In 2007, when Robert's sexually explicit poetry was the subject of a literary scandal, he was denounced by Christian letter writers to the Adelaide Arts Media as the writer of "witchcraft", reported to the police (no action was taken against him), prohibited from speaking at a supposedly open-mike venue which claimed to be against censorship, and his writing (media-labelled "transgressive" and "pornography") denounced as being in violation of UN human rights. It was the first time in Australian literary history that a poet had been accused of witchcraft since the mid-1950s case of Gavin Greenlees and Rosaleen Norton.