A woman who alleges a high-profile Sydney man touched her breast has asserted it was “skin to skin contact” after being asked why she wrote in her police statement that the man “tried to touch” her, a court has heard.
Under cross-examination, the woman – who was 21 at the time she alleges the man indecently assaulted her by touching her breast after she woke up and they were both naked in his bed – was asked if she added the detail of him touching her breast later.
“Yes … I did in another statement,” the woman, known as complainant two, responded.
The woman is the second complainant out of six to appear before the New South Wales Downing Centre district court in a trial expected to last 10 weeks. She follows the first complainant who alleged the man had raped her while she was his intern.
The accused, whom Guardian Australia cannot name due to a suppression order, is facing trial after pleading not guilty to 12 charges – which include six counts of rape – alleged to have occurred over a six-year period against six women on separate occasions.
The crown is arguing the man had a tendency to carry out sexual conduct with usually much younger females, knowing that they did not consent or that he was reckless to their consent.
The man’s defence contends there was no sexual contact “whatsoever” with complainant two. His defence argues there was sex with the five other women who have alleged they were raped. However, his defence argues, the sex was consensual, “not in the circumstances alleged by the crown”, and that the complainants “admired the accused, even idolised him”.
On Tuesday, complainant two told the court she had gone to the man’s house whose work she “admired” in the mid-2010s and while there, they took MDMA after he asked if she’d like some.
After the complainant was “feeling the effects of the MDMA a lot”, the court heard on Tuesday, the woman asked for water, and the man returned with a clear liquid in a martini glass and said, “Here’s your special drink.” After that, she said: “I started to get overwhelmed and I’d have to lay down and take deep breaths.” The woman included the detail about the “special drink” in her police statement.
The accused’s defence counsel, David Scully SC, asked the woman on Thursday if she could be “any clearer about the estimates of timing” throughout the night, suggesting that hours had passed between her taking the MDMA and her last memory before waking up.
“I don’t know,” she said.
He also asked if, upon providing copies of a text message exchanged with a friend to police as part of her statement, the woman deliberately withheld messages where she told the friend the man hadn’t tried to “fuck” her and the night was the “best experience” of her life.
The complainant said she hadn’t and that if she had been directed to provide the messages she would have.
“He didn’t touch you in any shape or form did he,” Scully asked.
“He did, I was here,” the complainant responded.
A witness, who is a friend of the complainant and had breakfast with the her the morning after the alleged incident, appeared before the court on Thursday.
The witness said complainant two was “super erratic” and was “coming down off something” when they went out for breakfast together.
Asked by the crown prosecutor, Adrian Robertson, if she had asked complainant two what happened, she said the complainant had not mentioned the incident at the time.
Around five years later, shortly before the complainant made a police statement, she told the witness that he’d “drugged” her then she’d “black out”, and that she kept “having different snippets of memories”, the witness told Robertson.
The trial continues on Wednesday.
