Cricket star jokes about sexual assault trial he faced in Sydney as he goes Instagram official with his new love
Sri Lankan star Danushka Gunathilaka was arrested in Sydney in November 2022 and charged with sexual assault without consent.
Police alleged he had removed a condom without consent, also known as 'stealthing', during a sexual encounter with a woman he met on Tinder while he was in Sydney for the Cricket World Cup.
Gunathilaka was found not guilty in a judge-only trial that finished in September 2023 and allowed to leave the country, with police pushing for an apprehended violence order to be taken out against him despite the verdict.
On Saturday, the 34-year-old joked about needing a lawyer for a possible return to court as he debuted his new, unnamed girlfriend.
'I'm not sure what's more terrifying, the wedding or the potential for a future court date. Send wine... and maybe a lawyer referral,' he wrote alongside a series of photos of him with his new partner.
His followers celebrated the news with comments like 'looking beautiful together' and 'glad to see you like this again'.
The post appears to make it official that Gunathilaka has broken up with Celine, the woman who supported him during his trial in Sydney.
In her verdict, Judge Sarah Huggett found that while Gunathilaka told the woman he preferred not to wear a condom, he used one during the encounter and had consensual sex with the woman.
She also found that police who attempted to prosecute the cricket star acted 'unreasonably' and revealed she had 'significant concerns' about the prosecution case.
'I'm firmly of the opinion that if the prosecution had - before the proceedings were instituted - been in possession of evidence and all the relevant facts, it would not have been reasonable to institute the proceedings,' she said.
The top-order T20 batter was arrested and charged with four counts of sexual assault in November 2022 after the woman reported the matter to Bondi police.
The court was told the woman told Mr Gunathilaka she would only agree to sex if he wore a condom, which he 'grumbled' about but ultimately agreed to.
Notes from the woman's first police interview indicate she told officers the condom was taken off 'against her will', allegations Mr Gunathilaka denied.
During that interview, Judge Huggett said the woman failed to include 'critical' evidence she later provided to police in a statement some six months later.
Ultimately, police only proceeded to trial on a single charge, that of stealthing, with charges relating to the alleged roughness of the sex being dropped.
'The deficiencies in the prosecution case of stealthing, remembering that the prosecution case was not one of rough or aggressive sexual intercourse, were apparent,' Judge Huggett said.
'They were not the result of the factual findings made at trial ... Nor were the deficiencies related simply to the credibility of the complainant.
'There were so many inherent issues and difficulties with the prosecution case that should have been obvious to the prosecution at the outset.'
Judge Huggett ordered a certificate be issued to Mr Gunathilaka so he could be awarded costs.
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Daily Mail
12 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Fallen TV cooking show host breaks his silence about sex charge shock - despite his lawyer telling him not to speak as he makes a furtive dash to see cops
Former Ready Steady Cook! host Peter Everett has broken his silence as he reported for bail at a police station following his shock arrest on underage sex charges. The fallen TV show star initially attempted to sneak past waiting media, opting to drive around the streets of Sydney 's eastern suburbs, only to return two hours later. But he opened up to Daily Mail Australia as he left Waverley Police Station after he was charged with child sex offences at his Toukley home on the NSW Central Coast. 'I am holding up as well as possible,' Everett, 66, told Daily Mail Australia. 'My solicitor has advised me not to speak, but I am pleading not guilty.' He was granted bail with strict conditions that include reporting twice a week. He has been charged with sexually touching a 16-year-old boy without consent and appeared in Sydney's Parramatta Local Court over the weekend. On Monday police sought an Apprehended Violence Order against Everett on behalf of a third party identified only as 'MD'. The matter will be heard at Wyong Local Court on Thursday. Mandatory interim conditions, including bans on assaulting, threatening, stalking, harassing or intimidating the alleged victim, remain in place. Officers from the Tuggerah Lakes Police District had begun investigating the alleged incident the day before Everett's arrest. 'Following extensive inquiries, police arrested a 66-year-old man at a home at Toukley,' a statement from NSW Police read. 