Sri Lankan international cricketer Danushka Gunathilaka pursued his Tinder date relentlessly and had “plenty of opportunity” to remove a condom during sex, a prosecutor has told a Sydney court.
But the batsman’s barrister argued the woman is “demonstrably unreliable” and CCTV from the night does not match her narrative that his client was forceful and aggressive.
Gunathilaka, 32, is accused of removing a condom without the 29-year-old woman’s knowledge during sex, known as stealthing. He has faced a four-day judge-alone trial in Downing Centre District Court after pleading not guilty to sexual intercourse without consent.
In a closing address to Judge Sarah Huggett on Thursday, Crown prosecutor Gabrielle Steedman said Gunathilaka pursued the woman “quite relentlessly” in messages sent before the date on November 2, 2022. They went to the Opera Bar, Frankie’s Pizza and caught a ferry to her eastern suburbs home.
Steedman said the sexual episode “turned out very differently to what she expected or wanted”.
“He was rough, did not care or respect any of her requests or boundaries … entirely consistent with someone who would, in that state of mind, remove his condom, despite her clear wishes to the contrary,” the prosecutor said.
Steedman said the complainant made it “entirely clear her consent to sex was conditional on him wearing a condom”, and DNA results matched her account that she had opened the condom packet.
She said Gunathilaka admitted in his police interview that he did not like having sex with a condom.
The prosecutor said Gunathilaka gave a “jumbled and confused answer” to police about the use of a second condom, but only one was found at the scene.
“The accused almost panics when he is asked questions about putting on this condom and his assertion that there were two,” Steedman said.
She said he was “laying it on thick, trying to paint a picture that he was all for the condom, so much that he got a second one out when the first malfunctioned”.
“In between, he could’ve been doing anything with his hands,” the prosecutor said.
She said he had “plenty of opportunity” to remove the condom.
“He doesn’t have his hands tied behind his back, he was a man annoyed about wearing a condom.”
“She never says his penis was outside her vagina. She never says that,” Thangaraj told the court.
“She describes continuous sexual activity. That ends it. The Crown cannot prove its case at all, let alone to the requisite standard, with that evidence.”
He said the woman gave self-serving evidence, and it was “completely illogical” to claim Gunathilaka had pushed her on the couch and that she froze if she then “initiated movement into the bedroom” and lit candles.
“This evidence is another example of why she was demonstrably unreliable,” the barrister said.
He said the woman’s story had been “shaped to fit the allegation”. He said she had expressed a belief to police that the condom was removed, which was “totally different” to her uncertainty when she told her friends “I don’t know if he took it off” and “I’m not sure, I just have a feeling”.
He noted two wrapped condoms were found in Gunathilaka’s Burberry satchel bag seized by police.
Huggett will deliver her verdict on September 28.
