Tristan Sailor has told a court the woman who accused him of rape did not seem drunk when they had sex after she took part in a binge drinking session where she downed margaritas with rum, coke and other spirits.
The 23-year-old former St George Illawarra Dragons NRL player was cross examined in the witness box on Monday as his trial in the NSW District Court continued in Sydney.
Mr Sailor has pleaded not guilty to two aggravated sexual assault charges laid after he and the woman had sex she alleges wasn’t consented in October 2020.
While asked to disclose intimate and sexually explicit details about the sex acts he engaged in, Mr Sailor did not flinch and repeatedly denied the suggestion the woman would have appeared intoxicated.
He told Crown prosecutor Jeffrey Tunks the prospect of sex with the woman was “not necessarily” the first thing that came to his mind when the pair met for the first time in-person at Bondi’s Beach Road Hotel in the hours leading up to the alleged assault.
“You brought up the flirty messages,” Mr Tunks said, referring to Instagram messages the pair exchanged in March 2019 when they started following each other.
“It [sex] must have been on your mind.”
Mr Sailor responded, saying “the messages were, yeah”.
After the court was shown CCTV footage of the pair in the beer garden at the pub, where the woman is seen sipping on rum and coke and swaying as she tries to stand up, Mr Sailor said there was “no indication” she was affected by alcohol.
“She just had a bubbly demeanour and I hadn’t met her before so just assumed that was her character,” Mr Sailor said.
After the pair got closer during the night, Mr Sailor said he, teammate Eddie Blacker, the woman and her friend left the pub and went to an apartment in Wooli Crek.
“Is it the caxjmtzywse Mr Sailor that you didn’t really care about her level of sobriety when you attended the apartment at Wooli Creek?,” Mr Tunks asked.
“I did care,” Mr Sailor responded.
When the group were back at the apartment where more alcohol was poured and they started playing an R-rated version of drinking game Never Have I Ever.
“She told she’d been at a bottomless brunch, she told you she drank for over two hours, you’ve seen the CCTV on a number of occasions … seen her drinking margaritas, rum and coke and whatever the alcoholic drink was in the middle of Never Have I Ever and you say at this stage of the night there’s no signs of intoxication at all?,” Mr Tunks asked.
Mr Sailor said “no”.
When the woman and Mr Sailor went to her room to have sex, he told the court there was no discussion about condom use.
“I think it had progressed so passionately it didn’t get brought up,” Mr Sailor said.
“I don’t usually have conversations about condoms.”
Mr Sailor denied a series of suggestions Mr Tunks put to him, saying he never believed he was “entitled” to do whatever he wanted to to the woman.
When the sex acts concluded, Mr Sailor agreed he “left pretty quickly” and the court was shown CCTV footage of him walking out of the apartment complex with no shoes on.
“I knew we had a half an hour Uber trip so I just thought I’d put them on in there,” Mr Sailor said.
The following day the woman sent Mr Sailor a message saying she couldn’t remember what happened and the court heard he told her they had sex and that he sought and was given consent.
“I was just helping reassure her if she didn’t have any memory,” Mr Sailor, the son of NRL legend Wendell Sailor, told the court.
The trial continues.
