The rugby star Kurtley Beale made an urgent phone call to his agent Isaac Moses, shortly after being confronted with a serious rape allegation, a court has heard.
In a recording of the call played to a court on Tuesday, Beale tells his long-time manager “I messed up”.
“A bird rang me out of the blue, saying she’s a little bit upset because I just misread the whole situation … and she performed oral sex on me,” Beale says in the recording.
“But she’s like, ‘I didn’t really consent to that action’, blah blah blah.”
The woman, who cannot be legally identified, alleges Beale touched her backside and forced her to perform oral sex in a pub’s toilet cubicle.
Beale, 35, is standing trial in the NSW district court on one count of sexual intercourse without consent and two of sexual touching following an incident at Bondi’s Beach Road Hotel in December 2022.
Beale, who has pleaded not guilty to all of the charges, will not give evidence in the trial, with the prosecution and defence cases concluding on Tuesday.
After informing Beale the woman may have already gone to police, Moses prompts him during the phone call to confirm the woman had consented.
“Kurtley, I’ll bet you she did consent otherwise that wouldn’t have happened, true yes?” Moses says.
“That’s what I thought,” Beale replies.
“Yes, yes, yes,” Moses says.
“Yes,” Beale replies.
The call is abruptly ended by Moses who tells Beale he will ring him back on a different phone.
Moses, who has managed Beale since he was 18, appeared as a witness on Tuesday, explaining his past experience dealing with players facing criminal charges informed how he handled Beale’s call.
“I just didnt want Kurtley to be misunderstood or misconstrued in what he said,” Moses told the court.
Also on Tuesday, NSW police forensic pharmacologist and toxicologist Shuang Fu gave evidence regarding the woman’s use of cocaine on the night of the alleged assault.
She might have used “a bit more cocaine than average” as well as consuming roughly 12 drinks through the evening, the court heard.
Testing of a urine sample taken about 24 hours after the alleged assault showed cocaine in the woman’s system.
She admitted in court to having “two very small lines” earlier in the night.
Based on the cocaine still being present in the woman’s system at the time of testing, Fu said she likely had an above-average dose.
Beale’s lawyer Margaret Cunneen SC asked if cocaine might lead users to engage in risk-taking behaviour as it caused “heightened sexual excitement” and a loss of inhibitions.
“You might do things you wouldn’t do if you hadn’t taken the drug,” she suggested.
Fu said it was a “broad concept” regarding how much people might act outside their usual behaviour when taking any substance.
She said cocaine users were likely to become “talkative and very friendly to everyone, but not something extreme”.
The court also heard on Tuesday from a staff member who worked at the Beach Road Hotel and was using the bathroom during the alleged assault.
The man said he saw a woman’s “sandals” under the cubicle and heard what could have been the sounds of oral sex.
He described the sound and said it continued for roughly a minute while he was in the bathroom.
Beale’s defence has argued he and the woman engaged in an extended period of consensual oral sex in the cubicle, while she said it was not consensual and only lasted a matter of seconds.
The staff member also told the court on Tuesday he didn’t hear any sounds of protest or distress coming from the cubicle. The trial continues.
