Ex-top Darwin rugby league player found not guilty of historical child sex offences

A former top Darwin rugby league player charged with historical sex offences has been acquitted on all charges.

UPDATE: A FORMER top Darwin rugby league player charged with historical sex offences has been acquitted on all charges after facing trial in the Supreme Court.

The man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was found not guilty of five counts of allegedly physically and sexually assaulting a six-year-old boy in the early 2010s.

In his opening address last week, Crown prosecutor Steve Ledek said the alleged abuse occurred while the man was in a relationship with the boy’s mother, and he would wait until her back was turned before preying upon her son.

Mr Ledek said the man used his hulking “physical presence, his imposing bulk” as well as violence and threats to force the boy to perform sex acts on him.

“(He) would come into (the boy’s) room when (his mother) was either out, in the bathroom, downstairs, or elsewhere, and he would try and force, or he would force (himself on him),” he said.

“On some occasions (the boy) would fight back, punch him in the testicles, hit him in the stomach — fight back — every time he’d be overpowered.

“He’d either be grabbed by the shirt, or he’d be thrown, or he’d be pushed back on the bed or he’d be otherwise physically controlled.”

But it took jurors in the trial just over two hours to deliver not guilty verdicts on all charges.

EARLIER: A FORMER top Darwin rugby league player has faced the first day of his trial in the Supreme Court for a string of alleged historical child sex offences.

The man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, pleaded not guilty to five charges of allegedly physically and sexually assaulting a six-year-old boy in the early 2010s.

In his opening address on Monday, Crown prosecutor Steve Ledek said the alleged abuse occurred while the man was in a relationship with the boy’s mother, and he would wait until her back was turned before preying upon her son.

Mr Ledek said the man used his hulking “physical presence, his imposing bulk” as well as violence and threats to force the boy to perform sex acts on him.

“(He) would come into (the boy’s) room when (his mother) was either out, in the bathroom, downstairs, or elsewhere, and he would try and force, or he would force (himself on him),” he said.

“On some occasions (the boy) would fight back, punch him in the testicles, hit him in the stomach — fight back — every time he’d be overpowered.

“He’d either be grabbed by the shirt, or he’d be thrown, or he’d be pushed back on the bed or he’d be otherwise physically controlled.”

Mr Ledek said it was about six years later, when the boy was 12, that he finally told his mother about the abuse.

“That was the first time that she ever heard that something like this had happened to her son and within the space of about four weeks of that disclosure or that revelation they were in a police station talking to police,” he said.

Mr Ledek said the allegations emerged after the boy’s mother took in a foster child who had “problems with the rules”.

“There was a conversation between (the boy) and his mother about why this young foster child was getting away with the bending of the rules,” he said.

“She told him that there were traumas in the foster child’s life that made it difficult for him to obey the simple things that he would, and it was at that point that (his mother) found out that her son had gone through trauma as well.

“He said ‘His trauma? What about my trauma?’ and that’s when it came out.”

The man’s lawyer, Shane McMaster, did not make an opening address to the jury and the trial continues before Justice John Burns on Tuesday.