Jarryd Hayne has been jailed ahead of sentencing after being found guilty on two counts of rape.
Hayne hugged his sobbing wife Amellia, as Justice Richard Button sent him into custody in the NSW Supreme Court on Friday.
Hayne was “remarkably” still on bail after the 35-year-old disgraced former NRL star was found guilty on two counts of sexual intercourse without consent earlier in April, the judge said.
He sexually assaulted a woman with his hands and mouth after attending her home on the night of the 2018 NRL grand final.
She cannot be identified.
A taxi Hayne paid $550 to drive him to Sydney following a buck’s weekend waited outside the suburban Newcastle home while he played the woman songs on a laptop and watched the end of the grand final as her mother sat in the living room.
Following the assault, the pair cleaned blood off of themselves in the woman’s ensuite and Hayne continued to Sydney, the trial heard.
Hayne had initially been allowed to remain on bail after a jury returned the guilty verdicts. On Friday, he was brought before the Supreme Court for a bail review.
Justice Button said it was “inevitable” Hayne would be jailed.
“It is proven that Mr Hayne is a man who sexually assaulted a woman,” he said.
The question was when.
Hayne’s barrister Margaret Cunneen SC argued there were “special” or “exceptional” circumstances requiring the bail he had complied with for more than four years be continued until he was sentenced in May.
Then he could be almost immediately be classified as a prisoner in need of protection, rather than placed on remand with other prisoners awaiting sentence.
He would be held in “oppressive” and isolated conditions while on remand.
Hayne’s crime had attracted an unprecedented amount of attention, more akin to a high-profile murder, and out of proportion with the actual gravity of the two sexual offences he had been found guilty of, she said.
Many details of the case remained unknown to the public.
“There was a closed court for evidence, as there should be,” Ms Cunneen said.
However, it meant a “baying mob” had become involved in a “toxic” social media campaign in response to Hayne’s crimes, committed over 30 seconds by someone with no other criminal history, Ms Cunneen said.
“Mr Hayne suffers from the default position he is a sex offender of the most debased and worst kind,” she said.
The “terrifying” posts also reached the prison population, she said.
Crown prosecutor Brett Hatfield said some of the posts were years old.
The restricted conditions required by Hayne’s need for protection were no different from others in protective custody or isolation, for various reasons, Mr Hatfield said.
Many offenders had young families whose lives were disrupted by them entering custody.
“It is not by itself special or exceptional such that it would justify being released on bail,” he said.
Hayne previously spent more than nine months in custody before an earlier guilty verdict was overturned, requiring the third trial, and the resumption of a prison term.
“To recommence it with something as oppressive as 25 days in isolation, represents something that is exceptional,” Ms Cunneen said.
The judge was not convinced.
“The fact is, all prisons are inherently places of deprivation of liberty.”
“If Mr Hayne should otherwise be in custody, that circumstance should hardly stand in the way of it,” Justice Button said, before revoking Hayne’s bail.
He will face a sentencing hearing on May 8.
He has reportedly been sent to Silverwater Prison.
-with AAP
