Former NRL star Jarryd Hayne had just paid a taxi $550 to drive him to Sydney after a buck’s weekend when he decided to make a detour to meet up with a woman he had been chatting with on Instagram for two weeks.
As he approached the house on Newcastle’s western outskirts at 9.07pm on September 30, 2018, he is said to have placed a half-drunk Vodka Cruiser bottle on the letterbox and approached the door.
While inside, Hayne would sing an Ed Sheeran cover of Oasis’ Wonderwall in the hope of “breaking the ice” with a then 26-year-old woman he hoped to have sex with in a “best-case scenario”.
MORE HAYNE TRIAL NEWS
BREAKING: Jarryd Hayne found guilty of sexual assault
EVIDENCE: The texts and social media chats that helped convict Hayne
WITNESS: Taxi driver reveals what happened before and after Hayne sexual assault
‘YOU F***ED THE APPEAL’: Hayne victim’s outburst revealed after guilty verdict
But when he emerged 46 minutes later, he left the young woman in her room with blood on her bedspread and painful injuries to her vagina.
Communications between the pair began two weeks before the fateful night the woman was sexually assaulted.
In a Snapchat exchange later recorded by police, Hayne vehemently denied the allegations.
He was accused of pulling off the woman’s pants before performing oral and digital sexual acts on her without her consent, causing cuts and substantial bleeding.
Hayne claims they engaged in consensual sexual acts but the jury favoured the prosecution.
Here is a timeline of everything leading up to and after the critical 46 minutes on September 30, 2018.
September 17, 2018: The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, initiates the conversation with Hayne on Instagram two weeks before they meet in person on the night of the assault.
In her first message, she wrote: “You are absolutely gorgeous.”
September 18, 2018: “Price it,” came Hayne’s reply.
The woman replied: “Do you think I’m an escort or something (emoji) because I’m not.”
Later in the conversation she told him: “I’m not going to lie … I imagined what it would be like to be f**king you when you started talking.”
She apologised before Hayne responded: “Very steamy.”
In the weeks leading up to the weekend of September 29 and 30, 2018, the pair exchanged “flirty” Snapchats and Instagram messages.
The court was told Hayne sent the woman videos of himself singing on Snapchat, and she sent him pictures in her underwear.
September 22, 2018: The court was told the alleged victim sent “raunchy” selfies to Hayne at his request.
On September 22, she asked when he would be free to come see her.
The court was told the pair were in touch “probably every second day” in the lead-up to the buck’s weekend.
September 29, 2018: Hayne jumps in a car and heads north on the M1 to Newcastle with a mate.
While in the car he made several posts to social media, sending some videos and photos to the woman alerting her he would be in Newcastle for the weekend.
Hayne told the woman he was planning to leave on Sunday night and she tried to organise a time and place to meet.
In prerecorded evidence played to the court, Hayne said he began his weekend at a golf course before heading to the clubhouse where the party drank and “sat on the pokies”.
The former NRL star described his memory as “blurry”, but he had a barbecue about 6pm on the Saturday before the group “went into town”.
Hayne invited the victim out and told her to bring a friend but she declined.
About 10.11pm, the woman asked if Hayne would stay in Newcastle on the Sunday night to see her, but he said he had to return home.
She asked: “Coffee in the morning?”
Hayne told the court he called her shortly before 1am but couldn’t remember what was said.
The woman texted him: “Your phone’s f**ked, I’m seeing you before you go tomorrow ok, morning coffee or breakfast, friends welcome, night.”
September 30, 2018 – Morning: The woman texted Hayne the following morning: “Where’s my coffee?”
Hayne told the court he explained to her that he was returning to Sydney later that day.
But he first went to paintball before going on a pub crawl with the group that left him “pretty intoxicated”.
Midday: The jury heard fresh evidence from another man the woman had been texting on the same day as Hayne.
The man received a message early on Sunday that said: “You have made me feel f**king terrible today bye” with a waving emoji.
He told the court he received the text because he “didn’t want to go see her”.
The jury was told the woman then wrote: “Are you going to talk to me, otherwise I won’t … at least answer me and stop being a d**k.”
The man wrote: “You honestly lost me at Jarryd Hayne is your side boy.”
The woman continued to ask if the man would be coming over before saying she felt “like a f**king idiot”.
She messaged again: “K (sic) if you aren’t going to say yes then I’ll say yes to Jarryd Hayne.”
“Omg (sic) get me his signature babe xx,” the man responded.
The woman said she was feeling like an idiot: “Are you coming over … I’m going to say yes to Jarryd … you don’t have to come here you’ll be ages … you’re being a jerk.
