How disgraced footy star Jarryd Hayne’s legal team will use his rape victim’s text messages against her as he fights to have conviction overturned

Former NRL star Jarryd Hayne hopes to overturn a conviction for raping a woman on the night of the 2018 grand final as a second appeal heads to the NSW Supreme Court.

Hayne’s attorneys argued Wednesday that text and social media messages deleted from the victim’s phone amounted to a deliberate concealment of the facts.

They asked the Court of Criminal Appeal to acquit Hayne on those grounds, rather than ordering the 36-year-old to face a fourth trial on the case.

Hayne, who watched the appeal hearing via video link from prison, was found guilty of two charges of sexual intercourse without consent on September 30, 2018, following an incident at a woman’s home near Newcastle.

Previous trials heard the woman, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, change her mind about having sex with Hayne after realizing a taxi was waiting outside the house.

Hayne’s attorneys argued Wednesday that text and social media messages deleted from the victim’s phone amounted to a deliberate concealment of the facts.

Hayne’s barrister, Tim Game SC, told the appeal court that the defense had failed to question the woman at the most recent trial about facts that could have been crucial to the case.

Messages from the victim to another woman she met on social media contained no mention of a sexual assault so she took action to cover it up, he said.

Mr Game argued that not coming forward with the messages amounted to ‘systematic gathering of evidence that did not help her case’.

“The things she forgets are the things that don’t help her,” he said.

‘In our case it concerns large-scale concealment of evidence.

‘Of course we say that concealment is the same as lying or deception.’

Prosecutors argued that the victim did not have a close relationship with the woman she was messaging and had never met her in person.

They also pointed out that the woman appeared as a witness in the third trial and that the jury was able to weigh her evidence as it saw fit.

The fact that the victim had not told the woman she had been sexually abused “paled into insignificance” compared to the complaints she had made to others, the court heard.

Hayne (pictured outside court) has been behind bars since April last year after a jury found he sexually assaulted the woman with his hands and mouth in 2018

She told a friend, “I’m too scared to report it,” and asked her mother not to tell anyone because she didn’t want to be in the public eye.

She also discussed the incident at length with her GP and said she did not want to go to the police.

But Game said the defense was forced to argue their case with “one or two hands tied behind their backs.”

Hayne’s defense team also argued that the woman should be cross-examined about why she allegedly told police, “If those reports get out, I’m fucked and he’ll go away.”

Judge Graham Turnbull, who oversaw Hayne’s third trial, refused to allow the woman to be cross-examined about the statement, saying it had “almost infinite weight.”

Game argued that the statement was evidence that the woman appreciated the importance of the text messages and did not want them to get out.

During the trial, the court was told Hayne arrived at the house at 9.07pm and left 46 minutes later, but the sexual activity did not occur until 9.26pm in the last 27 minutes of the visit.

Mr Game told the court that everything the complainant alleged could not have happened in 27 minutes.

“We say 27 minutes cannot explain this,” Game told the court on Wednesday.

Hayne was charged in November 2018 after the rape allegations reached the NRL’s integrity unit.

He has been behind bars since April 2023 after a jury found he sexually assaulted the woman with his hands and mouth.

The guilty verdict followed a hung jury in his first trial in 2020 and an earlier appeal that overturned the 2021 guilty verdict from his second trial.