Jarryd Hayne had ‘terrible’ sexual prowess but didn’t assault woman, jury told

“It caused her a lot of pain, discomfort and grief – and to be frank, his sexual prowess turned out to be terrible. It was terrible.”

Mr Boulten said it’s “not a big step” to then “convert that in your own mind, as the victim, to ‘he was nasty to me, he was uncaring towards me, he was forcing me into it’.”

“It was bad sex,” Mr Boulten said. “If there hadn’t been blood, though, it’s unlikely there’d be any complaint made against Jarryd Hayne of sexual assault. But the blood was completely consistent with an innocent intention on his part.”

Photos and a short video of the woman’s room, played to the jury, showed blood on the blankets, pillows and a towel. Mr Hayne told the court he got blood on his hands and lip, and the woman said blood was dripping down her legs.

Mr Boulten said he does not ask for special treatment for Mr Hayne, and the jury should treat him “the same as anybody else who’s not famous”.

“We don’t ask you to treat Jarryd Hayne as some sort of hero that needs to be acquitted because of that. Far from it,” Mr Boulten said

“Please don’t treat him differently because he’s a very good footballer. Nor should you convict him simply because you feel very very sad for [the woman].”

Mr Boulten said Mr Hayne has remained “100 per cent consistent” in his account, and the fact the woman told her version of events to three or four people doesn’t make it more likely to be true.

“It is no more than her word,” Mr Boulten said.

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He said when the jury stacks up the evidence, “a not guilty verdict is appropriate”.

In his closing statement on Wednesday, prosecutor Brian Costello said Mr Hayne left a buck’s party in Newcastle and travelled to the woman’s home at Fletcher, leaving a taxi waiting outside, for “one plain and obvious reason, the sex he thought he had been promised”.

Mr Costello said the woman was in a bad mood when she discovered the taxi, telling Mr Hayne she wasn’t interested in sex, and “nothing he did from that point would have redeemed him in her eyes” to the point she would have given consent.