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<\/p>\nA New South Wales jury has been told a woman repeatedly said “no” and “stop” before she was allegedly raped by two country rugby league footballers.<\/p>\n
Warning: this story includes details of alleged acts some readers may find distressing.<\/p>\n
Ryan Matthew Hawkshaw, 27, and Hayden Charles Topliss, 37, are facing a joint trial in Newcastle District Court after pleading not guilty to a series of charges.<\/p>\n
Sexual assault\u00a0support lines:<\/p>\n
The men are facing four counts of aggravated sexual intercourse in company regarding the alleged rape in Scone in the early hours of the morning in 2023.<\/p>\n
The complainant, who cannot be named, continued her evidence on Wednesday before being cross examined.<\/p>\n
The woman said she knew of Mr Hawkshaw “as a footy boy” before meeting him.<\/p>\n
‘Footy boy’<\/p>\n
At the time, both men played for the Scone Thoroughbreds in the Hunter Valley Group 21 Rugby League competition.<\/p>\n
Under cross examination the woman denied being interested in Mr Hawkshaw because he was a footy player.<\/p>\n
“I knew he was on the [footy] team, I knew he was on the Scone team, I guess,” she said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Ryan Hawkshaw outside Newcastle Courthouse. (ABC Newcastle: Tamara Penniket)<\/p>\n
In her opening address on Tuesday, Crown prosecutor Charisse Hodgeman told jurors the woman had exchanged prior Instagram messages with Mr Hawkshaw.<\/p>\n
The messages talked about giving lifts and sex.<\/p>\n
The night<\/p>\n
The court heard on the night before the alleged assault Mr Hawkshaw messaged saying “oi pick us up” to give the two defendants a lift.<\/p>\n
Ms Hodgeman told jurors the woman picked the men up from a local RSL club that night, driving them to “Toppers” [Topliss’s] house, as requested.<\/p>\n
Once there the court heard she had consensual sex with Mr Hawkshaw before he asked if she wanted “Topper” to join.<\/p>\n
The Crown said the woman said “no” before Mr Topliss came in naked.<\/p>\n
Ms Hodgeman told the jury the woman repeatedly said “no” and “stop” as she was forced down, repositioned and assaulted.<\/p>\n
She “repeatedly said she did not want to have threesome” when Mr Hawkshaw said “come on, we’ll get Topper in”.<\/p>\n
The prosecutor told jurors she confided in a relative the next day.<\/p>\n
“She said she ‘felt like she had been raped’,” the Crown prosecutor said.Sexual consent<\/p>\n
Both men said all sexual acts were consensual and reject claims they operated as part of a joint criminal enterprise.<\/p>\n
In her opening address barrister Sharyn Hall, representing Mr Topliss, told jurors they had probably all heard “far too much about footballers and their sex lives”.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
The men are on trial in Newcastle District Court. (ABC Newcastle: Robert Virtue)<\/p>\n
Ms Hall said it might be easy to “assume the worst” in relation to what footballers got up to on their weekends.<\/p>\n
She then paused and said if they made assumptions they would be in breach of the promise they had made to the court.<\/p>\n
“Hayden Topliss maintains that each of the sexual acts that happened in that spare bedroom were consensual,” Ms Hall said.<\/p>\n
Barrister Caitlin Akthar, representing Mr Hawkshaw, questioned whether they could rely on the complainant.<\/p>\n
“The issue is whether you can rely on her evidence beyond reasonable doubt, and are you satisfied she is being honest and accurate in her evidence?” she said.Messages exchanged<\/p>\n
While under cross examination of the complainant Ms Akthar took her through some Instagram messages, including one on the night of the alleged rape.<\/p>\n
Ms Akthar put to the woman that Mr Hawkshaw had messaged her that night saying he wanted to have sex with her. The woman agreed that was the exchange.<\/p>\n
It was then put to the complainant that she had replied asking whether he was sure “because what about the other chick”. The woman confirmed that she sent the message.<\/p>\n
Mr Topliss is facing a fifth charge of sexually assaulting the woman on the same night and a sixth charge of sexual touching the complainant in 2024.<\/p>\n
The trial is due to run up to 10 days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A New South Wales jury has been told a woman repeatedly said “no” and “stop” before she was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":885977,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[64,63,1108,455579,13396,455578,6671,85,1109],"class_list":["post-885976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-court","tag-hayden-charles-topliss","tag-rape","tag-ryan-matthew-hawkshaw","tag-sexual-assault","tag-sports","tag-trial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/885976","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=885976"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/885976\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/885977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=885976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=885976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=885976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}