Two-time NRL player of the year Jarryd Hayne was sentenced to five years and nine months in prison on Thursday after he was found guilty of raping a woman in 2018. Hayne, 33, was convicted for two counts of sexual intercourse without consent with the possibility of a reduced sentence of at least three years and eight months.
Newcastle district court judge Helen Syme said Hayne has to face jail time because the community expected courts to take such actions very seriously. Non-consensual sexual intercourse is an extreme form of violence, the judge said, noting that Hayne only stopped attacking the victim when she started to bleed, and not when she told him "no" and him asked to stop.
Syme said it was clear the victim had been resisting Hayne when he sexually assaulted her.
"I do not accept he was not aware that she was attempting to push him away and trying to physically resist him... it was very clear she said no several times," Judge Syme said
"I have found the offender was fully aware that the victim was not consenting and went ahead anyway. His decision to do so increases the objective seriousness," she added.
According to 9 News, Hayne met up with the victim on league grand final night in 2018. He had kept a taxi waiting while he went inside the woman's home and assaulted her, before traveling back to Sydney.
Hayne maintained the sex was consensual. The crown case states he arrived drunk at the woman’s house about 9pm on Sept. 30, 2018 and stayed for about 45 minutes. This was when he committed two sex acts on her without her consent involving digital penetration and oral sex before causing two separate injuries to her genitalia before he left her home.
During her trial the woman told the jury that Hayne tried to kiss and touch her but when she said “no” and “stop” he pushed her head into the pillow, ripped off her trousers and attacked her.
Hayne claimed he knew the woman did not want to have sex with him because she realised he had a taxi waiting outside but she agreed to him performing oral sex on her to please her. He said the woman’s injuries must have been caused when he accidentally cut her with his finger, The Guardian wrote.
On the other hand, Judge Syme said the victim’s honesty had been tested at length during the trial but the jury and the judge believed her.
In the victim impact statement read to the court, the 28-year-old woman said Hayne had made her feel dirty and violated. She said he had made her feel like an object recalling how she had endured “countless hours of crying” and visited various psychologists to try to push the memory to the back of her mind. She added that she had to move out of the home she shared with her mother because she could not bear to be in that bedroom again.
As Hayne was escorted out of court by police, the woman received hostile reactions from Hayne’s supporters as she got spat at and stared down.
