Three men will have to wait to learn their fate after being found guilty of gang-raping three teenagers during a stag weekend.
Andrew David, 30, and his brothers Maurice Hawell, 30, and Marius Hawell, 22, went on trial in the New South Wales District Court this year after pleading not guilty to sexual assault offences.
The trio were accused of raping three teenage girls at an Airbnb in February 2022 while they were staying in Newcastle to celebrate groom-to-be Maurice’s stag do.
Prosecutors said the men sexually assaulted two 18-year-old women on Friday night before attacking a 19-year-old woman the following night.
Maurice and Andrew maintained that all sexual activity was consensual, while Marius claimed he did not participate in any of the sexual incidents during the stag weekend.
The jury, made up of eight men and four women, deliberated for eight and a half hours before returning unanimous guilty verdicts on nine of the 11 charges on Monday.
However, they were unable to reach a unanimous verdict on two counts and were ordered to continue discussions.
At lunchtime on Tuesday, jurors found Maurice guilty of sexually touching an 18-year-old girl without her consent the previous night.
Maurice Hawell has been found guilty of gang-raping three teenage girls during his stag weekend.
The teenager told the court that Maurice had attempted to sexually touch her upper thigh, near her groin, while she was lying in bed after having consensual sex with another stag party attendee.
“I don’t want that at all,” she recalled telling the groom-to-be.
The jury also told the court they could not reach a unanimous decision on whether brothers Hawell and Andrew had anally raped the same 18-year-old woman that night.
The teenager said a “swarm” of men held her down on a bed in a dark bedroom and stripped her naked.
She described how she tried to hit one man’s penis as he tried to put it in his mouth, while another man tried to place his free hand on his penis.
The 18-year-old said she was then vaginally and anally raped but could not identify her attackers because the room was so dark.
All three men denied the allegations.
Although the teenager was unable to identify her attackers, the jury found Monday that brothers Hawell and Andrew had sexually assaulted the woman in the darkened room.
However, jurors could not agree on whether the three men were guilty of anal rape.
Judge Gina O’Rourke ordered jurors to try to reach a majority decision on the aggravated sexual assault charge against the trio.
After just over an hour of deliberation, the jury said they could not reach a consensus.
The jury also returned guilty verdicts for Marius Hawell (pictured), Maurice’s younger brother.
Judge O’Rourke formally discharged the jury of its duties to render a verdict on the final charges against the three men.
The three rapists sat in the dock, dressed in green prison-issued tracksuits and wearing expressionless expressions.
On Monday, the jury found the trio guilty of gang-raping three teenage girls over two consecutive nights of a stag weekend.
The 18-year-old women told the court they had been sexually assaulted on Friday night when they went to get their phones as they prepared to leave the Airbnb.
They said they were both thrown back onto the beds and held down as the men gang-raped them in a darkened room, leaving them unable to move or identify their attackers.
The jury also found that Maurice, Andrew and Marius had gang-raped a third teenage girl the following night after Maurice lured her to the rented Airbnb using a false name.
The court heard the man persuaded the woman to go up to his flat for a few drinks before leaving, but instead led her into a bedroom.
Andrew David was also found guilty of sexually assaulting three women.
Maurice pushed her onto a bed and they kissed before asking her if she wanted to have a threesome with him and Andrew.
—What? No —she said.
Despite her denials, the teenager said David pinned her to the bed by kneeling on her shoulders before forcing his penis into her mouth while Maurice raped her.
The jury accepted that Marius entered the room and used the flashlight on his phone while the men took turns sexually assaulting the 19-year-old.
The court heard the teenager had put her trousers on backwards in her rush to leave the flat after the gang rape and was “sobbing”.