'The man was taken to Wyong Police Station where he was charged with sexually touching another person without consent.' Everett spent Saturday night in a cell before his bail hearing at Parramatta Local Court on Sunday. He may only return to his home to collect his belongings with a police escort, and is forbidden from contacting his alleged victim or any witnesses. He pleaded not guilty to the charge and denied any wrongdoing when approached by waiting media outside. Everett was best known for hosting the Channel 10 daytime cooking show Ready Steady Cook for five years from 2006. He was unceremoniously sacked from the show over the phone in 2011. In 2022, Everett revealed he was selling off his possessions just 'to survive' after a tough few years during the Covid-19 pandemic. Everett, who regularly appears at food festivals across the country, told 4BC Afternoons host Rob McKnight he'd 'lost his livelihood' because of the lockdowns. 'There's been a lot of sales on my behalf. I'm selling anything - not down to the garage sale yet - but I've been selling off a lot of things,' Everett said. 'It really hasn't been an easy time. It hasn't. The entertainment industry, a lot of my friends, far less fortunate than I, have had it really, really bad.' After he was dumped from the show in 2011, he said he was 'disappointed' to have been fired over the phone just before heading overseas on holiday. Rory Callaghan, the CEO of Southern Star Productions (now Endemol Australia), which produced the series, later defended the decision to sack Everett. Callaghan told TV Tonight: 'It was me who called him and said, 'Don't bother coming back from Bali.' It was a hard production with him so it was time to move on.' Speaking to in 2019, Everett added: '[Callaghan] was saying that I think I'm greater than the show. I think it meant I thought I was so indispensable and that they couldn't do the show without me.' In 2023, Everett unleashed on Channel 10 producers for failing to invite him back for the 2024 reboot. Everett told New Idea magazine that he was devastated and could barely sleep after learning that chef Miguel Maestre was hosting the program. 'I was like a three-year-old for a couple of days, who constantly asks, 'Why, why, why?'' he said. 'They didn't approach me for some reason. Who knows why? It's a shame.'
The Guardian
12 hours ago
- The Guardian
‘It destroyed me': two more men accuse Christian rock star Michael Tait of sexual assault
Two more men have come forward to accuse Christian rock superstar and Maga firebrand Michael Tait of drugging and sexually assaulting them – including Jason Jones, the founding manager of the American hard-rock band Evanescence. Jones said he was fired from the band – which had ties to Tait – for speaking out about his alleged assault. Jones said the firing, which he claimed happened in 1999, cut him out of Evanescence's massive success beginning in 2003. 'It destroyed me,' said Jones. 'I was achieving my dreams at an early age, and Tait changed all that.' Evanescence co-founder Ben Moody denied Jones was fired from the band for speaking out against Tait. Moody said he does recall Jones telling him about a sexual encounter with Tait, but at the time Moody interpreted it as consensual. 'I was a kid, only 18, and clearly didn't realize what he was going through,' Moody said. 'I'm sure I missed a lot of things I'd recognize today. I didn't realize he was traumatized.' In all, eight alleged victims have now come forward publicly with sexual assault allegations against Tait. A previous investigation by the Guardian reported allegations of sexual assault by Tait against three young men while another from the Christian news outlet the Roys Report reported allegations by three other men. Tait became famous as the frontman for DC Talk and Newsboys, two Christian mega-bands known for packaging conservative rhetoric about sexual abstinence, sobriety, Christian nationalism and the coming rapture in catchy rock songs. Tait has been a supporter of Donald Trump and served as a key bridge between Trump and evangelical voters. Tait has not responded to questions from the Guardian about the allegations against him. But in an Instagram post in June, Tait confessed to a decades-long addiction to cocaine and alcohol and admitted that he had 'at times, touched men in an unwanted, sensual way'. In the post, Tait added that he had recently 'spent six weeks at a treatment center in Utah'. Jones was described by friends who knew him in the 1990s as a happy-go-lucky Christian teenager, bursting with ambition and creativity. Growing up in Arkansas, Jones remembers, one of his biggest dreams was 'to meet DC Talk'. Jones achieved that dream in 1994 after moving to Nashville to manage the band of his friend, Randall Crawford, who was also friends with Tait and introduced the two. Jones recalled going to McDonalds with the DC Talk frontman and being mobbed by so many teenage fans they had to leave before getting their food. 