Kangaroos player to stand trial for rape
North Melbourne AFL player Majak Daw will stand trial after pleading not guilty to raping a teenage girl in 2007.
He entered the pleas at the conclusion of a committal hearing at Melbourne Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday.
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“I do find the evidence is of sufficient weight to support a conviction to all three charges,” Magistrate Donna Bakos said.
Daw, who is on bail, was told he must attend a directions hearing on Wednesday.
Earlier, a man who cannot be named for legal reasons, told the court how the teenage girl had not been seen for a while during a house party they were at in Melbourne’s west in March 2007.
He said the girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was “very emotional” when she was eventually found by a female friend.
“It was hard to get anything out of her,” he told the court.
“Obviously we asked her to tell us.”
He said eventually the girl told them she had been raped by Daw, now 23.
The witness said he then carried the girl to the front of the property “because she was so emotional”.
“She couldn’t stand up,” he said.
Another friend told the court the girl who found the alleged victim told her the next day that she had discovered Daw lying on top of her.
“She stated that she had to get him off her and she had bruising,” the woman told the court.
The witness who discovered the alleged victim gave evidence to the committal hearing on Monday, saying the girl was “hysterical” after she found Daw lying on top of her near a creek out the back of the party in Altona Meadows.
The alleged victim also gave evidence on Monday but journalists were not allowed to listen.
Daw, who is facing three counts of rape, sat listening to the evidence in the court room with supporters sitting behind him.