Doyalson: A drunk teen falsely accused servo attendant of sexual assault

A drunk, young blonde turned a Halloween graveyard shift into a nightmare for one poor servo manager who she falsely reported to police for sexual assault after he rejected her amorous advances.

A young woman, 19, who cannot be named for legal reasons, has pleaded guilty to making a false report that a Metro Doyalson service station manager sexually assaulted her when in fact she came onto him and he refused her advances. Picture: supplied

From the outset it looked like an open and shut case of a middle aged service station manager taking advantage of a drunken teenager less than half his age.

But thanks to the recovery of lost CCTV footage the service station manager has avoided a criminal conviction while the young femme fatale is facing jail.

The woman, 19, faced Wyong Local Court on Wednesday where she pleaded guilty to one count of making a false statement to police with the intent of subjecting another person to an investigation.

An agreed set of facts states the teenager had been at a Halloween party on October 30, 2022, when she was dropped off by a party bus at Blue Haven.

Having drunk “half a bottle of vodka” she was heavily intoxicated and set off walking towards Doyalson when she noticed her mobile phone battery was nearly flat.

The young woman, 19, who cannot be named for legal reasons, has pleaded guilty to making a false report. Picture: supplied

She stopped at the Metro service station on the Pacific Highway about 4am and asked if the attendant could charge it for her before using the toilet.

From there, the court heard, the narrative split in two diametrically opposite directions.

The Metro service station on the Pacific Highway at Doyalson. Picture: Google

She would later tell police the then 42-year-old manager invited her into the back storeroom where they sat down and he started touching her legs, waist and thighs before another customer came in and he had to serve at the counter.

She told police she grabbed her phone, went into the bathroom and called her mother “in distress”.

The then 18-year-old reported the matter to Toukley police the following day with police visiting the service station where they obtained CCTV showing the pair going into the storeroom together.

Police believed they had a slam dunk case when the CCTV showed the man “stroke his genitalia area for approximately 11 seconds shortly after the incident”.

The woman outside Wyong Local Court. Picture: supplied

The man was charged with sexual touching and released on bail.

When he was shown footage of him stroking himself he said “I was scratching, I was wearing tight jeans”.

The young woman pleaded guilty in Wyong Local Court. Picture: News Local.

All along he maintained he was innocent and that she came onto him but the CCTV camera from inside the storeroom — which would have proved his innocence — was either not working or the footage was lost before it could be recovered.

He pleaded not guilty and hired a lawyer at a cost of $6000 who represented him at a hearing on October 16 last year.

Luckily in the interim he managed to recover the storeroom footage and the charge was withdrawn and dismissed.

Having viewed the missing CCTV footage police then dragged the woman in for a “please explain” and she maintained the signed statements she gave the day after the incident, and again a month later, were “correct recollections”.

The facts state that was until they played the missing CCTV which showed her “mount the [man’s] lap and proceed to dry hump and thrust against his body”.

The footage showed the woman was the amorous one who grabbed hold of the back of his neck, kissed him passionately and “continued to latch on and not let go” for about 10 minutes as he tried to wriggle out from under her.

The young woman will be sentenced in May. Picture: supplied

When he eventually managed to escape to the front counter, the footage showed she “gets up, readjusts her skirt and smiles” before calmly collecting her mobile phone and goes to the bathroom.

Meanwhile the poor servo manager was captured on the other CCTV “scratching” and rearranging himself in his tight jeans.

“The accused watched part of the footage before informing police she did not wish to watch it any more,” the facts state.

Police put it to her that her statements didn’t match the footage and she replied “yeah”.

“Police further asked the accused ‘do you agree that this goes on for a prolonged period where you are sitting on him and the video actually looks like in the end he is trying to push you off him but you maintain contact with him and don’t let that happen?’,” the facts state, to which she again replied “yeah”.

On Thursday her Legal Aid solicitor told the court the woman was “heavily intoxicated” and meant no “ill will” in making the false report, which was “more of a mistake”.

However Magistrate Robert Munro said the man was charged as a result, put on bail conditions for a year and no doubt “subjected to public humiliation”.

Mr Munro ordered she undergo a sentencing assessment report.

“It’s not necessarily saying the Section 5 [jail threshold] has been crossed but I want to know more about her,” he said before adjourning her to May 15 for sentence.

Incredibly, thanks to a quirk of NSW’s legal system which prevents the identification of a complainant of a prescribed sexual offence, the woman cannot be named.

That is despite the sexual offence being a complete fabrication, for which she now has pleaded guilty.