After more than four years and three trials, NRL star Jarryd Hayne has been found guilty of sexually assaulting a woman on the grand final night in Newcastle. Video / ABC Australia
Convicted rapist and former NRL star Jarryd Hayne will spend another three years in prison after he was found guilty of sexually assaulting a woman at her Newcastle home on the night of the NRL grand final in 2018.
The 35-year-old appeared via audiovisual link at Sydney’s Downing Centre District Court from Silverwater Correctional Complex, wearing his prison greens, as Judge Graham Turnbull SC sealed his fate.
His wife Amellia Bonnici did not appear in court to see her husband get sentenced, but watched the proceedings online.
The former Dally-M winner has spent the past four weeks behind bars after he was taken into custody during a Supreme Court bail hearing on April 14.
Hayne remained on bail for just 10 days, spending his last days of freedom with his family before he was sent to prison.
But now that four weeks will extend to May 2025, with Judge Turnbull telling the court Hayne is a “completely different man” to the person who committed the offences.
“People are going to be left to suffer as a result of him being taken from them,” Judge Turnbull said.
“He is going to be doing his time in a difficult environment.”
An aggregate sentence of four years and nine months was handed down, but it was backdated to July 2, 2022 to account for the previous nine months Hayne spent in custody.
Hayne will now be properly classified as a prisoner in need of protection and moved to a more accommodating facility where he will be around other high-profile prisoners.
Former NRL superstar Jarryd Hayne and his wife Amelia Bonnici pictured leaving court during his final trial. Photo / NCA Newswire
The jury was told the woman refused to consent to sex because the ex-Parramatta fullback had a taxi waiting outside.
Hayne’s defence barrister, Margaret Cunneen SC, on Monday told the court the reason Bonnici chose not to attend proceedings as the publicity has had an “exceptional effect” on the family.
“I’m instructed she continues to support, it’s just been too much with the photographs taken of the children and herself,” the court heard.
“The media has been extremely negative about this and the social media has been appalling … the attacks were for Mr Hayne and to his wife.”
A victim impact statement was read to the court on behalf of the victim during the sentence hearing by Crown prosecutor John Sfinas.
The woman said her life has been a “never-ending nightmare” since September 30, 2018.
“I still don’t know how to put any of this into words,” the statement read.
“From the 30th of September 2018, my life has been launched into what feels like a never-ending nightmare.”
The woman said she was hoping to move on after the second trial, but said she hadn’t had the chance to “move on or feel peace”, reliving the trauma “over and over”.
“In September it will be five years since this has happened. I was a 26-year-old with the world at her feet, now I am nearly 31 and haven’t been able to finish uni,” the woman said.
“I am stronger, I am wiser, but I am damaged and I won’t ever be the same person.”
Cunneen said the length of the offending was important in the context of the case and would affect the objective seriousness.
She told the court that there was “unambiguous and mutual sexual context” in the lead-up to Hayne raping the woman.
The court heard the act occurred between “two grown adults”, with the victim knowing “who Jarryd Hayne was” before “urging him to come over”.
Cunneen told the court Hayne is a “very different man” to the person who committed the offences in 2018.
”He doesn’t possess the personality and thought patterns and sexual arousal patterns of a sex offender, and also because of his life which has turned around considerably since the hiatus in the relationship with his now wife,” Cunneen said.
”There is an eloquent testament of Mr Hayne’s pastor of his commitment to his Christian faith.”
