Walking through a closed bathroom door naked as a woman used a toilet is indicative of Jack de Belin's attitude the night the NRL footballer allegedly raped a teenager, a prosecutor says.
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"He just thought he could do whatever he wanted," David Scully said of the incident minutes before the alleged attack.
A Sydney jury on Thursday began hearing closing arguments ahead of their deliberations in the retrial of the St George Illawarra forward, 30, and his friend Callan Sinclair, 23.
Both men have pleaded not guilty to multiple charges of aggravated sexual assault, saying their encounter with the then-19-year-old in December 2018 was consensual.
Mr Scully said de Belin was "the instigator" of the attack, having led the way in getting the woman back to his cousin's North Wollongong apartment after the city's popular Santa Pub Crawl.
"He hoped and - you might think - expected that consensual sex would occur once he'd got this young female back to the apartment," the crown prosecutor told the jury.
But when she didn't want it and said stop, de Belin "wouldn't take no for an answer".
"They were there and it was going to happen," Mr Scully said.
The woman says she was attacked after rushing from the bathroom, where she'd been using the toilet when the completely naked de Belin walked in and began showering.
The footballer said he'd earlier flagged having a shower and only entered the bathroom after hearing the toilet flush.
Mr Scully said de Belin's initial attack "may have come as quite a shock and a surprise" to Sinclair but he "made the wrong choice and he joined in".
Sinclair testified the woman was "enjoying herself" during the episode, and was not crying as she told the court.
But he had no recollection of having a discussion about a threesome with the woman, the Crown said.
According to de Belin, his dancefloor proposition "You, me and Cal?" was met with a wink and a smile once he confirmed he could keep a secret from his girlfriend.
Mr Scully said the men had "sprinkled" words and actions into their story "to turn the narrative into a false picture of a consensual sexual encounter".
"They just went too far and it became inherently implausible," he said.
The woman's evidence was "compelling" despite some gaps of events outside the unit.
"You might think that the focus of her attention on that night and what would be burnt in her memory is what happened in that room," Mr Scully said.
But the woman, whether intentional or not, had reconstructed the night's events from the moment she left the men at Fever nightclub and "trudged her way up the hill", Sinclair's lawyer said.
"The suggestion she was concerned for her safety that she attempted to put a video on Instagram so people would know her location, I'm going to suggest ... that is absurd even for a generation so reliant on social media," Sharyn Hall said of an incident on the way to the unit.
"Why not just text someone?"
Footy fans in the jury might feel sorry for the men, while other jurors may have heard "some disgraceful things" about football players in the past, she said.
But the jury's decision should not be about sympathy, emotion or even whether the woman was lying.
"Not guilty means you're not satisfied the Crown has proved its case beyond reasonable doubt," she said.
De Belin's lawyer, David Campbell SC, is due to make his closing address on Friday.
Earlier in the trial, he said the complainant's evidence has a "fundamental issue of credibility" and the men had "forcefully, emphatically, repeatedly and consistently" denied anything untoward.
Australian Associated Press
