Simone Holtznagel: Police arrest a man out of court shortly after he was acquitted of stalking model

A man cleared of stalking one of Australia’s most high-profile models was charged with breaching a personal protection order against her just minutes after a court hearing ran out.

In bizarre scenes, 59-year-old Benjamin Reeves was accused of violating a personal ban not to approach reality TV star Simone Holtznagal.

Police charged the former CEO outside Sydney’s Downing Center Court around 4:20pm as he left after a stalking charge against him was dropped and won $36,000 in charges for an “unreasonable” charge.

At the end of that hearing, a magistrate dropped the warrant for the arrest of Mr. Reeves, which was protecting Ms. Holtznagal.

However, the police allege that Mr. Reeves violated the Personal Violence Order (PVO) that was part of the AVO against him for the person with whom he had no domestic relationship.

Police will claim the PVO breach occurred on Wednesday night when Mr Reeves was reportedly seen at a Sydney venue for the Vivid Festival that Ms Holtznagel was attending.

“On Wednesday, officers from the Eastern Suburbs Police Area Command began an investigation into an alleged violation of a (order) that occurred at Circular Quay at about 6:20pm that day involving a 29-year-old woman and a 59-year-old man,” a NSW Police statement says.

“Yesterday (June 15, 2023) at about 4:20pm the man was arrested outside a courthouse on Castlereagh Street, Sydney.”

Police charged Reeves with violating a personal warrant of violence and granted him conditional bail to appear in Downing Center local court on Friday.

Minutes before his arrest outside the same court on Thursday, Reeves’ attorney, Osman Samin, said his client was “justified” by the dismissed charge and AVO and could “return to his life.”

“He’s just really happy that this is over and he can move on with his life,” said Mr. Samin.

Mr Reeves had just filed a suit alleging that he repeatedly turned up at venues in the Sydney CBD and Bondi beach party district where the Australia’s Next Top Model star was working or socialising.

He denied continuously stalking Ms. Holtznagal between April and July last year, arguing that he frequented the areas regularly.

The former CEO of the Australian Association of Graduate Employers was set to challenge the allegations at a hearing on Thursday morning when police dropped the stalking charge, and subsequently the AVO.

Mr. Reeves’ lawyers were awarded $36,208 after a magistrate ruled I’m a celebrity! Get Me Out of Here star Simone Holtznagel’s evidence against Mr Reeves was ‘unreliable’

But in a dramatic development, prosecutors dropped the stalking charge and on Thursday Mr Reeves’ lawyer successfully filed for charges, saying officers viewed CCTV footage of their client and Ms Holtznagel at Ravesi’s and that he clearly wasn’t stalking.

Barrister Steven Boland told Downing Center Local Court it was a case of Mr Reeves and his accuser who both visited entertainment areas – the Sydney CBD’s Ivy venue area and the beach strip at Bondi.

“It’s people who go to popular public places and see each other,” he said. “It would be like Mr. Reeves pointing the finger at her.”

He said that in her police statement, Ms. Holtznagel had described Mr. Reeves’ distinctive appearance – about six feet tall, thin, with long legs and a stiff gait, curly red hair, freckles and “beady eyes” – “in a derogatory manner” described.

He said footage of her drinking champagne and kissing her famous personal trainer boyfriend Jono Castano on Ravesi’s balcony while Mr. Reeves was sometimes nearby showed “massive inaccuracies” in her police statement.

He said that instead of being scared, as she had told police, she and her boyfriend engaged in “back slapping hilarity” on the evening of June 12 last year.

At one point on the CCTV footage playing in court, Mrs. Holtznagel puts her fingers in her mouth twice and makes a vomit gesture.

Mr. Boland said this could represent her “dislike” for Mr. Reeves: “She finds him aesthetically displeasing.”

Magistrate Glenn Bartley, however, responded that the gestures could be in response to “anything,” adding, “That could be federal politics or Waverley Council politics.”

His Honor noted that Mrs. Holtznagel’s body language changed when Mr. Reeves approached the table and she saw him: “Her body language seems to say she didn’t want him there.”

Mr. Boland countered that there were large parts of Ms. Holtznagel’s police statement about the occasion that were untrue, including that Mr. Reeves was “within inches of my face” at Ravesi’s – which was “obviously untrue.”

Magistrate Bartley rejected the arrest warrant issued by police against Mr. Reeves for Mrs. Holtznagel.

Prosecutors argued that while the honor of the complainant, Ms. Holtznagel, “was at stake,” Mr. Reeves “was at those locations.”

“If the court accepted that there were six incidents in a two to three month period, the prosecutors’ argument would be that it was not a coincidence. [Mr Reeves] should know … that it would make a reasonable person fear,” the prosecution said.

However, Magistrate Bartley found that while Mrs. Holtznagel had not lied, she was a “demonstrably unreliable” witness and that CCTV had proven her story false in two of the six alleged incidents.

He said the “incidents are too fleeting and infrequent” to be considered stalking on purpose, and that Mr Reeves’ eye contact with Ms Holtznagel on several occasions “could be because he had seen her before, so that interest was aroused, or because she was attractive’.

Your Honor said that Mr Reeves’ credit card details indicated that he visited both Sydney’s CBD and Bondi.