The men hugged and shook hands after the not guilty verdict was delivered. They said nothing when they left court shortly afterwards with a large number of supporters.
Mr de Belin was the first NRL player to be stood down under the competition’s no-fault rule,where players charged with an offence carrying a maximum prison term of 11 years or more are automatically stood down until their court proceedings are finalised.
He has not played since the end of the 2018 season and following Monday’s decision the Dragons said Mr de Belin remained “subject to the NRL’s no-fault stand down policy”.
In her evidence in the trial,the woman said she met the men at a nightclub,Mr Crown,on the evening of December 8 and believed they were taking a bike taxi to another club,but instead they went to a unit in North Wollongong. She initially declined to go inside,she said,then went in to use the toilet.
The woman said that,while she was using the toilet,Mr de Belin walked into the en suite bathroom naked so she left the room. She said that when Mr de Belin emerged he undid her top,pushed her onto a bed and removed the rest of her clothing,then started “having sex with me” despite her saying “no”.
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“I couldn’t do anything about it,no one was listening to me,” the woman said. “I had tears coming out of my eyes instead ... by that time I was just going dead and numb inside.”
She said Mr Sinclair undressed and joined in,taking Mr de Belin’s place,before the pair swapped several times.
“They were both cheering each other on. Jack de Belin was going,‘Yeah Cal,keep going,’ ” the woman said.
“I was dead inside,I was numb,I was crying – that’s all I was doing,” she said. “Then they swapped over again.”
In a phone call played to the trial,Mr de Belin told his State of Origin teammate Angus Crichton that he was “not too worried” and was going to get off the charge,“it’s just that my image is tarnished” and his partner was pregnant.
He said he was baffled the woman went to police,because it had been a standard “bun” – a slang term for a threesome – and “she’s never once said ‘no’,never once not given consent”.
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Mr Sinclair told his mother in a recorded phone call that the “chick” was “hanging around us like a bad smell all night”. In another call,Mr de Belin told Mr Sinclair,“make sure you back yourself because you know for a fact we didn’t force sexual assault on her”.
In closing arguments,Crown prosecutor David Scully said the woman “was a compelling witness and you can believe her”.
He said Mr de Belin thought he could do whatever he wanted and was “leading the way in that bedroom”,with Mr Sinclair making “the wrong choice to join in”.
But Mr Sinclair’s barrister Sharyn Hall said the woman’s evidence was inaccurate and inconsistent,including being captured on CCTV “laughing uproariously” with Mr de Belin and Mr Sinclair following the alleged rape,at a time when she said she wanted to get away from them.
Ms Hall said the court was “not a court of morals” and jurors should put to one side their thoughts about threesomes,football players generally and the fact Mr de Belin cheated on his pregnant girlfriend.
Mr de Belin’s barrister David Campbell,SC,said there was a significant body of evidence contradicting the Crown case,and each man had “forcefully,emphatically,repeatedly – and consistently,most importantly – denied that there was anything untoward about what happened”.
“That is,everything that took place at those premises on that night was consensual.”
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