savour the pinnacle of her career, but instead Robyn Gardiner's glittering world has turned to dust.
Just weeks ago, the celebrity agent was lovingly thanked by Cate Blanchett as the actress accepted an Academy Award for best actress at a glittering Oscars ceremony.
Now Gardiner's life - as a successful businesswoman and partner to a successful actor - has come crashing down as her husband Robert Hughes faces years in prison as a reviled child sex offender.
It has also been claimed that Gardiner was told about her husband's sexual approaches to children on the set of his sitcom Hey Dad! 20 years ago.
Her refusal to believe the allegations ended one of her oldest friendships.
Robyn Gardiner (left) is seen leaving a Sydney court last month with husband and former Hey Dad! actor Robert Hughes, who has been found guilty of sexual assault. They are pictured with daughter Jessica Hughes (right)
Robyn Gardiner (left) is seen leaving a Sydney court last month with husband and former Hey Dad! actor Robert Hughes, who has been found guilty of sexual assault. They are pictured with daughter Jessica Hughes (right)
When Cate Blanchett said in her Oscars speech last month, 'To my agent in Australia, Robyn Gardiner, I love you so very much,' few if any of the Hollywood royalty in the audience would have known the significance of the statement.
Blanchett's public thanks to Ms Gardiner came in the second week of the very public trial of Gardiner's husband on 11 child sexual assault offences against young females including a cast member in his career flagship Australian sitcom, Hey Dad!
Ms Gardiner had snapped up Blanchett back in 1992 upon the promising young actor's graduation from Australia's National Institute of Dramatic Art, and has represented her ever since, also acquiring Blanchett's husband, theatre director Andrew Upton, as a client.
It has now emerged that Ms Gardiner's star acquisition came at around the same time when stories about Robert Hughes sexual advances to a child TV star were known among the Hey Dad! cast, and the show's casting agent Liz Mullinar claims she approached Ms Gardiner to inform her.
Following a jury's conviction last week of Hughes on ten child sex offences, Ms Mullinar, herself a victim of sexual abuse as a child, has come forward.
Actor Robert Hughes has been convicted on child sex charges, after he was accused by former Hey Dad! actors and and the daughters of family friends of sexual assault
Actor Robert Hughes has been convicted on child sex charges, after he was accused by former Hey Dad! actors and and the daughters of family friends of sexual assault
Robert Hughes in character as the father, Martin Kelly, in the sitcom Hey Dad!, which ran on Channel Seven from 1987 until 1994
Robert Hughes in character as the father, Martin Kelly, in the sitcom Hey Dad!, which ran on Channel Seven from 1987 until 1994
Ms Mullinar told the Nine Network's Today Show she had been close friends with both Robyn Gardiner and Robert Hughes for years before she learned about Hughes' behaviour from members of the Hey Dad! production.
She claims she approached Ms Gardiner back then and was rebuffed.
'My whole life’s work had been to help people find healing and help,' Ms Mullinar told the Today Show.
'That’s why I told his wife because I thought that’s my duty, everybody has to know. She denied it and that was the end of a very long friendship, that’s what happens people deny it.'
Hughes is currently in Australia's largest maximum security remand prison, in western Sydney, and awaiting sentence on ten charges which include seven counts of indecently assaulting a person under the age of 16 years, and two counts of sexual intercourse with a person under the age of 16 years.
The utter destruction of his career ends a four saga of accusations - and denials by Hughes, who even after his conviction yelled out in court, 'I am innocent'.
Clockwise from centre front: Robert Hughes, Simone Buchanan, Christopher Truswell, Julie McGregor, Christopher Mayer, and Sarah Monahan. Ms Monahan accused Hughes of touching her inappropriately while on the set of the show
Clockwise from centre front: Robert Hughes, Simone Buchanan, Christopher Truswell, Julie McGregor, Christopher Mayer, and Sarah Monahan. Ms Monahan accused Hughes of touching her inappropriately while on the set of the show
Robert Hughes entered a plea of not guilty on 11 charges relating to the alleged indecent and sexual assault of five girls, which are said to have occurred between 1985 and 1990, and his trial began on February 24.
Robyn Gardiner supported her husband through almost six weeks of often lurid testimony at the trial.
Hughes, the trial heard, touched girls as young as seven, gave one victim a teddy bear and called her a 'good girl' after forcing her to perform a sex act. He also exposed himself on set and indecently assaulted some of his victims.
Ms Gardiner gave evidence at the trial, saying she was shocked at the accusations against her husband, and rejected the testimony of a former woman friend of the couple
The woman said when her then seven-year-old daughter told her Hughes would molest her during sleepovers at his Artarmon house in the mid-1980s she refused to allow her to go back.
Soon afterwards, the woman said, Hughes’ wife Robyn Gardiner asked her why the girl wasn’t sleeping over any more.
'I said words to the effect of 'ask your husband' or 'keep your husband away from my kids,' the woman told the jury. 'She said 'we will have to get him help'.'
Challenged about these allegations in the witness box, Gardiner denied saying this and then. 'Absolutely not,' she said repeatedly and and denied lying to save her husband.
I’m under oath here, she did not say those words,” Ms Gardiner told the court.
She told the court the first allegation she was aware of - that Hughes had exposed himself to a young girl at their home in the 1980s - was 'bad enough'.
'I love you so very much': Cate Blanchett, who was represented by Robyn Gardiner, thanked the agent in her Oscars acceptance speech
'I love you so very much': Cate Blanchett, who was represented by Robyn Gardiner, thanked the agent in her Oscars acceptance speech
She said police investigated and took no action. 'It's not as if I brushed it aside... I saw no evidence to suggest it was true,' she said.
Liz Mullinar claimed on Radio 3AW that she had acted 20 years ago to get Robert Hughes sacked from Hey Dad! after informing the show's producers about the abuse.
'We had to get him off the show because of these allegations,' she said.
Asked if, at the time, she believed her 'dear friend' could have done the kind of things he was accused of, Ms Mullinar said: 'Yes I did believe them [the allegations], and I did know 20 years ago.
'And even then, as a survivor of child abuse myself, I was, and have been, very public about it.
'I think at the time I didn't realise that paedophiles are your friends. They are lovely, fantastic people. They are not greasy men in dirty coats.
'That it could be someone who I was so close and intimately involved with was terrible. I told his wife and it was a terrible, terrible shock to be surrounded by child abuse.'
Robert Hughes will be sentenced on May 2.
