- Wallaby found not guilty of alleged attack in February sentencing
- The 35-year-old man appeared in court again in Sydney on Friday.
Wallabies star Kurtley Beale has lost his bid to have the state foot his hefty legal bill after being acquitted of sexually assaulting a woman in a Sydney bar.
The 35-year-old man stood trial in the New South Wales District Court earlier this year after pleading not guilty to sexual intercourse without consent and two counts of sexual contact.
After a two-week trial, jurors took less than an hour to determine that the rugby star had not groped a woman’s bottom at the Beach Road bar in Bondi on December 17, 2022.
They also rejected the woman’s claims that Beale forced her to perform oral sex on him in the men’s room.
The Wallabies star has consistently denied the allegations and told reporters he was relieved “the truth has come out” after being cleared of the charges.
“I have always maintained my innocence,” he said.
‘My family and I have endured a terrible year.’
On Friday, Judge Graham Turnbull ruled that the Director of Public Prosecutions would not pay Mr Beale’s legal costs.
Beale (pictured with his wife Maddi during his sexual assault trial in February) will have to foot a legal bill rumored to be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars after Friday’s ruling.
The 35-year-old was recently tipped to return to the Wallabies (pictured) but now requires surgery on a ruptured Achilles tendon he sustained in a club rugby match.
The rugby star’s legal costs are known to run into hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Judge Turnbull found it had been reasonable for the Crown prosecutor to pursue Mr Beale over the allegations.
“I conclude that there were substantive issues that needed to be determined and that this was not simply a word-for-word case,” he said.
During a costs hearing in April, Mr Beale’s barrister Margaret Cunneen SC argued the Crown’s case against her client was “extremely weak” and should never have been pursued.
She argued that CCTV footage from the night of the alleged assault was “spectacularly different” to the woman’s version of events and showed parts of her account were “clearly wrong”.
Beale said he and his family had “suffered a terrible year” when he was acquitted, and news of his massive legal bill has only made his 2024 even worse.
However, Crown prosecutor Philip Hogan argued that Beale’s statements in recorded phone calls meant there was a reasonable case to prosecute him.
In the phone call, Mr Beale told the woman she “misjudged the whole scenario” and said “that’s my mistake and I have to live with it”.
Judge Turnbull said the recorded phone calls appeared to be “a very strong reason to charge” the rugby star.
Rugby Australia suspended Beale in January 2023, but he returned to the sport in March following his acquittal.
He was recently called up by the Wallabies, but an injury may have hampered his return to the national team.
