A friend of Tristan Sailor’s rape accuser has burst into tears in court as she described the scene she was confronted with the morning after the alleged assaults.
Mr Sailor is standing trial, charged with two counts of aggravated sexual assault that allegedly caused actual bodily harm to a woman at an apartment in Sydney’s south in October 2020.
The woman claims she did not consent to having sexual intercourse with the 23-year-old former St George Illawarra Dragons player; however, Mr Sailor says she did consent.
The NSW District Court trial started last week in Sydney, and after the crown and defence barristers gave their opening statements, the court was closed for several days while Mr Sailor’s accuser gave evidence.
A friend of the woman, who was in the apartment when the alleged rape took place, told the court on Tuesday what happened shortly afterwards.
“I walked into her room … as I opened the door I saw some of her clothing on the ground,” the friend said.
“I saw sheets on the ground … I could see her feet.
“I seen her naked and her eyes were open, but she was not moving or saying anything. Her back was on the floor and her legs were raised up on to the bed.”
The woman made “grunting noises” after being asked if she was OK and the friend told the court that when shxjmtzywe picked the woman up she was “like a dead weight”.
After putting the woman on the bed, the friend said she heard her vomit.
“I turned back to her and rolled her onto her side in towards the bed so she wouldn’t choke on her vomit,” the friend said.
“I think I grabbed the blanket to put over her and I left the room.”
The morning after, the friend said the woman woke and did not know what had happened.
“I told her how I’d found her and then she told me … she’d gone to the bathroom and wiped herself and there was blood,” the friend said.
“She was trying to piece together what happened … she asked if she’d had sex with Tristan.”
The court was told that before the alleged rape, the woman and the friend met Mr Sailor and his teammates at the Beach Road Hotel in Bondi.
The friend said she did not think they would be allowed to enter the pub because of the woman’s level of intoxication.
“I recall her saying to me ‘I feel a bit lit’ and lit meaning tipsy,” the friend said
“She was very giggly, laughing a lot, happy … she was just a bit more kind of unsteady on her feet … she didn’t seem like herself.
“I had noticed that she was intoxicated, so I remember that I had a small bag of cocaine with a bit of residue left inside. I suggested to give that to her to kind of straighten her out.”
After the pair licked a bag of cocaine in a toilet block, the court was told that they entered the hotel and met with the St George players before consuming more alcohol and playing drinking games.
While at the pub the woman sent messages to her friend saying “I can’t function” and “I can’t see straight”.
The friend said as the night went on the woman and Mr Sailor appeared to become closer.
“They were sitting next to each other, kind of talking to each other,” she said.
“At one point she was sitting on Tristan’s lap
“We’d gone to the toilet at one point and they had kissed in the bathroom. I saw them kissing … it wasn’t just one kiss.”
The court was told that after the woman, the friend, Mr Sailor and his former teammate Eddie Blacker left the pub and went back to the apartment in Sydney’s south, they started playing more drinking games.
“We were going to continue to drink … there was a bottle of Smirnoff and another vodka bottle,” the friend said.
“Tristan was pouring it for all of us, he was behind me making the drinks.”
The friend said the drinking game the group played was called Never Have I Ever and it allowed people to pick what genre or theme they wanted questions to be asked about.
“I recall Tristan changing it to an R-rated theme,” the friend said.
After the friend and Mr Blacker spent time together in the bathroom, she said they came out to discover Mr Sailor and the woman were in a bedroom together.
The teammates later left the house when Mr Sailor, the son of former Australian rugby league and union international Wendell Sailor, emerged from the bedroom.
The trial continues.
