A jury has acquitted the son of Australian rugby league and union legend Wendell Sailor after he was accused of raping and injuring a drunk woman he met through a social media app.
Tristan Sailor, 23, faced a NSW District Court trial in March after the woman said she could not remember having oral, vaginal and anal sex him in 2020.
After retiring to consider a verdict about 1pm on Thursday, jurors reached their unanimous decision after two hours and 20 minutes and delivered verdicts of not guilty to the two aggravated sexual assault charges Mr Sailor was hit with.
During the trial the court was told the woman and Sailor met on the social networking app Instagram in 2019 when he was on the cusp of following in his father’s footsteps and making his NRL debut for the St George Illawarra Dragons.
The pair met in-person for the first time on October 3, 2020 at Bondi’s Beach Road Hotel where Mr Sailor was enjoying a boys weekend away with teammates, including Eddie Blacker who knew one of the woman’s friends.
The court was told the woman was not a regular drinker and before arriving at the pub she and the friend Mr Blacker knew had been at a Mexican restaurant enjoying an all-you-can-eat and drink margaritas and tacos event. The women also consumed cocaine in a toilet block.
After they arrived at the pub CCTV footage from the beer garden captured images of Sailor and the woman drinking, touching and hugging each other.
Defence barrister Richard Pontello told the court the woman agreed she consented to all of the contact which occurred just a few hours before the alleged assaults.
“There’s over 60 instances … 64 to be precise … of the complainant initiating or starting some sort of physical contact with Mr Sailor,” Mr Pontello said.
Following an encounter in a bathroom where the pair urinated together, kissed and posed for photographs, they left the pub with Mr Blacker and the woman’s friend.
When the group arrived at an apartment in Wolli Creek they played an R-rated version of the drinking game Never Have I Ever before Mr Blacker and the woman’s friend went to a bathroom to have what Judge Antony Townsend described as “physical interaction”.
Mr Sailor and the woman went into her bedroom and had oral, vaginal and anal sex he said the woman repeatedly consented to.
“I finished on her stomach,” Mr Sailor told the court.
“After that she pulled me in passionately and kissed me. She said to me ‘don’t go’ but I said ‘sorry I have to’.”
The woman said the last thing she remembered, before waking up about 5:30am the following morning, naked and in pain, was sitting on a couch sipping vodka drinks Sailor had poured.
Sailor and Mr Blacker told the court the woman, who had consumed about 11 standard drinks, did not appear to be overly intoxicated in the bedroom and she was “definitely conscious”.
The woman said she “blacked out” and assumed she had sex without giving consent the next day when she presented to hospitals with two lacerations to her genital region.
Medical expert Dr Petra Van Nieuwenhuijzen gave evidence during the trial and said it was possible the woman’s experience of the black out might not have been apparent.
“From the outside you’re not able to tell if someone is experiencing a blackout … that person would just look intoxicated, slightly or severely, it just depends … but you cannot tell the person you are having a conversation xjmtzywwith is not forming a memory,” Dr Van Nieuwenhuijzen said.
Mr Sailor, who was supported in court with character references from NRL super coach Wayne Bennett and former St George coach Paul McGregor, said he was well aware of the importance of consent from his time playing league.
“We’ve had yearly, if not biyearly education classes and seminars that specifically speak about things like consent … we’ve always been told to ensure that consent is given,” Mr Sailor said.
During a summing up the Crown and defence cases before the jury retired to consider its verdict, Judge Townsend said the woman had previously told the court she was “deliberately dishonest” to Mr Sailor and had sent “leading” messages to him on Instagram which referred to him as honey and baby despite her maintaining in court she was not attracted to him.
“She didn’t want to be rude,” Judge Townsend said.
“Her truthfulness and reliability are central to the issues in this trial.”
