By Sarah McPhee
Warning: Graphic content
A woman allegedly gang raped during a buck’s weekend was sobbing as she told her flatmate what had happened, and called triple zero to say she had been pulled into an apartment and pushed onto a bed before multiple men appeared in the room, a jury has been told.
Andrew David, 30, and brothers Maurice Hawell, 30, and Marius Hawell, 22, have pleaded not guilty to multiple counts of aggravated sexual assault in company, attempting to commit aggravated sexual assault in company and aggravated sexual touching, allegedly committed during a getaway for Maurice at an Airbnb in Newcastle West in February 2022.
Maurice Hawell outside Downing Centre District Court on Tuesday.Credit: Kate Geraghty
Prosecutors allege two 18-year-old women were attacked on the Friday night, and a 19-year-old woman on the Saturday night, and that the men acted in a joint criminal enterprise.
In his closing address, Crown prosecutor Craig Evans said Maurice Hawell, using the fake name “Jonathan”, approached the third complainant outside the apartment and persuaded her to come inside for drinks.
He said the woman was “feeling scared and anxious” and was pushed onto a bed by Maurice Hawell before she saw another man, who the Crown alleges was David, laying facedown next to the bed.
The prosecutor said “Jonathan” had said, “Threesome?” and the complainant replied, “What? No.’”
Andrew David has pleaded not guilty to the gang rape of three women.Credit: Dean Sewell
Evans said the two men were “looking to take advantage of an opportunity to turn this into group sex” and knew the woman was not consenting to what followed but decided to “go ahead anyway”.
“Both were present when [she] says ‘no’,” he said.
He alleged Marius Hawell entered the room and committed an act or acts “encouraging this conduct”.
The woman gave evidence she had tried to keep her legs closed, but they were “forced open”.
The jury has been asked to consider whether the door was locked, and if so, by whom.
The prosecutor said the complainant spent 14 minutes and 40 seconds inside and “rushed out of the place and put [her] pants on backwards”. He said she was sobbing when she spoke to her flatmate.
Evans said the flatmate gave evidence he had “asked her if she was able to get out of where she was before anything bad happened” and “she replied, ‘No.’”
“I asked her if she’d be OK with calling the police, and she said she would,” the man said, according to the prosecutor.
Evans took the jury to the woman’s triple zero call, in which she told the operator that the man “pulled me up the stairs” and they went to a room and he “pushed me onto the bed”.
“A few seconds later, there was a naked guy on the right of the bed [who] jumped on as well,” the complainant said.
She said two more men came into the room including one on his phone, and she had asked him if he was filming, to which he allegedly replied, “Don’t worry about it”.
The woman told the operator her pants were pulled off and multiple sexual acts occurred.
In her evidence, she said a man on top of her and the person who walked into the room were “speaking in another language”.
Marius Hawell is accused of acting in a joint criminal enterprise with two men including his older brother.Credit: Rhett Wyman
In his closing address, Marius Hawell’s barrister Scott Corish said the Crown was “attempting to cast the net very widely” and “get the little fish, the younger fish”, but his client’s invite to his older brother’s buck’s weekend did not make him part of any joint criminal enterprise.
“No one actually points and says Marius Hawell inserted any part of his body into any part of their body,” he said, arguing the jury could “never be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that he’s a rapist”.
David’s barrister Sharyn Hall, SC, said the jury may take a “dim view of a bunch of young men, at least one of whom is about to be married” having a weekend of “sex and booze”, and may feel “sorry for the women who came into their orbit”, but a criminal trial is not a moral judgment, and the Crown must prove its case beyond reasonable doubt.
She said the first and second complainant left The Cambridge Hotel on the Friday night to have consensual sexual activity inside the apartment.
“The complainants acted in a way that Mr David understood to mean they were consenting,” Hall said.
The court has heard the first woman initially told police she had consented, but later said she lied because she did not want to go through the court process and wanted to forget it.
Maurice Hawell’s barrister Richard Pontello, SC, will deliver a closing address on Wednesday.
The trial continues before Judge Gina O’Rourke.
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