Jack de Belin trial: Alleged rape victim recalled to stand

A woman accusing NRL star Jack de Belin of sexual assault has been recalled to the witness box to be asked whether she remembered referring to the footballer as “hot”.

A woman accusing an NRL star of sexual assault was recalled to the witness box on Monday to be asked whether she remembered referring to the footballer as “hot” on the night of her alleged ordeal.

The woman was made to reappear in court for just 20 minutes - five months after her last questioning.

The 21-year-old woman who says she was sexually assaulted by Jack de Belin, 30, and his mate Callan Sinclair, 24, gave evidence from a separate District Court room on Monday.

The Dragons forward and Sinclair have pleaded not guilty. They maintain they received consent before oral, vaginal and anal sex with the woman after dancing and drinking at a Wollongong nightclub on December 8, 2018.

St George Illawarra Dragons star Jack de Belin arrives for his trial at the Downing Centre in Sydney. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Christian Gilles

Callan Sinclair arrives for his trial at the Downing Centre in Sydney. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Christian Gilles

The jury has watched the woman be interviewed and cross-examined in pre-recorded interviews since Thursday last week.

Judge Nicole Noman SC allowed further questions to be put to the woman on “limited” evidence which was unavailable last November.

The court heard Jared Barnes claimed the woman told him she was attracted to de Belin.

“You said something like: ‘Have you guys seen that Jack de Belin is here? He is so hot’,” Barrister Sharyn Hall SC put to the woman.

“No, I don’t remember any of this conversation, so no,” the woman responded.

Ms Hall pressed, “You said those things to him that night because you had a sexual interest in him?”

She responded: “In my home town in Wollongong, everyone talks and makes up rumours. I don’t remember it, it didn’t happen.”

Ms Hall also asked the woman if she “lashed out” with her arms or legs to stop the men from assaulting her.

“My arms lashed out and grabbed the sheet when they grabbed my legs and tried to take my pants off...I lay there dead because I was so numb inside,” she told the court.

Earlier in the day, the woman in her pre-recorded interviews hit back at claims she “looked fondly” at him on the dancefloor.

The court was shown CCTV footage from the R&B section of Mr Crown nightclub when she met the NRL Dragons forward for the first time.

She was dancing, laughing and talking with a handful of people, including de Belin and Sinclair, in the four-minute video shown to the jury.

Defence Barrister David Campbell SC asked the woman, in a pre-recorded interview, if she remembered dancing, touching and cuddling de Belin.

“I could have, it’s a dance floor. I like to dance. It was two years ago,” she told the court, before she had watched the video.

She was asked if she looked “fondly into his eyes”.

“I was dancing, I was having fun. I’m a 19-yr-old girl. I’m allowed to go out and have a good dance...I’m allowed to be a 19-year-old girl,” she told the court.

She was also asked whether a ‘V’ symbol with her hands, meaning oral sex, that she was directed towards de Belin and Sinclair.

“I don’t know who it was directed at. It could have been the wall,” she responded, becoming impatient with the continued questioning.

The woman continued to reference her trauma, breaking down in tears telling the court: “All that matters is what happened in that unit…that’s what we’re here about”.

Mr Campbell pressed that she was lying about her versions of what happened that night, before she broke down again.

“Were you there? No you weren’t there,” she told Mr Campbell.

She apologised for not telling police earlier that she remembered de Belin’s “wet body” on her back.

“I’m not lying. I shouldn’t have to remember that. That’s what trauma does, it makes you remember things that have happened before,” she said.

“I remember them pinning me down and I said stop. I remember that. I remember them lifting my hips up. They put their penis’ inside me.”

She told the court: “Nothing was consensual that night”.

The trial continues.