Former NRL player Jarryd Hayne has been found guilty of sexually assaulting a woman in Newcastle on the night of the 2018 grand final.
Jarryd Hayne outside court on Tuesday with his wife Amellia Bonnici.At 3.30pm, the court received a further note that the jury had reached their verdict, unanimously finding Hayne guilty of both charges. Hayne let out a sigh and was later heard muttering “disgrace”.
The trial heard Hayne and the woman had been talking for almost two weeks on platforms including Snapchat after she sent him a message on Instagram reading, “you’re gorgeous xx”.if he went to the woman’s house in Fletcher, an outer suburb of Newcastle, for “sex and sex only”, Hayne replied, “potentially sex”.
“I knew she didn’t want to have sex, I thought I’d just please her and that was it,” Hayne said in his evidence. A forensic doctor described a laceration to the woman’s genitals as a “significant” and “rare” injury, but added, “you cannot look at an injury and determine whether consent occurred or didn’t occur”.After Hayne left the woman’s home, she sent him a text saying she was “hurting so much”.
He said Hayne had used the woman’s letterbox as a stand for his half-drunk Vodka Cruiser after he arrived in the taxi.“He didn’t want to pleasure her, she was nothing more than a diversion on his trip,” Sfinas said. “That’s why he wanted to get in and get out. That’s why he told his taxi driver he’d only be a couple of minutes.”