By Sarah McPhee
Kurtley Beale’s barrister has labelled his sexual assault accuser a “manipulative woman” who threw the Wallabies player under the bus with a false allegation amid problems in her own relationship.
Margaret Cunneen, SC, delivered her closing address for the defence case to the jury of seven women and five men on Thursday afternoon. Beale, 35, has pleaded not guilty to sexual intercourse without consent and two counts of sexual touching.
Wallabies player Kurtley Beale arrives at Downing Centre District Court on Thursday to hear closing addresses in his sexual assault trial.Credit: Rhett Wyman
Prosecutors allege Beale groped a 28-year-old woman’s buttock in the Beach Road Hotel on December 17, 2022, forced her to perform oral sex in the men’s bathrooms and grabbed her by the hips and spun her around. The defence argues the sexual act inside the cubicle was consensual.
Cunneen began her final remarks by noting sexual assault was a dreadful and abhorrent crime and there were three “terrible, serious allegations” levelled at Beale, but said “what is also terrible … is a false allegation of sexual assault”.
“A false allegation made to try to change the dynamic in one’s own difficult time of life,” she said. “That is what has happened in this case.”
Kurtley Beale outside court with his barrister Margaret Cunneen, SC.Credit: Peter Rae
She said the woman’s fiance, who was also at the pub that night, had been “suffering” amid an ongoing argument between the couple.
“I don’t shrink from suggesting that [the complainant] is a manipulative woman who curated circumstances of the night to turn the tables, to turn herself into a victim,” Cunneen said.
“And to become someone everyone had to feel sorry for and support.”
The woman’s fiance agreed under cross-examination that the couple had a rough week, and it was the “lowest point” in their relationship, but disagreed that it had been “make or break”.
“But for the situation in their relationship, we wouldn’t be here,” Cunneen said, adding that Beale had been “thrown under the proverbial bus”.
She submitted that the woman’s family would not “cross-examine” or question their loved one about her allegation, but rather would “just accept it”.
“But, ladies and gentlemen, you are not in that position. You are not here as relatives or friends ... you are judges,” the barrister said.
The woman told her sister and future mother-in-law that Beale had followed her into the bathroom.
“She was desperate,” Cunneen said. “She had to get the relationship back on track.”
Cunneen said “thank goodness” for the CCTV, which showed Beale entering the bathroom first.
“If it was the old days, what would we have? We would probably have set in stone ... the false account that he followed her into the toilets,” she said.
Cunneen said the woman was “laughing” one minute after she alleges she was groped by Beale in the main bar.
“You wouldn’t accept that any woman of her maturity, worldliness, would follow this actively dangerous person who’s brazenly criminally assaulted her in a public place ... into a space that was separated from the crowd,” she said.
“She only goes in there because, for some reason, she wants to be on her own with that man.”
Cunneen claimed the woman had been “flirting” with Beale and the CCTV captured the “flavour of the night”, including the woman grabbing Beale’s cap off his head, showing him photographs of his wedding as she said she had liked his suit for her own nuptials, and touching him when he came to talk to her and her fiance after being in the bathroom.
She also addressed a phone call between Beale and the woman one month later, recorded by police, during which the rugby union star was confronted with the allegations and repeatedly apologised.
“Not anywhere in that call does he concede or agree that on the night he thought she wasn’t consenting,” the barrister said. “As he says, ‘I thought it was on’.”
She said the woman had been able to “powerfully suggest a scenario to Mr Beale” in the call.
Earlier on Thursday, Crown prosecutor Jeff Tunks said Beale had responded to the woman’s accusations in the call “without seeking clarification” and made “direct admissions to specific acts”.
He said the jury may think Beale sounded “contrite” and “aware of the gravity of the situation”.
The prosecutor said it was for the jury to consider whether Beale had a guilty conscience.
In her address, Cunneen said, “of course there’s a guilty conscience”.
“His wife knows what’s going on in the telephone call. If you’re looking for a guilty conscience, of course you’ll find it,” she said.
“A guilty conscience about something done that’s not ideal in marriage is nothing to do with a guilty mind for a serious criminal offence.”
The trial continues before Judge Graham Turnbull in Sydney’s Downing Centre District Court.