Jarryd Hayne has been jailed for a maximum four years and nine months for sexually assaulting a woman in her Newcastle home, but the former NRL player could be released in two years due to time already served.
Hayne was found guilty after a third trial on two counts of sexual intercourse without consent relating to non-consensual oral sex and the digital penetration of a 26-year-old woman on the night of the NRL grand final in 2018.
The 35-year-old appeared via video link in Sydney’s Downing Centre District Court on Friday, with a shaved beard and in a prison green T-shirt, for his sentence before Judge Graham Turnbull.
The judge said Hayne, knowing the woman was not consenting, “overwhelmed her in an inherently unequal context and an indulgence of physical power to achieve some sexual gratification”.
Turnbull set a maximum term of four years and nine months’ imprisonment, with a non-parole period of three years.
The sentence was backdated to account for time Hayne had already spent in custody and under onerous conditions on remand, meaning he will be eligible for release from May 2025.
“Say no more,” Hayne replied.
The judge noted Hayne “maintains his innocence”, and, as a result, “expresses no contrition or remorse”.
The trial heard Hayne and the woman had been talking for almost two weeks on platforms including Instagram and Snapchat, exchanging “flirty” messages and photos, before he arrived at her home in Fletcher at 9.07pm on September 30, 2018.
Leaving a $550 taxi waiting outside and a half-drunk Vodka Cruiser on the mailbox, Hayne told the driver he needed to collect a bag. Inside the woman’s bedroom, Hayne played his “go-to” songs on a laptop, including an Ed Sheeran cover of Oasis’ Wonderwall.
The Crown case was that the possibility of sex evaporated for the woman when she became aware of the waiting taxi, after a beep of its horn or a knock at the door.
The judge said the complainant had been “open to something sexual happening if it happened in the right way”, but her “heart dropped” and she felt Hayne was there for “one thing”, telling her mother, “there’s no way I’m about to have sex with him”.
Crown prosecutor John Sfinas submitted Hayne engendered fear into the victim, who weighed 48 kilograms compared with Hayne’s 104 kilograms, and was motivated by his own sexual gratification.
Hayne, in his evidence, said: “I knew she didn’t want to have sex; I thought I’d just please her and that was it.” But the judge noted, on Hayne’s own account, “he places her hand on his crotch”.
The judge said the jury must have rejected Hayne’s account as true or possibly true, and must have accepted the complainant’s account.
In her evidence, the woman said Hayne grabbed her pants and “pulled them off in one go”, was rough and forceful and performed the acts despite her saying “no” and “stop”, leaving her bleeding.
“The offending only stopped when the bleeding commenced,” Turnbull said. “He did not relent voluntarily.”
Hayne left the home at 9.53pm. In response to the woman’s texts that she was “hurting” and “didn’t want to do that”, he said, “go doctor tomorrow”.
The now 30-year-old woman, in a victim impact statement, said her life had been “launched into what feels like a never-ending nightmare”, including going through three trials in under five years.
“I have not been able to move on or feel any sense of peace,” she said.
“I am stronger, and I am wiser, but I am damaged, and I won’t ever be the same person.”
She found discussion on social media and reporting “extremely difficult to handle”, and said people speak about the private, horrible sexual assault “like they were there”.
The judge said: “These remarks on sentence and the imposition of this penalty should not obscure the fact that there was a young woman here who was dealt with criminally by this offender.”
Defence barrister Margaret Cunneen, SC, had argued Hayne was a “very different man” since the “hiatus” in the relationship with his now wife Amellia Bonnici, with whom he shares three children.
“Mr Hayne has a very steady, dependable, loving relationship and a cohesive family unit,” she said.
She said Hayne, a two-time Dally M Medal winner who played for the Parramatta Eels and Gold Coast Titans, was publicly vilified, experienced an “extraordinary loss” from his “stellar rugby league career”, and still faced the prospect of being stripped of his achievements.
Bonnici previously told the court the family had been living off Hayne’s savings.
Hayne’s first trial ended in a hung jury and the convictions reached by a second jury in 2021 were quashed on appeal. He was released from Cooma Correctional Centre in February 2022 and faced a third trial in Sydney.
His bail was revoked in the Supreme Court 10 days after the guilty verdicts, and he has since been held on remand in Silverwater prison, isolated from other inmates.
The judge expects Hayne to receive his prisoner classification within days and be returned to Cooma jail, where high-profile inmates are housed.
Turnbull said he considered Hayne to be “well on the way to rehabilitation”, noting his commitment to his Christian faith, devotion to his family and change of attitude towards alcohol, and found him a low risk of reoffending.
Hayne’s lawyers have indicated an intention to appeal against the verdicts.
Replies
I feel very sorry for Jarryd by reason of him once again receiving such a harsh sentence in the circumstances of being a dickhead . The moral of his story is catch a Uber and not a taxi to have a sex so as to prevent consent being withdrawn. LOL
True that Driza ......very harsh sentence in my small Op. As if she didnt know what she was doing her own Mother was in the lounge SMH. What a cautionary tale though....what coould have been for a guy who had once in a generation talent. If he had pricey's heart and work ethic Jarryd could have been anything even an immortal.
Wonder what the woke Fwits at the NRL are going to do now have some stripping of awards ceremony with a group of femminsts at NRL central ....who knows.....Crazy fall from grace through.....
PS does anybody want a hardly worn San Francisco 49ers Jersey .......lol
Might want to read the part of the article where Hayne admits knowing she didn't want to have sex with him.
What do you think sex means to most adults ? A rub is not sex . The issue was whether or not she consented to him rubbing her , not having sex. Jarryd was quite right with admitting she did not want sex however took issue with her version of not consenting to him rubbing her . Different things . Anyway he was a dickhead going there hoping to get a quicky.
Well he didn't have sex with her . So that's kinda irrelevant. I don't know about you , but I don't think I've ever asked for permission to go down on a woman. I've just followed her lead , so if she didn't say " no please don't go down on me " then it gets a bit grey . My wife has had the shits plenty of times and said I'm not getting a root , but once I've pants her she will very much so let me go the growl which will lead to a root .
Im guess Jarryd backed himself to turn it around with his crooning and tounge lashings
He didn't 'have sex' with her pursuant to the normal understanding of that phrase.
Different things. Hayne said he knew she didn't want to have sex. The common meaning of that is inter course so that's not an admission of guilt.
Of course if digital penetration without consent is established that is rape.
I've been involved in a few similar cases in my capacity as a lawyer and I have to say it seems a strange one. Withdrawel of consent cases, especially those not involving actual intercourse are very hard to establish and you usually need extensive corroborating evidence. I can't say I've seen any such evidence in any of the reports of the case I've seen.
Are you suggesting based on your experience a Lawyer that Hayne could be innocent?
I'm saying that it seems an odd case to get a conviction on from my observations of the case. Admittedly I wasn't in the courtroom at any stage.
Thanks
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