Alan Jones, Australian Former Radio Host, Arrested on Sexual Abuse Charges

The retired radio host, who was granted bail after being arrested, was accused of abusing eight victims over nearly 20 years.

Alan Jones, a retired controversial Australian talk radio host, was arrested on Monday in Sydney and charged with nearly two dozen counts of sexual abuse.

He was granted bail and is due in court on Dec. 18.

Mr. Jones, 83, has faced accusations of abuse in the past and has denied them. On Monday, the New South Wales police said that he had abused eight victims between 2001 and 2019, the youngest of whom was 17 at the time of the abuse. He faces charges including aggravated indecent assault and sexually touching another person without consent.

Mr. Jones was once one of Australia’s most influential talk radio personalities, hosting a morning show on 2GB, a Sydney station, from 2002 through 2020. He started out as a schoolteacher before moving to radio, and along the way wrote speeches for Malcolm Fraser, a former prime minister. In the 1980s, Mr. Jones coached the Wallabies, the national men’s rugby union team.

Last December, The Sydney Morning Herald published an article in which multiple men accused Mr. Jones of sexual abuse. The police said they had started a new investigation after the publication of the article. Mr. Jones, the authorities said, knew the alleged victims either personally or professionally.

Kate McClymont, who wrote the Herald article, said in a broadcast interview on Monday that it could not be emphasized enough “how powerful Alan Jones has been in the media industry in this country.”

In a news conference, the state police commissioner, Karen Webb, urged other potential victims to come forward. She described the investigation, which started in March, as “complex” and “protracted.”

While he was on air, Mr. Jones made a number of attacks and disparaging comments. In 2019, he said that Scott Morrison, the Australian prime minister at the time, should “shove a sock” down the throat of Jacinda Ardern, Mr. Morrison’s counterpart in New Zealand. Mr. Jones later apologized. Earlier, he hurled multiple insults at Julia Gillard, who was Australia’s prime minister between 2010 and 2013.

Days before ethnic unrest erupted in a Sydney suburb in 2005, Mr. Jones referred to people of Lebanese descent as “mongrels.” A state tribunal later ruled that Mr. Jones had “incited hatred, serious contempt and severe ridicule of Lebanese Muslims” through his speech.