“You said maybe so i’m asking if you’re not … I feel like a f**king idiot … are you coming over … k (sic) … if we aren’t going to keep talking I’m going to say yes to Jarryd,” more messages read.
Evening: The man told the court the woman kept texting from before lunch until about 8pm and she was being “aggressive”.
The jury was told the woman sent six more messages, including “what have I done now”, “you’re a jerk” and one that said she was “upset”.
7.31pm: Hayne calls the woman for one minute and 45 seconds.
He told the court he said something along the lines of “I’m going back to Sydney where do you live, if you’re on the way to the freeway I’ll pop in”.
7.36pm: Five minutes later, Hayne received a text with the woman’s address.
Hayne told the court he “said goodbye to the boys” and waited outside for the taxi to arrive.
“The boys were trying to persuade me to stay … but I thought nah I’ll definitely go home,” he said.
The jury was told Hayne then paid a taxi driver $550 to drive him back to Sydney while stopping at the woman’s house along the way to “pick up a bag”.
He made his way to the woman’s house, sitting in the back seat of the taxi and drinking a four-pack of Vodka Cruisers.
“I walked towards the house and I put (the half-empty bottle) on the letterbox,” Hayne said.
9.07pm: Hayne arrived at the woman’s house, telling taxi driver Helen Morel he would be “a few minutes”.
When he arrived, the woman opened the door and led him into her bedroom.
Hayne laid down and asked for her laptop. He put on an Ed Sheeran cover of Oasis’s Wonderwall and sang along.
The court was told the woman found it “quite awkward”.
When asked about his intentions while on the way to the woman’s house, Hayne said he “wasn’t sure” but he knew the woman was “keen” as she had been sending him “flirty messages”.
“It was up in the air, best-case scenario I would be having sex with her, worst-case scenario I get to introduce myself,” he told the court during his prerecorded evidence.
The jury was told the woman asked Hayne why there was a taxi, but he didn’t respond.
According to the Crown, she said in her evidence: “My heart dropped because I felt like he had only come there for one thing.”
She said the taxi’s presence made her feel like “absolute crap” and “sad and stupid for flirting with him to start”.
9.27pm: Taxi driver Helen Morel knocked on the door, asking how long Hayne would be.
The court was told the woman’s mother answered the door before knocking on her daughter’s bedroom door.
Hayne briefly went outside where he told Ms Morel he would be a little while as he was still waiting for the bag to be dropped off.
The woman’s mother gave evidence that her daughter came out of her room and said there was “no way” she would be having sex with Hayne.
When he came back inside, instead of going to the woman’s room at the front of the house, Hayne walked straight past the doorway, down the hallway to the lounge room where her mother was watching the closing stages of the Sydney Roosters’ grand final victory over the Melbourne Storm.
He eventually made his way back to the bedroom where he placed the knee of his 104kg frame on the bed and broke a slat.
According to the woman, he then forcibly kissed her and pushed her head into the pillow.
Crown prosecutor John Sfinas told the court the woman felt overpowered, with Hayne pulling off her jeans before sexually assaulting her despite the woman saying “no” and “stop”.
But according to the NRL star, the woman kissed him back and stood up before taking off her own pants.
She described his actions as “forceful”, “fast” and “rough” as he performed oral and digital sex on her, adding she said “no” and “no Jarryd” about three or four times.
Hayne claimed the woman responded to the sexual acts, saying he took her “heavy breathing” as a good sign.
He only stopped when they realised the woman was bleeding from her genitalia.
The former footy star rushed to the bathroom to wash his hands as the woman got in the shower to clean off the blood, feeling “swelling” and “stinging” on her genitalia.
9.53: Hayne leaves the woman’s house, picks up the half-finished drink from the mailbox and gets back into the cab to head back to Sydney.
The woman went into her mother’s room, telling her Hayne left because he suffered a nosebleed.
10.13: The woman texted Hayne 20 minutes after he left, saying she “didn’t want to do that”.
She wrote: “I am hurting so much.”
“I know I’ve talked about sex and stuff so much but I didn’t want to do that after knowing the taxi was waiting for you,” another text said.
“I thought you would have at least stayed? I am hurting really badly … I’m sitting here in my room crying cause I feel weird.”
Hayne responded: “Go doctor tomorrow.”
11pm: In the hours after the incident, the woman took a picture of her genitalia and forwarded the image to her best friend.
She told her friend Hayne “started being really pushy like he wanted to have sex and I kept saying no”.
The woman said she thought Mr Hayne “wanted to get the f**k out of here”, saying the “whole situation was weird”.
“That’s like sliced everywhere,” the woman responded.
The best friend wrote to the woman: “If you kept saying no and now that’s happened, that’s rape.
