Wolf Creek actor John Jarratt has dropped a defamation action he launched against Sydney's The Daily Telegraph newspaper.A woman he lived with in a share house in the 1970s had alleged he raped herThe 66-year-old was acquitted of raping a 19-year-old woman in an eastern Sydney share house more than 40 years ago.The legal action against Nationwide NewsAfter Jarratt was cleared, his high-profile lawyer Chris Murphy announced on Twitter that proceedings against the Telegraph would go ahead.
But a spokeswoman from the Supreme Court of New South Wales has confirmed the actor filed a notice of discontinuance last Friday.Mr Jarratt was charged in August 2018 after the woman went to police in late 2017. He insisted that the extramarital sex he had when living with the woman in a share house in 1976 was consensual.
He told the court that the woman had beckoned him into a bedroom and told him to be quiet to avoid waking his wife, Rosa Miano. He had told police he first heard about the rape claim when he saw the story on the front page of the Sydney newspaper.It followed another defamation case against Nationwide News by the actor Geoffrey Rush, withThe Daily Telegraph had published allegations that Mr Rush had behaved inappropriately towards a colleague while performing King Lear with the Sydney Theatre Company.