Former Socceroo player stands trial on rape allegations
The former A-League defender has fronted a Sydney court charged with aggravated sexual assault in company.
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A former Socceroo is standing trial, defending allegations he and a friend sexually assaulted a woman at his Western Sydney apartment in 2018.
Ruon Tongyik, 28, appeared in the Downing Centre District Court on Wednesday dressed in a navy blue suit, and lowered his head as Crown Prosecutor Emma Curran delivered her opening address.
His co-accused Mardochee Manirakiza, a Western Australian man, also appeared in court, and sat alongside Mr Tongyik in the docks.
Both men have been charged with two counts each of sexual intercourse without consent.
They have both pleaded not guilty.
Police allege Mr Tongyik, and Mr Manirakiza, sexually assaulted a woman, by knowingly having non-consensual intercourse with her at Mount Druitt in Sydney’s west in November 2018.
In her opening remarks to the jury and Justice Lara Gallagher, Ms Curran alleged Mr Tongyik and the woman, who cannot be named due to legal reasons, began talking over social media in 2017, when Mr Tongyik was playing football for Melbourne City FC.
A year later, in November 2018, Mr Tongyik told the woman he had signed with the Western Sydney Wanderers and asked if she wanted to meet at his Mt Druitt unit, the court was told.
The crown alleges the woman attended and had drinks with Mr Tongyik, before having consensual sex.
Mr Tongyik’s friend and co-accused Mr Manirakiza then came over that same night and the three started taking multiple shots and playing truth of dare, the crown told the court.
After multiple shots, the woman says she blacked out and when she came to she was laying naked on a bed and the two men were allegedly sexually assaulting her, the crown alleges.
The crown alleges the woman said she told the men that “it hurt” and she had asked them to stop, but she was frozen and scared.
“It’s the crown case that the complainant was not capable of consenting to any of the acts of sexual intercourse due to her intoxication and the accused men knew she was not consenting,” Ms Curran said.
After the alleged incident, the woman said she went into the lounge room, and reached out to a friend to pick her up, and while waiting for a lift she began taking notes on her phone with details of the alleged assault and said she feared for her life.
The woman told her friend about the alleged assault and said she just wanted to go home.
Later that evening, the crown alleges, Mr Tongyik posted an image of him and his co accused to his private Instagram account with the caption: ‘tag team’, of which the woman took a screenshot.
The pair then stopped talking and the woman removed Mr Tongyik from all social media accounts.
In June 2020, Mr Tongyik was selected for the Australian Olympic Football team to compete at the Tokyo Olympics.
The woman became aware of his selection after watching news reports and took to Twitter to share a post which read: “Love finding out my rapist is representing Australia, even when he laughed about the incident at the time.”
Following the social media posts, the woman was asked by Mr Tongyik’s legal counsel to cease posting.
Shortly after, in October 2021, the woman reported the matter to police and made a formal statement.
Mr Tongyik was charged in August 2023, and his co-accused Mr Manirakiza was charged in March 2024.
Mr Tongyik declined an interview with police, however, Mr Manirakiza participated and told police the sex was consensual and that it was the woman who suggested they played truth or dare because she said they were “boring and watching TV - Football”.
He also told police that the Instagram post referring to the ‘tag team’ was a soccer reference given the two men had played together, and that it had nothing to do with the incident.
Defence Barrister Georgia Huxley argued in her opening submissions that the woman was a willing participant, and that while they do not dispute that the two men and the women were at the unit, they will be disputing the Crown’s allegations of what took place inside the unit.
“What is in dispute is what occurred inside the unit while she was there,” she told the court.
Ms Huxley also reminded the court that Mr Manirakiza did “his very best” to recount “each and every detail” of the night of the alleged offence, some six years after it took place.
In her submissions, Ms Huxley said they dispute the woman’s allegation that the trio were concurrently involved in having sex with the woman at any point in time.
Justice Gallagher also reminded the jury that they must be convinced of the crown’s case to find the accused guilty.
The Western Sydney Wanderers previously said Mr Tongyik had been stood down from the club on a no-fault interim suspension in light of the court proceedings.
He was signed with the club back in 2018, however left due to injury before resigning in 2022.
He also made two appearances with the Socceroos in 2021 during their bid for World Cup qualification.
Mr Ruon is not currently contracted to any club.
The trial is expected to run for roughly 10 days, Justice Gallagher said.
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Originally published as Former Socceroo player stands trial on rape allegations
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