Plane crash: Jarryd Hayne’s fall from NRL superstar to jailbird

Once rugby league‘s most electrifying star, Jarryd Hayne is now facing jail time — the first footballer from either of the two major winter codes to be convicted of sexual assault.

Jarryd Hayne and his wife, Amelia Bonnici, leave the Downing Centre in Sydney on Monday after he as found guilty of sexual intercourse without consent. Picture: Christian Gilles

Once rugby league’s most electrifying star, the western Sydney kid whose pure athletic brilliance rocketed him to the top of the NRL is a convicted rapist facing a certain term of imprisonment.

At the heart of Jarryd Hayne’s trial — a harrowing six-month process that had to be restarted when a previous jury was deadlocked — was the issue transfixing the nation: consent.

He is the first footballer from either of the two major winter codes — the NRL and AFL — to be convicted of sexual assault.

Judge Helen Syme said he would be going to jail.

Hayne said he was not guilty of the two counts of sexual assault and would appeal.

Outside court on Monday, an emotional Hayne, flanked by his new wife Amellia Bonnici, the pair just married over summer, said he would “definitely appeal”.

“I’d rather go to jail knowing I spoke the truth than be a free man living a lie,” Hayne said.

In court, he had sought to argue that the highly sexualised Instagram flirtation he conducted with a 26-year-old Newcastle woman led him to believe she would consent to sex even when he arrived at her house late one evening for their first meeting, drunk and having asked a taxi driver to wait outside.

The woman‘s evidence was resolute: she might have told Hayne she imagined “f..king” him but she did not want it to be like that.

She described Hayne ripping off her clothing and performing digital and oral sex on her, even after she said no.

She described how, afterwards, Hayne washed blood from his face while she stood in a shower, watching bloody water running down the drain.

The woman said she was not sure ”whether he bit me or cut me” on the genitals.

Hayne testified he must have accidentally cut her with his ­finger.

Hayne’s lawyers painted her as a woman scorned: Richard Pontello SC told the jury in his closing address that the woman was shocked by the injuries, “which then leads to the complainant falsely convincing herself retrospectively that she didn’t consent … In her mind, it’s not lying.”

Yet as the prosecution and the woman made clear, a taxi waiting outside the house changed everything.

Crown prosecutor Brian Costello said the woman made a “conscious and definitive ­decision” she was not willing to consent to sexual activity when she realised Hayne had the taxi waiting.

Jarryd Hayne playing for the Parramatta Eels in 2018. Picture: AAP

The woman said when she heard that taxi beeping for Hayne outside her bedroom window, she stated there was “no way” she was going to consent to sex “Like my heart dropped because I felt like he had only come there for one thing,” she said.

“Like why would you get (the taxi driver) to wait outside for you for 20 minutes? I felt saddened because I felt like he must have only seen me in one type of way.”

She said the presence of the taxi made her feel “like absolute crap” and “sad and stupid for flirting with him to start”.

After 18 hours of deliberations, the jury found Hayne not guilty of both counts of aggravated sexual intercourse without consent ­inflicting actual bodily harm but guilty of two alternative counts of sexual intercourse without consent.

Judge Syme told the former NRL star a custodial sentence was “inevitable” and he was facing a maximum sentence of 14 years.

At the earlier hearing, which resulted in the jury being discharged after being unable to reach a verdict, Hayne’s former barrister, Philip Boulten SC, ­described the encounter as nothing more than “bad sex” that had accidentally resulted in blood being spilt.

He said Hayne could have cut the woman accidentally with his finger.

“Well, it was bad sex,” Mr Boulten told the earlier jury. “(The woman) was upset about her injuries and that’s why we’re really all here.’’

An intercepted phone call between Hayne and current league star Mitchell Pearce, recorded on November 15, 2018, four days before Hayne’s arrest, proved he did not rape her, Mr Boulten said.

In the call, Hayne told Pearce: “She was just sending me all these, all these nude snaps, bro, on Snapchat ... wanting to link up, link up; said, ‘Yeah, yeah.’

“Then I was in Newie, I was like, oh, I’ll pop in on the way home. So I did that and then f..k, she was filthy ’cause the cab was out the front.

“I said, ’Oh well, mate, I’m only going to be here for, you know, (laughs) a short time.

“She just wigged out ... we were just fooling around and she like, she like bled a little bit. It was weird. Then, then she just wigged.

Mitchell Pearce. Picture: Getty Images

“I said, ‘Listen, nah, you’re sweet.’ I said, ‘F..k’ my, like my fingernail must have clipped you, that’s all.

“I was like, ‘Oh, OK, I’d better go now,’ rah rah rah. And then she was just like filthy that I left her there. (Laughs) I was like, what the f..k?”

In 2018, during the NRL’s “off-season from hell”, Hayne was charged with sexual assault, as was Dragons star player Jack De Belin.

De Belin is currently sidelined for the game because of the NRL’s no-fault stand down policy.

The rape allegations triggered the National Rugby League to implement the stand-down ­policy (whereby players on charges of serious crimes involving women and children are automatically ruled out of the game until they prove their innocence).

The NRL also started a cultural review that has been overseen by professor Megan Davis and its findings are expected to be released within the next month.

While the NRL moves to overhaul their culture, the AFL continues to let a footballer on a sexual assault charge play: Collingwood’s Jordan De Goey took the field last weekend in the opening round of the season.

It has been a shocking fall for the superstar known as the Hayne Plane. He dominated rugby league for many years, winning the Dally M medal twice and playing briefly for the San Francisco 49ers in the US National Football League.

There have now been 29 cases involving 59 professional AFL and NRL footballers relating to sexual assault. Not one has been convicted until now.

Hayne will face a sentencing hearing on May 6 in Newcastle District Court.

Jarryd Hayne in 2016 during his stint with the San Francisco 49ers. Picture: Getty Images