Kyle Sandilands is back with another tedious, provocative take — this time coming to the defense of disgraced ex-Sony CEO Denis Handlin.
Last night, ABC’s Four Corners aired Facing The Music, an exposé chronicling the culture of ‘intimidation and abuse’ at Sony Music’s Australian headquarters.
The documentary saw a number of harrowing accounts from current and former employees of Sony Music Australia, detailing the culture of discrimination, sexism, systemic bullying, and misconduct under former chief executive Denis Handlin’s 37-year tenure at the top.
One of the graver revelations put forward was an allegation that detailed the sexual assault of a female employee in 2016, that took place in Sony Music Australia’s office bathroom during a work event.
“A naked male manager confronted her in a bathroom and sexually assaulted her,” reported Grace Tobin last night. “The woman reported it directly to Denis Handlin and HR.”
Four Corners reports that the alleged perpetrator held a senior role at the company for several years after the allegations. The victim left the company with an $80,000 pay-out and an NDA (non-disclosure agreement).
Despite these objectively horrifying revelations, the investigation put forward was simply not juicy enough for Shock Jock Kyle. This morning on The Kyle and Jackie O Show, Sandilands weighed in on the exposé, dismissing the seriousness of the allegations put forward, and noting that he felt the documentary was a waste of time.
“I wasted my life last night,” he said. “I was looking for the ABC, that Four Corners program because there was that big exposé on Sony Music.
“And everyone was like ‘Oh, oh. It’s going to blow the lid’. And I thought ‘Jesus. I’m going to watch this then if it’s going to blow the lid’.”
Sandilands added, “So the guy was a bit of a grog monster and yelled in the ’80s.”
During the exposé, Shane Earle, who worked as Handlin’s private chauffeur for four years from 1997-2001, detailed an incident that took place whilst picking up Handlin after a night of drinking.
“He had a little regular stop which was Harry’s Café de Wheels, a place where you buy a meat pie, down near the naval base, and a lot of people frequented, especially in the early hours of the morning,” Earle recalled. One evening, Handlin asked Earle for money to buy a pie.
“‘No, Denis, I don’t have any money. Do you have any money? Because I don’t,'” Earle recalled saying.
“All I got was, ‘Fuck you, fuck you, and fuck you.’ Screaming at the top of his voice. Just acting like, I don’t know… A child. Because he didn’t get his meat pie. It was relentless.”
Sandilands mocked this story, “There was some chauffeur on from back in the late ’80s – ‘oh, he threw a phone at me once and said the F-word when I didn’t have money for a Harry’s pie! So what, big deal,” he said.
He then went on to explain that he felt like he spent the entire documentary waiting for a bomb to drop, “there was this secretary from the ’80s [saying] ‘he was the most repulsive man,” he said.
“Oh yeah, no argument there but what did he do? ‘He’d belittle people,” he continued. “So what, big deal. The angry boss that screamed and belittled people. Get over it.”
