phone taps record accused talking about thenight

A “bun” is a term used in rugby league circles for group sex.

“I’m not too worried … I’m going to get off, it’s just that my image is tarnished, like my missus as well is f—en pregnant,” Mr de Belin could be heard saying to Crichton, who told him, “the worst part of it is your missus hearing about it.”

In several phone taps played to the jury trial against the pair before the NSW District Court in Wollongong on Wednesday, the St George Illawarra forward could be heard urging Mr Sinclair to tell the truth about the incident as neither were guilty of raping her.

It comes as the former lead investigator in the case admitted to lying to the court about legally protected material he accessed on Mr de Belin’s phone.

Mr de Belin, 29, and Mr Sinclair, 23, have both pleaded not guilty to multiple counts of aggravated sexual assault over allegations they raped a 19-year-old woman in a Wollongong apartment in the early hours of December 9, 2018.

They both claim to have had consensual sex with the woman, whom they met at a nearby bar earlier.

In a conversation with his cousin Jake Lewis, whose apartment he and Mr Sinclair had taken the woman back to, Mr de Belin said his girlfriend Alyce Taylor was “angry and skitz at me” when he had told her he had cheated and that he didn’t know the woman “from a bar of soap”.

In a conversation with his sister, he agreed when she suggested the scenario was “maybe a bit of a wake-up call for you”.

“Oh massive mate. It’s really given me a kick up the arse,” he replied.

In a phone call between Mr de Belin and Mr Sinclair, the latter was discussing advice from a lawyer before saying, “I’d rather just tell the truth, wouldn’t you?”

Mr de Belin replied, “It was consensual sex and she never got raped, she never told us at any point to stop.”

Mr Sinclair said, “it’s not like we’re trying to get our story straight, what happened happened” before listing an order of events inside the bedroom of the apartment to Mr de Belin.

Mr de Belin told Mr Sinclair, a Shellharbour Sharks player, that if police contacted him, “make sure you tell the truth.”

In a phone call with his mother, Mr Sinclair said the woman was with them at the North Wollongong Hotel before bumping into them again at nightclub Mr Crown.

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“She was hanging around us like a bad smell, she was flirting, blah blah … all that kind of shit,” he said, adding that she had gone back out with them to another bar following the incident and ordered the Uber.

“If you just got raped by someone you wouldn’t go back out with them would you?”

To his brother, Mr Sinclair said, “the only thing she was upset about afterwards was that Jack had a girlfriend … then she just snapped out of it, it was weird as f—.”

Earlier during the proceedings, Detective Senior Constable Shawn Adams admitted to accessing legally privileged messages on Mr de Belin’s phone then lying to the court about knowing messages between the footballer and a lawyer were to do with the rape case.

But Senior Detective Adams denied he then used the confidential messages to undermine the footballer’s defence or that he spoke to Mr de Belin’s accuser about the content of those messages.

Mr de Belin’s barrister David Campbell SC put to the detective:”You were looking through that material … in the hope that there may be in that material something that could undermine the defence of Mr de Belin, correct?”

The officer replied: “Incorrect.”

Senior Detective Adams also denied burying accounts that did not fit the accuser’s story, but admitted he failed to disclose inconsistencies in the woman’s narrative before the trial against Mr de Belin and Mr Sinclair began.

The evidence in the Crown case against the pair has concluded but the trial continues.