“You said he didn’t even say sorry, just ‘go to a doctor’, he is a c**t.
“Can’t believe he didn’t even say sorry.”
October 1, 2018: The woman comes clean to her mother about what happened.
The mother told the court her daughter said she “hadn’t wanted to do anything and said no”, and Hayne was “overpowering”.
October 3, 2018: The woman went to see her GP about the injuries to her vagina.
Evidence from the woman’s GP was read to the court during the trial that revealed she met with the victim just three days after the assault.
The court was told the GP examined the woman’s vagina and could see raised tissue and a “lumpy area” where the injury had been.
The GP said she “hadn’t seen” an injury like the woman’s before.
She told the court she had completed a pap smear on the victim weeks before the incident and saw no issues.
The GP had assessed the injuries and discussed the option of reporting the incident to police, but the woman said she didn’t want to.
The court was told the woman did not want to report the matter to police as she did not think “she could deal with any media attention”.
October 30, 2018: After a month of keeping the news to a select group of family and friends, the woman broke down and told her sister of the incident.
The sister told one other person about the allegations – her husband, who said he would take the matter “into his own hands”.
The brother-in-law then got in contact with Channel 9 journalist Danny Weidler, who told him to go to the NRL Integrity Unit.
November 2, 2018: The complainant went back to her GP to revise her notes from her visit on October 3.
November 6, 2018: Police met with the complainant and she provided her first statement in relation to the matter.
November 7, 2018: Walkthrough of the complainant’s house with police.
November 12, 2018: The woman attended a consultation with Dr Maria Nittis.
The doctor also studied photos of the woman’s genitalia, finding she had suffered two lacerations caused by the skin “stretching” beyond its ability to do so.
“It’s a blunt force injury that’s generally caused in one of two ways, either because the skin has been stretched beyond its capacity and it therefore tears or it has been crushed,” Dr Nittis said during the trial.
“It’s definitely been caused by penetration.
“It could be by a finger, fingers or hand, it could be by an object, it could be a penis.”
At the time Dr Nittis examined the victim, she still had a raised lump of tissue, which she described as a “tag”.
November 14, 2018: The woman messaged Hayne on Snapchat as police watched on.
“I thought you would have at least asked whether I’m OK or not by now?” the woman wrote in the Snapchat message.
Hayne replied: “You said you were OK last time we spoke?”
“I don’t remember what I said but you knew I definitely wasn’t OK from the damage that night and you just left me that way,” the woman said.
“It was pretty messed up and you should have just stopped when I said so.”
Hayne maintained they engaged in consensual sex: “Wtf are you on about!!!”
“I stopped straight away n made sure your were OK. We spoke for a while after n made sure you were OK be4 I left. Your starting to sound suss.”
November 15, 2018: Hayne is contacted by the NRL Integrity Unit for the first time about the allegations.
A phone tap was played to the court from NRL Integrity Unit chief investigator Karyn Murphy to Hayne.
“Hi Jarryd, it’s Karyn Murphy,” she said.
“Um, I was just wondering if you could give me a call when you get this message, I just need to talk to you about, um, a matter.”
In the hours following, Hayne made and received multiple calls that were recorded by police.
A “weirdo” and “cuckoo” is how he described the woman, continuing to proclaim his innocence.
“Who’s this sheila coming out saying something about ya?” NRL player Mitchell Pearce asked.
“Oh she’s, f**k, she’s from Newie, bro,” Hayne said before asking his former NSW Origin teammate to ask his Knights teammates about the woman.
Hayne added: “She was filthy cause the cab was out the front. I said, ‘Oh well, mate, I’m only going to be here for, you know, a short time’.”
To another friend, he described the woman as “a young cow just carrying on”.
“Like she’s f**king texting me. I think she started to like me or something, then because I brushed her, f**king blowing up.”
He added: “You speak to them for a bit, they get attached and they think f**king … Well mate, you f**king messaged me off Instagram, you idiot.
“Then cause I’ve flicked her, she’s blown up.”
November 19, 2018: Hayne is arrested at Ryde police station.
November 20, 2018: The alleged victim messaged a friend on social media asking if she remembers about when she told her the details of the alleged incident.
The friend said no as the messages were over Snapchat.
The complainant asked her to “not tell anyone” her name.
“The police haven’t released their statement yet and people and media are just making up their own stories,” the complainant wrote.
“I don’t want any f**king money and I didn’t go to the cops or the NRL. We didn’t have sex.”
Her friend asked her if charges were being laid, to which the woman said they already had been.
She said: “He was charged last night with aggravated sexual assault causing bodily harm. I obviously didn’t film it. My anxiety is through the roof.”
