Over a two-year period, a woman was allegedly sexually assaulted, choked, punched, and kicked three times by a domineering and envious male from northern New South Wales, including at a five-star hotel in Sydney.
A 22-year-old guy named Joel Nathan Fitzpatrick Burtt has entered a not guilty plea to numerous accusations of physical and sexual abuse against an unnamed lady.
The Suffolk Park man was characterised as domineering and envious by crown prosecutor Melanie O’Connell as his trial got underway in front of 14 jurors at Sydney’s Downing Centre District Court today.
While travelling through Cronulla in October 2020, the woman received a Snapchat message from a different man.
Fitzpatrick Burtt allegedly grabbed her phone, leaped out of the car, and fled after realising this.
The jury was informed that he had messaged the other man posing as the woman and made plans to meet him at Cronulla, where an altercation had taken place.
Later on in the day, the woman said that the 22-year-old had grabbed her hair and forced her to take him to a family friend.
He heard something he didn’t like, so on the way there, he headbutted her, according to O’Connell.
He’d allegedly wrapped his hands around her neck and given her a squeezing that night in a bedroom.
“He had his other hand on her mouth and … she couldn’t breathe,” stated O’Connell.
Fitzpatrick Burtt heard these dockside arguments, bolstered by court-appointed family members.
O’Connell went on, claiming that as they were lying in his Suffolk Park bedroom in October 2021, the 22-year-old reportedly choked the woman once again.
The jury heard that he lost his temper because the woman was using her phone when he was trying to fall asleep.
One year later, after they had both attended birthday parties, he is charged with raping and assaulting the woman multiple times on a Saturday night in a hotel room at the Star Grand.
It is anticipated that the complainant would inform the court that she went back to the room to get something before heading out to another gathering.
Fitzpatrick Burtt allegedly grabbed the complainant by the neck and restrained her while she was inside.
According to O’Connell, he raped her and hit her in the side of the head after she turned down his advances for sex.
The jury heard that following several instances of sexual assault, he stomped on the woman, threw ice over her while she lay on the ground, and kicked her in the face when she began to weep.
She then went out of the hotel room and spoke with the police and hotel security.
It is anticipated that a sexual assault nurse who assessed the victim the next day will provide documentation of her wounds and bruises.
According to defence attorney Peter Skinner, his client disputed that the purported events at Suffolk Park and Cronulla ever happened.
He asserted that the sex at the Star hotel was consenting, although he disputes several of the acts that the complainant and the crown claimed to have happened.
Fitzpatrick Burtt acknowledges that he actually hurt the woman when he hit her, but he claims this happened late at night during an altercation.
“That occurred following some pretty awful intercourse,” Skinner remarked.
“He lost it and he punched her.”
According to Skinner, the attack did not take place prior to the sexual encounter in order to overwhelm the complainant, as stated by the prosecution.
Additionally, Fitzpatrick Burtt denies stomping or kicking the woman.
Fitzpatrick Burtt sobbed as the 21-year-old complainant provided testimony this afternoon via audio-visual link, pulling tissues from a box nearby.
Tomorrow is the next day of the trial.
