A high-profile Sydney man threatened to use footage of a woman naked “against” her after she told a mutual friend he had raped and assaulted her, a court has heard.
“The accused called me and said that, [I] don’t know specific words, but that if I keep saying things like I did … to Steph[a friend] then he had footage of me naked that he would use against me,” the woman, known as complainant five, told the court.
Asked by crown prosecutor Adrian Robertson how the complainant felt when the man said that to her, she said: “Guilty and sort of upset. Worried and scared.”
The woman is the fifth complainant of six to appear before the New South Wales Downing Centre district court in a trial expected to last 10 weeks.
The man, who Guardian Australia cannot name due to a suppression order, is facing trial after pleading not guilty to 12 charges – which include six counts of rape – alleged to have occurred over a six-year period against six women on separate occasions. He’s also facing a charge of threatening to distribute an intimate video of complainant five.
The crown is arguing the man had a tendency to carry out sexual conduct with usually much younger women, knowing that they did not consent or that he was reckless to their consent.
The man’s defence argues there was sex with the five women who have alleged he raped them. However, his defence argues, the sex was consensual, “not in the circumstances alleged by the crown”, and that the complainants “admired the accused, even idolised him”.
The woman told the court she had a friendship with the man that at times was “intimate”, which involved consensual sex.
On the occasion the complainant – who was then 29 – alleges he raped her, she had been at a party and after exchanging texts with the accused, he picked her up in his car and took her to his home, the court heard. Once there, she went upstairs to his bedroom because he had a meeting downstairs, and locked her in the bedroom, she alleges.
The complainant told the court the man came to the room to check on her. He also gave her a glass pipe with a substance in it.
Complainant five told the court that he approached her from behind and without removing her underwear “put himself inside me, he started having sex with me from behind”.
She told the court, after questioning by the crown, she did not consent. Asked if she said anything, she said she didn’t know, later adding, “I was in shock because I didn’t realise it was going to happen.”
The complainant continued to have a friendship with the man after the alleged rape. She slept in his bed with him on one occasion and the pair were not intimate. They then had sex on another occasion when he paid for her and another friend to visit Sydney.
“Why did you have sex on that evening after what he had done earlier to you in the year?” asked Robertson.
“I don’t know,” she responded. “It was almost, I guess, feeling like that’s what could’ve made things better. I don’t know, that he wanted to do that, to make him happy, to keep him happy as well, I guess.”
On the same visit, she said the accused had become “angry” with her and she said she went to his house “to understand what had happened and why he was so angry” and they drank wine and spent time together.
The next morning, after they had slept in a bed together, she said she awoke to construction noise and gave “a little laugh because it was really annoying” and he then grabbed her by the throat. The man has not been charged over this allegation.
“All I can remember is that he grabbed me by my throat and I was on the floor,” she told the court. “I started to become very scared. Very frightened, I started sort of hysterically crying.”
She told the court she then got up to leave, he was yelling at her and at one point yanked a necklace off her neck that he had bought for her during the trip.
At a later date, the complainant told a mutual friend about what happened and the occasion she alleges he raped her. After the accused found out, she said he threatened to use an intimate video “against” her, her then boyfriend went to the accused’s house, she said.
The complainant told the court that her boyfriend and the accused had a fight and that he “had got the video deleted”.
Charges were laid against her boyfriend after he went to the accused’s house, the complainant told the court. It was not heard what those charges were.
She then went to a police station after her boyfriend was charged to explain that “it was a big story” and the accused had “threatened and assaulted and raped” her. She didn’t make a formal statement about the alleged rape on this occasion.
The complainant was asked if she was aware an intimate recording had been made of her. She said she was aware of one where she was with other women and she “might have not had a top on”.
Later in questioning by the crown, she was asked about videos police located after she had reported the incident that depicted “sexual acts” during an occasion she had consensual sex with the accused.
“Were you aware that these recordings were being made?” Robertson asked.
“No,” she responded.
She told the court that after she had made a formal statement to the police, the accused sent her a message asking if she thought that he was a rapist, and then saying, “I’m no rapist”.
She responded to the message, the court heard: “I guess the time I was locked in your room I was unsure whether that was entirely consensual.”
“Why use those words?” Robertson asked about her response.
“Because I didn’t trust this person, I didn’t know what [he] would do with my words.”
The trial continues, and complainant five remains under questioning by the crown.
