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Hey Dad actor Robert Hughes gets attacked with human excrement by fellow prisoners

August 3, 2015 1:20pm
news.com.au

‘They just unloaded’. Former Hey Dad star Robert Hughes was covered in human waste on his first day at Goulburn Jail.
HEY Dad actor Robert Hughes was covered in human faeces and urine by prison inmates who “unloaded” on him on his first day in jail.

Hughes, the Australian television celebrity sentenced last year for indecently assaulting four victims, was attacked by prisoners as he walked into a yard in Goulburn Prison. But not with their fists.

Instead, the inmates hurled cartons of faeces and urine at him, aiming at him through a fence that separated Hughes from at least 30 other inmates.

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Hey Dad actor covered in poo
Hughes

In his new book, Australia’s Most Murderous Prison: Behind the Walls of Goulburn Jail, writer James Phelps reveals the inmates didn’t miss, covering Hughes.

“They just unloaded,” recalled a Goulburn guard. “Piss and poo — they covered him in it. It was his first day in Goulburn and he was brought out into the yard.”

The assault traumatised Hughes so much he wet his own pants and was left sobbing on the phone to his wife Robyn Gardiner, according to an extract published in the Sunday Telegraph.

A guard who overhead the conversation said Hughes told her he “can’t stay here”.

“This place is hell. You have to get me out.”

The inmates had reportedly been waiting for their celebrity guest with one taunting him with “Hey Dad, cop this you kiddyfiddling f***.”

Another goaded him with: “I’m a celebrity ... Get me out of here.”


James Phelps’ new book about Goulburn Jail.
Hughes is normally in protection with other sex offenders because of his crimes and fears the other inmates would “kill him”.


But he still has to walk 40m from one prison block to the next and that’s where the excrement incident occurred, in a fenced off corridor between the two blocks.

It left him exposed to dozens of inmates who waited patiently with their milk cartons full of faeces and urine, the Sunday Telegraph reported.

“I’m not sure how they knew he was coming,” an officer said. “But they knew. And they had all armed themselves up with sh*t and gone out to meet him.”

Afterwards, he sat on a hill in the yard, dripping in the excrement and crying.

“He would have tried to clean himself up,” the officer said, “but it was impossible without having a shower. He spent the entire time sitting on the hill, sooking. He was a stinking mess.”

Hughes is reportedly so scared of being targeted in this way again he has taken to wearing a ski jacket, even in summer when the temperature is almost 40C.

Hughes was sentenced last year to 10 years’ jail for indecently assaulting four victims, including a child co-star.

* Sunday Telegraph journalist James Phelps’ book Australia’s Most Murderous Prison: Behind the Walls of Goulburn Jail, is in stores from today. Pre-orders available at Bookworld and iTunes