After two weeks of “sexual” messaging with Jarryd Hayne, the possibility of sex completely “evaporated” for a woman after the former NRL star “awkwardly” sang along to an Ed Sheeran cover of Wonderwall while a taxi waited for him outside, a court has been told.
The former footy legend, 35, faced the first week of his trial in the NSW District Court after he denied sexually assaulting the woman at her home on Newcastle’s outskirts in September 2018, on the night of the NRL grand final.
He has persistently maintained his innocence, claiming he engaged in consensual sexual acts. He has pleaded not guilty to two counts of aggravated sexual intercourse without consent.
THE LEAD UP AND FLIRTY MESSAGES
Crown prosecutor John Sfinas told the jury the woman initiated conversation with Mr Hayne on Instagram two weeks before they met in person on the night of the assault.
She sent him sexually explicit messages on Instagram before they agreed to meet at her house, which she shared with her mother.
Mr Sfinas told the jury the complainant found him “sexually attractive”.
According to messages provided to the court, the woman wrote: “I’m not going to lie … I imagined what it would be like to be f***ing you when you started talking.”
While communications between the pair were sexual in nature, it is the crown case the woman never consented to sexual intercourse.
A $550 TAXI FEE
Mr Hayne was in Newcastle on the weekend of September 29 and 30 to attend a bucks weekend, while the pair were trying to arrange a meeting.
Mr Sfinas said Mr Hayne paid a taxi driver $550 to drive him back to his home in Sydney following a two-day bucks’ party in Newcastle, asking to stop at the woman’s house along the way.
Mr Sfinas said Mr Hayne told the taxi driver he needed to collect a bag and would be “back in a minute”.
Taxi driver Helen Morel told the court Mr Hayne was drinking “brightly-coloured premixed alcoholic drinks” in the back seat.
“AWKWARD” SINGING
The jury was told the woman sat on the bed, while Mr Hayne lay down and asked for a laptop, before singing along to Ed Sheeran’s cover of Oasis’ Wonderwall.
“(The woman) found the whole singing along to songs things to be quite awkward,” Mr Sfinas said.
The jury was told the woman heard the taxi outside beeping in an attempt to alert Mr Hayne, and the woman refused to consent once she realised.
Mr Sfinas said this was a defining moment that “shifted” her mindset and turned the meeting sour.
“(The woman) did not know the taxi was waiting for the accused after he said it would be a minute,” Mr Sfinas said.
“It made that possibility (of sex) for the complainant evaporate.”
A KNOCK ON THE DOOR
The woman’s mother told the jury she had been ironing in her bedroom on the night of the incident with the grand final on the television in the lounge room.
She said she heard the door knock around 9.07pm and assumed it was one of her daughter’s friends.
She also said that twenty minutes later she heard a strange, “more urgent” knock and opened the door to find taxi driver Ms Morel.
“Jarryd Hayne came out, pushed past me and went outside with the taxi driver,” the mother told the court.
“I said what’s going on and she (her daughter) said, ‘He’s here, he wants to karaoke on the laptop’.”
The jury was told that her daughter told her: “I think he wants to have sex; there’s no way.”
When Mr Hayne returned, he walked into the lounge room where the woman’s mother was watching the end of the NRL Grand Final.
The mother said Mr Hayne yelled “Go the Roosters” and “I’m jealous”, before returning to the bedroom.
THE ALLEGED INCIDENT
The crown alleged the pair were sitting on the woman’s bed when he tried to kiss her, where the woman said “no” and “stop”.
He is accused of pulling off the woman’s pants and allegedly performing oral and digital sexual acts on her without her consent.
It is alleged he only stopped when they realised she was bleeding from her genitalia.
The jury was told Mr Hayne had blood on both his lips and hands.
Mr Hayne went into the bathroom to wash his hands before the woman got in the shower to clean off the blood.
She felt “swelling” and “stinging” on her genitalia, the crown alleged.
HAYNE’S THREE-WORD TEXT
The woman texted Mr Hayne in the hours after saying she “didn’t want to do that”.
She wrote: “I am hurting so much”.
“I know I’ve talked about sex and stuff so much but I didn’t want to do that after knowing the taxi was waiting for you,” another text said.
“I thought you would have at least stayed? I am hurting really badly … I’m sitting here in my room crying cause I feel weird.”
Mr Hayne responded: “Go doctor tomorrow”.
“FORCEFUL AND PERSISTENT”
The woman’s mother told the court her daughter came to her bedroom to say Mr Hayne had left; she claimed he had a nosebleed.
But the following day her daughter came clean about what allegedly happened.
“(She told me) Jarryd Hayne had been quite forceful and persistent and that he pulled her pants down and she thought he’d bitten her,” the mother said.
The mother said her daughter told her she “hadn’t wanted to do anything and said no”, and Mr Hayne was “overpowering”.
TEXTS TO HER FRIENDS
Messages between the woman her best friend on the night of the incident were read to the jury on Friday.
After taking a picture of her genitalia, the complainant forwarded the image to her friend.
“That’s like sliced everywhere,” the woman responded.
In another message, the best friend wrote to the woman: “If you kept saying no and now that’s happened, that’s rape.”
Another message said: “But sometimes when you’re in that situation after you’d said no, you kind of freeze.”
“You said he didn’t even say sorry, just ‘go to a doctor’, he is a c**t.”
“Can’t believe he didn’t even say sorry.”
REPORTING TO THE NRL INTEGRITY UNIT
The woman kept the incident to herself for several weeks, only telling a select group of friends and family.
But on October 30, the court was told she broke down and called her sister.
Her sister told the court she was “upset” when she found out her sister avoided telling her of the allegations for a month but finally opened up during a FaceTime call.
She said she tried telling her sister to go to police but the woman “didn’t want to” because she was scared.
The sister told the court she told one other person about the allegations – her husband, who said he would take the matter “into his own hands”.
The woman’s brother-in-law, a keen NRL fan, told the court he had been told by his wife, who is the sister of the alleged victim, she had been “raped”.
“(Her sister) said she’d been raped by Jarryd Hayne on grand final night,” he told the court.
He then rang Channel 9 journalist Danny Weidler, who told the family to call Karen Murphy at the NRL Integrity Unit, where authorities then became involved.
The trial continues.
#Moment #Hayne #meeting #turned #sour #court