Media figure Antony Catalano charged with assaulting a woman

Prominent media owner Antony Catalano has been charged with assault and accused in court of dragging a woman around an apartment by her hair and ankles, before swinging a clothes iron at her head.

The woman sustained a fractured coccyx during the alleged attack by the 59-year-old, who was granted bail on Friday evening at a hearing in the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court.

Catalano, the co-owner and chairman of Australian Community Media (ACM), is facing charges of assault, false imprisonment and making threats to kill, according to a report by the ABC.

A police informant asked for Catalano to be denied bail and remanded in custody, alleging he posed an unacceptable risk of further offending and fleeing Victoria.

“The accused dragged the victim to the laundry area where he grabbed a clothes iron and held it towards the victim’s head, causing the victim to grab onto the iron herself,” according to a police summary read in court.

The informant said the woman sustained a fractured coccyx and spent several hours in hospital.

The entire incident had been captured by CCTV cameras, with Catalano’s barrister Jason Gullaci, SC, conceding there was “no doubt” his client had made physical contact with the woman.

“There’s still a few moving parts about exactly what happened, how it started, how it moved out to the area where the CCTV footage is inside, how it then manifested in relation to what happened in that hallway,” he said.

Gullaci said a claim by the woman that Catalano had forcefully swung the iron at her head had not been included in the written police summary presented to court.

Before granting bail, Magistrate Rohan Lawrence described the evidence as “relatively strong” and said a jail term was possible if the charges were proved, according to the ABC report.

Catalano was not required to enter a plea, given the early stage of the case.

This masthead has contacted Victoria Police for further detail on the incident.

The court had been told Catalano recently experienced a mental health episode at his waterfront residence in Wategos Beach in Byron Bay and was admitted to a psychiatric ward last month after using drugs.

“It is believed approximately three days ago at his property in Byron Bay, the accused himself called police because he believed he was seeing people emerging from the woodworks around his property,” the officer testified on Friday.

Catalano did not respond to requests for comment from this masthead.

ACM general manager Tony Kendall has also been contacted by this masthead about the charges facing the company’s chairman.

Originally a police reporter with Fairfax Media, Catalano became chief executive of Domain before splashing $115 million in 2019 to acquire Australian Community Media, the publisher of major regional newspapers including the Canberra Times and Newcastle Herald.

A father to nine children, Catalano has property and business interests across the nation, including a luxury penthouse apartment in the St Moritz complex in St Kilda and famed Byron Bay resort Raes on Wategos.

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