AFL footballer Tarryn Trindall, better known as Tarryn Thomas, threatened to send an intimate video that he and another person had taken consensually after his mother was insulted, a court has heard.
But the North Melbourne player, 23, has walked free with no criminal record after he successfully applied for a diversion on his downgraded charge of using a carriage service to harass.
Mr Thomas, who played for North Melbourne on the weekend, attended the Broadmeadows Magistrates’ Court alongside his lawyer Anna Balmer, where details of his actions were laid out for the first time.
Magistrate Julie Grainger said on July 17 2022 Mr Thomas had accused the complainant of being intimate with another person via Instagram messages.
The court heard during the course of the exchange, the complainant had made a reference to Mr Thomas’ mother, which he took as a “slight”.
Magistrate Grainger said after this message, Mr Thomas told the complainant he had distributed intimate videos of the two of them where both parties had consented to the recording.
The complainant believed the videos had been sent, but they had not, Magistrate Grainger said.
At the beginning of Tuesday’s hearing, the court was told that the first charge had been struck out, meaning Mr Thomas’ only remaining matter before the court was a diversion application regarding the remaining charge.
Ms Balmer told the court the offending had occurred when Mr Thomas was “not coping” with the death of his grandmother.
She said Mr Thomas was misusing alcohol at the time of the incident, and travelling frequently to NSW.
She said her client had engaged in a “reactive response” from a perceived “slight” from the complainant, which had “struck a nerve” with the footballer.
Ms Balmer said Mr Thomas had done “everything possible that he could do since the incident,” including social media training, engaging a psychiatrist and working as a part-time cleaner at an Indigenous start up.
The court heard he had no prior convictions, and that the complainant was “supportive” of the diversion application.
Magistrate Grainger told the court if Mr Thomas agreed to pay $1000 to a court fund by August 15, the charge would be formally withdrawn.
She said she was “very happy” to grant the application for diversion, and that Mr Thomas had worked “really hard to better (himself)” in the wake of the incident.
