A rugby player and cheerleader sent a picture of his genitals to a 15-year-old girl and asked her to send him naked pictures of herself before raping her in a car, a court has heard.
Conor Lindh, 23, is on trial in Sydney’s Downing Centre Local Court after denying having sexual relations with girls aged 14 and 15.
He pleaded not guilty to four counts of having sexual relations with a minor and one count of intentionally sexually touching a minor.
On Monday, the jury heard that Mr Lindh sent a photo of his genitals to a 15-year-old girl and asked her to send him nude photos of herself before sexually assaulting her.
Connor Lind, 23, was charged at Sydney’s Downing Centre Local Court.
In pre-recorded testimony in court on Monday, the then-teenager said she received the photos on Snapchat.
“I was shocked,” she said.
‘I didn’t expect that.’
The plaintiff said she did not remember ever ‘deliberately displaying a seductive attitude’ to Ms. Lindh.
According to the court, the 15-year-old girl was later alone with Mr Lind in a car, where he kissed her and put his hand down her pants.
She said the woman, then 20, touched her vagina and took off her underwear before asking her to “lick it just once”.
The plaintiff said Mr. Lind asked her, “Please.”
“I just said, ‘No,’ and it just kept happening,” she told police in an interview recounted in court.
When Lind’s attorney, Lisa-Claire Hutchinson, asked the plaintiff whether she had verbally objected, the plaintiff insisted she had said “no” more than once.
The plaintiff said, “I refused, but I don’t remember how many times I refused.”
She said she later regretted not intervening physically, such as ‘pushing him away’ when Mr Lind touched her.
“Looking back, I realized what had happened, it made me sick and I regretted everything,” the plaintiff explained.
Mr. Lind was 20 years old when the incident with the teenage girl occurred.
Mr Lind with his lawyer Lisa-Claire Hutchinson outside court today
Her friend told the court the 15-year-old was “slightly drunk” but “not intoxicated” at the time of the alleged sexual act.
According to the friend’s testimony, the plaintiff told her that night that she and Mr Lindh had ‘met’ in his car and showed her a red mark on his ‘lower chest’ as evidence.
The plaintiff testified that she told friends that she had rejected Mr. Lindh’s sexual advances, but the friends said they could not remember such details from the conversations.
The friend agreed with Ms Hutchinson, saying it was likely the plaintiff remembered telling her the sex was non-consensual, which may have prompted her to tell her parents.
A friend of the plaintiff told the court that the plaintiff was “pretty neutral” when telling friends about the sexual conduct she had with Ms Lindh.
Mr Lindh denied ever having sexual contact with the 15-year-old girl he is accused of having sex with or the 14-year-old girl.
Prosecutors alleged he had anal, oral and digital sex with an underage girl when he was 19.
Mr Lind is also accused of putting his hand down the pants of a 14-year-old girl while she was sitting on the sofa in her parents’ home.
A witness told the court that while the couple were in bed, he heard a “sound” and saw Mr Lindh put his hand between the girl’s legs.
The trial is due to continue at Downing Centre Local Court on Tuesday.
In text messages read out in court, the witness told her mother that a 14-year-old boy had “climbed on top of her” and then “put his hand down her pants.”
‘I can hear shit. I’m shaking,’ she wrote.
Her mother came to pick her up, responding that it was ‘twisted’.
Mr Lind was arrested at Sutherland Police Station in August 2021 and did not deny knowing the girls were aged 14 and 15 at the time.
Mrs Hutchinson argued that her client, then a promising rugby union player and university student, had ‘every reason to comply with the law’.
The trial continues before Judge John Pickering on Tuesday.
