He said the women had discussed leaving and went to retrieve their phones from a bedroom, in which the lights were off, when the second woman “felt someone grab her and the door close”.
Evans anticipated the second complainant’s evidence would be that she then felt “a swarm of people on her”, was “forced onto the bed”, undressed and had “many hands on her body”.
He said the woman called out for the man she had met at the pub, and a “number of males” replied that they were him.
“There were at least three men in the bedroom at this time, Maurice [Hawell], Marius [Hawell] and Mr David,” the prosecutor said.
Evans said the first woman was allegedly pushed back on the bed and raped by two men at once.
“She felt scared and trapped … she didn’t know what to do and froze … she reached out and grabbed [her friend’s] hand,” he said.
Evans said the first woman saw “three males on top of” the second woman during the incident.
The prosecutor said the women returned to the pub, where the first woman “told her friends that they had just had an orgy” and “tried to make out that it was a funny situation”, while the second woman kissed the man she earlier accompanied back to the Airbnb, who is not one of the accused.
Evans said the first woman did not tell anybody about what had happened until early 2023.
“She said it was not true that she enjoyed the sex in the dark [and] she previously told police that because she didn’t want to go through the court process, and wanted to forget it all,” he said.
The Saturday night
The prosecutor said the third complainant, a 19-year-old woman, was outside The Cambridge Hotel on the Saturday night when a man introduced himself as Jonathan and said, “Come to mine for predrinks”. Maurice Howall’s lawyers said it was not in dispute their client had said he was Jonathan.
The court heard the woman went inside the apartment and said, “What about predrinks?” to which Maurice Howall allegedly replied, “We’ll get to that.”
The prosecutor anticipated the third woman would give evidence that she “had an overwhelming feeling of being scared and wanted to leave” and “started to have a panic attack”.
Evans alleged Andrew David was also inside the room when Maurice Howall said, “Threesome?” to which the woman replied, “What? No.”
“She did that because she did not want sexual contact with anybody,” the prosecutor said.
The third complainant was then allegedly raped by the two men and heard the door open and an “additional male speak” in a language she did not understand.
The Crown alleges the third man was Marius Hawell, who was “walking back and forth at the end of the bed”.
The court heard the 19-year-old woman left and called triple zero at about 11.06pm that night. She gave police her clothes, pointed out the apartment and was taken to hospital for examination.
The defence arguments
In his opening remarks to the jury, Maurice Hawell’s barrister Richard Pontello, SC, said it was a case of “two episodes of sexual activity among a group of adults, all of whom engaged in that activity consensually”. He said his client did not accept that each of the alleged sexual acts had taken place.
David’s barrister Sharyn Hall, SC, said her client’s case was that “anything of a sexual nature that involved him happened consensually”.
“That is that everybody agreed to it happening,” she said. “Put simply, Mr David denies forcing anyone to do anything.”
Marius Hawell’s barrister Scott Corish said the 22-year-old was “tagging along with his brother and his brother’s friends for their buck’s weekend”.
“His case is that he did not engage in any of the sexual contact that grounds each of those counts on the indictment, or was not part of any joint criminal enterprise,” Corish said. “He’s the one described as having his clothes on at all times.”