By Sarah McPhee
Former NRL player Jarryd Hayne says he maintains his innocence “100 per cent” and is “pretty confident” of an appeal after the jury at his third trial found him guilty of sexually assaulting a woman in Newcastle on the night of the 2018 grand final.
Hayne, 35, pleaded not guilty to two counts of sexual intercourse without consent relating to a 26-year-old woman on September 30, 2018, when he was alleged to have assaulted her with his hands and mouth and left her bleeding from the genitals. The defence claimed the acts of digital penetration and oral sex were “entirely consensual”.
Walking from Sydney’s John Maddison Tower after the verdicts on Tuesday afternoon, hand in hand with his wife Amellia Bonnici, Hayne told the waiting media scrum he was “devastated” before he put one hand in his pocket and took a deep breath.
He said he maintained his innocence “100 per cent”.
“I never lied to the police, I never deleted evidence, I never hid witnesses, you do the math,” Hayne said.
Asked whether he had any remorse, Hayne repeated, “Did I lie? That’s factual evidence.”
Jarryd Hayne outside the John Maddison Tower on Tuesday.Credit: Nikki Short
Regarding any appeal of the decision, he replied, “we’re pretty confident, yeah”.
Following a week of deliberations, the jury of six men and six women sent their first note on Monday afternoon to say they were unable to reach a unanimous decision and were “seeking guidance on how to proceed”.
Judge Graham Turnbull, SC, acknowledged there had been lengthy discussions and that he did have the power to discharge them, but said he was required to ask them to persevere.
The judge repeated that direction on Tuesday morning, and on Tuesday afternoon the jury sent a second note indicating they remained deadlocked, and asked for clarification on whether “ignorance is a sufficient defence”.
Jarryd Hayne outside court on Tuesday with his wife Amellia Bonnici.Credit: Nikki Short
The judge responded that the short answer was “no”.
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”.
His wife leant forward in her seat as the verdicts were delivered, audibly crying and putting her head in her hands as she sat next to Hayne’s mother Jodie Hayne.
Hayne embraced his wife with his eyes closed as she cried during a brief adjournment after the verdicts.
The matter has been adjourned to Thursday for a detention application brought by the Crown. “The extension of bail is in no way an indication of the ultimate outcome,” the judge said.
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”.
Asked in his recorded evidence if he went to the woman’s house in Fletcher, an outer suburb of Newcastle, for “sex and sex only”, Hayne replied, “potentially sex”.
“Best-case scenario would obviously be having sex with her; worst case I would introduce myself and that was it,” he said.
After a bucks’ weekend of golfing, drinking, clubbing and paintball, Hayne arrived at 9.07pm, and left at 9.53pm. He had paid a taxi $550 to take him back to Sydney, where he was due to attend an event in Alexandria later that night, and told the driver he needed to stop at the address to collect a bag.
The court heard Hayne played his “go-to” songs on a laptop in the woman’s bedroom, including an Ed Sheeran cover of Oasis’ Wonderwall, before she noticed his taxi waiting outside. The Crown said this was a “defining moment” for the woman and dissolved the possibility of sex with Hayne.
After about 20 minutes, the taxi driver knocked on the door. The woman’s mother said she had been watching the grand final in the living room when Hayne, a two-time Dally M winner, caught the end and yelled out “Go the Roosters, I’m jealous” before he returned to the bedroom.
“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.
Crown prosecutor John Sfinas said Hayne tried to kiss the woman and “grabbed her by the face”, despite her moving up the bed and her protestations of “no” and “stop”.
The woman gave evidence Hayne was “rough and forceful”, and had pulled her pants off in one clean motion. Hayne said they had both tried to take the woman’s pants off, that she had “hopped to get them off”, and that during the acts she never told him to stop.
The Crown alleged Hayne then performed digital penetration and oral sex without consent, before she began bleeding, leaving blood on his hands and lip.
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”.
Jarryd Hayne arrives at court with his barrister Margaret Cunneen, SC.Credit: Oscar Colman
Another text read: “I know I’ve talked about sex and stuff so much, but I didn’t want to do that after knowing the taxi was waiting for you. I thought you would have at least stayed? I told my Mum you got a nosebleed, but I’m sitting here in my room crying because I feel weird.”
Hayne replied: “Go doctor tomorrow.”
The court heard the woman and Hayne exchanged a number of messages after the incident, including her telling him, he “should’ve just stopped when I said so”.
Hayne replied she was “starting to sound suss” and told the court he had been “fuming” as “she was starting to make up something that wasn’t true”.
The prosecutor submitted Hayne’s version – that “he did what he did to pleasure” the woman – was “implausible and lacks an air of reality”.
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.”
However, defence barrister Margaret Cunneen, SC, said the woman was “emotionally fragile”, had made up a “false story”, and Hayne was not guilty of the “dreadful allegations”.
“They kissed, they touched, and he tried to please her until something awkward and unexpected went wrong,” she said.
Police began investigating after the woman’s brother-in-law contacted Nine journalist Danny Weidler, who provided a contact for the NRL integrity unit.
The court heard the woman had deleted 22 messages to and from Hayne before handing her phone to police, including a text before his arrival, “Where are you, fool?”
Also missing were conversations with others including a man who was the sole witness called on the defence case. That man presented texts from the woman in which she said if he did not go and see her that day, she was “going to say yes to Jarryd Hayne coming here to hang out”.
Officers intercepted a number of Hayne’s calls, including to NRL player Mitchell Pearce on November 15, 2018, when he described the woman as a “full-blown weirdo” who was “filthy because a cab was out the front” and had “wigged out”. Hayne was charged four days later.
Hayne’s first trial ended in a hung jury in December 2020 after jurors at Newcastle District Court said they were unable to reach a unanimous or majority verdict. He was found guilty at his second trial, in Sydney, in March 2021 and spent nine months behind bars before his convictions were overturned on appeal.
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