'That kind of thing happened a lot,' he said. Jones was thrilled to be welcomed into Tait's inner circle, yet he was taken aback by what he described as Tait's proclivity for randomly grabbing other men's genitals. He said he eventually learned that Tait was living a double-life as a closeted gay man, which was becoming a problem for a band mentored by Moral Majority co-founder Jerry Falwell, who called Aids 'God's punishment for homosexuality'. While surprised, Jones held no negative feelings toward Tait's sexuality, even taking him to gay clubs in Little Rock (at Tait's request) when DC Talk performed there. Jones was regularly traveling back and forth from Nashville to Little Rock, and in 1995 he met aspiring musician Moody – the two of them hitting it off and collaborating on a project that would come to be named Evanescence. After co-producing the first Evanescence demo, Jones returned to Nashville and began talking up the band to his friend, Tait. Jones, as an evangelical, was sober and a virgin at the time. But he recalls getting caught up in a whirlwind of partying with Tait in 1995, chain-smoking cigarettes and marijuana and closing down bars, then returning to Tait's house to continue drinking. Jones said he was uncomfortable with all of it, but was eager for Tait's approval so he complied. 'I had this band that I was trying to take places,' Jones recalled. 'And [Tait] had the power to open doors for us in the industry. So I went along with whatever, but didn't know what it would cost me.' Jones' used his connection with Tait to help Evanescence get a foot in the door in Nashville, speaking with A&R people, record labels, venue owners, producers and musicians. Sources that wish to remain anonymous alleged that Tait had a rotation of attractive young men at his Nashville home at this time, some of them underage, and that Tait had a 'no clothes allowed' rule in his hot tub. 'He would put his penis against one of the jets, and tell us to do the same, saying 'see, it feels good!'' recalled a source who visited Tait regularly at this time, and wishes to remain anonymous. 'He was all about the shock factor,' recalled Crawford, who was close with Jones and Tait throughout the 90s. 'He was always saying 'let's make out in front of these people!' And I was like 'no, you're gonna destroy your career.' But he felt untouchable. And in some ways, he was.' Around this same time, Crawford recalls Tait driving him through the campus of Liberty University – Falwell's Christian college where DC Talk formed – speeding at 60mph and getting pulled over by campus security, who turned from anger to laughter when seeing Tait behind the wheel, even asking for pictures and autographs. 'After they left, Michael turned to me, calm as ever, and said: 'I can do anything and not get in trouble.'' Jones recalls drinking at Tait's house one night in late 1998, just after DC Talk finished rehearsals for their Supernatural album tour. Jones remembers feeling tired suddenly, and Tait recommended he go to sleep in his bedroom. 'I felt honored that he felt that close to me, that he trusted me enough to let me sleep in his bed,' Jones said. Some time later, Jones recalls waking up, his pants missing, and Tait was giving him oral sex. 'I said no and pushed him off, but then, somehow, I passed out again. I woke back up and he was still doing it. I said no again, then nodded out. And then I woke up a third time, aggressively shouted 'no!' and pushed him harder. It was then that he left me alone.' Looking back, Jones said, 'I believe that Michael Tait drugged me.' Two alleged victims from the Guardian's previous report also say they believe they were drugged by Tait before their alleged assaults. In addition, a female accuser cited by the Roys Report said she believed that Tait supplied Rohypnol or some other sedative to a crew member on a Newsboys tour, who then drugged and raped her while Tait watched. Distraught and in need of comfort, Jones flew home to Little Rock the day after he said he was assaulted. There he confided in a friend and mentor – who wishes to remain anonymous – that he had had 'a bad experience with Tait,' but wouldn't go into details. 'He wasn't the same after that,' Jones's friend recalled. Jones said that in early 1999 he had also confided in his friend and Evanescence co-founder, Ben Moody, about being sexually assaulted by Tait. 'Ben was only 18 at the time, new to the music industry, and I wanted to warn him,' Jones recalled. '[Tait] was flying Ben out to Nashville to write songs together, to see if he fit in Tait's inner-circle.' Moody remembers things differently. 'He didn't frame it as 'sexual assault,'' Moody said. 'He described it as like frat-boy joking around while they were drunk, with [Tait] saying 'what's the big deal? A dick's just a muscle.' And Jason said 'the next thing I know he's sucking my dick.'' Jones said he remains confident that he told Moody the full details of the assault, including that he verbally and physically resisted Tait three times as his consciousness came and went. Moody said he soon noticed a change in Jones's demeanor. Jones, a passionate, fun-loving guy who was easy to get along with, began suffering manic swings from depression to rage to paranoia and then to dissociation. 