Bachelor alum Matty J speaks out following Sam Wood charges

Former reality star Matthew ‘Matty J’ Johnson has released a lengthy statement calling out violence against women after his fellow The Bachelor alum Sam Wood was refused bail on domestic violence charges.

In a lengthy post, Johnson said it had taken him “a little while” to put his “thoughts about the allegations against Sam Wood into words.”

He starts the Instagram post by recalling the first time he saw Wood in public, explaining he was “stepping out of a flashy European car, dressed sharply, when someone asked him to stop and take a photo.”

“It was a snapshot of the kind of public profile he had built. It looked to me like real success. It’s a funny thing, the way we form impressions of people. Sometimes it only takes a few seconds to decide who someone is and what their life represents.”

He went on to write: “Maybe that’s part of the problem.”

Johnson said that after he went on The Bachelor, Wood reached out to him to offer support and he “took him up on it,” before making it clear he “is not and never has been” a friend of Wood.

“We both went on the same TV show, and as a byproduct of that our paths crossed a handful of times.”

He went on to say he was “shocked” after hearing the allegations against Wood, explaining what stunned him was how the allegations “contradict the image many of us had mistakenly formed of him.”

“The man I once saw as a benchmark for success has now been charged for a crime that represents the very worst in what men are capable of.”

Johnson went on to urge men to self-reflect and “challenge the version of masculinity they inherited rather than blindly pass it on.”

Wood was denied bail and transferred to Brisbane Correctional Centre earlier this week after the court heard that he allegedly pushed and choked his wife Snezana at a luxury apartment in Noosa last Saturday.

The court heard allegations that the incident had resulted from an argument about going to bed or packing for their departure the next day after Wood and his wife had returned from dinner.

In refusing bail, Magistrate Janelle Boegheim described the allegations as Wood having pushed his wife with one hand into a wall and then to the ground, before grabbing the alleged victim around the neck “gripping tight and restricting the airway”.  

It’s alleged Snezana told police that she thought “that this was it, that her life was going to end”.  

Boegheim described strangulation as a “particularly grave form of violence”. 

Sergeant Jeanette Grigoris earlier told the court police had obtained a video-recorded statement from Snezana, who alleges she experienced “cessations of breath” and the “banging of her head on the floor... that she couldn’t breathe”.

Woods has been charged with two domestic violence offences, assault occasioning bodily harm and strangulation in a domestic setting. He is defending the charges.

Support is available from the National Sexual Assault, Domestic and Family Violence Counselling Service at 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732).