Victorian prosecutors have abandoned a sexual assault case against Geelong player Tanner Bruhn and his friend Patrick Sinnott.<\/p>\n
Mr Bruhn and Mr Sinnott were charged with sexually assaulting an intoxicated woman in a car after meeting her at the Alley Cats strip club in Geelong in February 2023.<\/p>\n
Both men were also charged with rape.<\/p>\n
The lifting of a nine-month suppression order means the ABC can finally reveal that Mr Bruhn was at the centre of the now-discontinued case.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Tanner Bruhn and Patrick Sinnott leave court with their lawyers in September this year. \u00a0 (ABC News)<\/p>\n
A committal hearing in September was told the men travelled with the woman to a bottle shop car park and paid for sexual services.<\/p>\n
The woman accused them of sexual assault and rape when they allegedly refused to comply with her demands for extra money.<\/p>\n
Mr Bruhn and Mr Sinnott maintained their innocence and were set to fight the charges, before the case collapsed entirely on Tuesday when the Office of Public Prosecutions withdrew the charges.<\/p>\n
Issues with the prosecution case emerged during the committal when witnesses testified that the complainant had lied to police.<\/p>\n
One witness also admitted lying in his police statement and telling further lies under oath; one lie included an allegation that he had been physically attacked by one of the accused men.<\/p>\n
“I had no memory of the two accused even being there, let alone the night,” he later said.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, Mr Bruhn’s defence barrister Dermot Dann KC described the case as “a horrible stain on the criminal justice system”.<\/p>\n
Mr Dann said his client had been “to hell and back”, with his career put at risk.<\/p>\n
Mr Sinnott’s barrister Moya O’Brien said she echoed Mr Dann’s comments, and said her client and his family had suffered due to publicity of the case.<\/p>\n
The suppression order covering the case did not extend to Mr Sinnott when it was partially lifted in April.<\/p>\n
Suppression order barred reporting of Bruhn case<\/p>\n
Mr Bruhn, 23, joined the Cats from GWS in season 2023 and has played 36 games for Geelong.<\/p>\n
He was charged earlier this year and did not feature for the Cats in the 2025 season.<\/p>\n
The media was unable to fully report on Mr Bruhn’s prior court appearances due to a suppression order, which was granted on safety grounds.<\/p>\n
The order banned anyone from linking Mr Bruhn to the case, but did little to stop speculation and rumours spreading on social media during the year.<\/p>\n
Geelong and the AFL were not able to publicly explain the player’s absence during the season.<\/p>\n
Mr Bruhn’s name was also removed from public court lists.<\/p>\n
Mr Dann said those who’d attacked Mr Bruhn online “should step away from their keyboards and hang their heads in shame”.<\/p>\n
“He should be regarded forever as someone who was 100 per cent innocent.”<\/p>\n
Victoria Police has agreed to pay the men’s legal costs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Victorian prosecutors have abandoned a sexual assault case against Geelong player Tanner Bruhn and his friend Patrick Sinnott.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":276615,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[64,63,160382,2475,13658,160381,85,160380],"class_list":{"0":"post-276614","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-bruhn","11":"tag-cats","12":"tag-geelong","13":"tag-patrick-sinnott","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-tanner-bruhn"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276614\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}