'After a late night studio he couldn't get the car shifter into gear and he just started screaming, hurling his body around, jerking the shifter violently like he was going to break it off.' Moody said he and the band began wondering if they should continue working with Jones. In retrospect, Moody said: 'I didn't know what he was going through. Looking back I would've been a bit more attentive, but I was the typical 18 year old who wanted to be a rockstar.' Moody said that in a phone call with Tait, he mentioned that Jones had told him about a sexual encounter between them, which Tait then denied. 'I wanted to get ahead of [Jason] talking shit about us and ruining the whole thing. Back then there were rumors Michael Tait [was gay] and at that point, right after [DC Talk's Grammy-winning album] Jesus Freak, he was the biggest thing in Christian music history, and the scandal would've been a huge deal.' Jones and Moody differ on whether he was fired or quit, but both recall the incident with Tait – however it was characterized – as the turning point of the relationship. 'I hid away after that,' Jones recalls. 'I started snorting meth, then smoking it.' His isolation and drug binge would continue for five years. Moody said he regrets how things went down with Jones back then. 'He was my best friend for so many years, and now I ask myself 'how fucking blind could I have been?'' Evanescence went on to be one of the biggest bands in the world, winning 'Best New Artist' and 'Best Hard Rock Performance' at the Grammys in 2003 and eventually selling tens of millions of albums. The following year, Moody and Tait would go on to be roommates and musical collaborators, with Tait singing on Moody's solo album, and Moody producing Tait's solo album, Loveology. In 2003, Moody left Evanescence to pursue his solo career. Evanescence co-founder Amy Lee and other representatives of the band could not be reached for comment. Like Moody, Crawford remembers his friend Jones as a 'a happy guy, a real sweetheart, but all that changed after 1998. I could tell something had happened. He didn't tell me about it at the time, but he has since. And I believe him, because the same thing happened to me.' Crawford first met DC Talk when the band was filming the music video for its first single, Heavenbound, in 1989. Crawford was working in a movie theater in the same Nashville mall the band was filming in. He loved their debut cassette and when they came by to catch a movie he introduced himself and gave them a discount. Crawford remembers his friend Jason Jones getting squeezed out of the management position of Evanescence in early 1999, and that 'it had something to do with Tait', but was unaware of specifics at the time. Back then, Crawford was an ambitious musician, and was being hired to write songs for solo projects for Tait and DC Talk's Toby Mac (the band went on 'hiatus' in 2000, and never officially reunited). Mac's project was later nominated for a Grammy and Dove Award. Crawford had also just signed his own record deal for his band, Webster County. Crawford recalls being distraught over a breakup one night in the fall 2000, and Tait inviting him over to hang out. 'You'll bounce back,' he recalls Tait saying, as he handed him a shot glass of Makers Mark whiskey. 'I told him 'just one,' and took the shot,' he recalled. 'I had a pretty high tolerance for alcohol at the time, but I blacked out shortly after I took that one drink.' Crawford said his memory picks up some time later, finding himself propped up on Tait's kitchen counter, his pants around his ankles. 'My legs were up in the air, and Tait was licking my anus,' he claimed. 'I said 'what are you doing, dude?' and then he said the weirdest thing: 'Hey man, did you catch the Colts game last week?' Like we were just hanging out, chatting.' Crawford said that he fled Tait's house, but has no memory of driving home. He said he is convinced that Tait drugged him. Two close friends of Crawford's have corroborated his story. One of them confirmed that Crawford told him details of the alleged assault at the time, but only named the perpetrator two years ago. The other friend said he was told the whole story at the time. 'I was never the same after that,' Crawford said. 'The joy and drive I had for music went away. Suddenly I had stage fright for the first time, brain-fog, anger issues, depression, and was even suicidal for a time. It ruined my career.' Despite having finished recording the album for his band, Crawford felt unable to perform as a musician, and the record was never released. Both Jones and Crawford recall thinking their assaults were isolated incidents and continued to have some involvement with Tait. Jones accepted a phone call from him when Tait's father passed away and he was distraught, and Crawford says he was 'love bombed' by Tait and succumbed to future advances. After not speaking for years, Tait re-entered his life in 2020. Crawford's wife was a musician herself, and Tait had offered to produce her album. 'I had buried the memory of that night for a long time,' Crawford said. After seeing Tait again, Crawford said, a lot of feelings came to the surface and he found himself weeping uncontrollably in the shower. After confessing to his wife what had happened, she encouraged him to enroll in EMDR trauma therapy, which he said had been helpful. 'Hearing Jason's story recently broke my heart,' he said of reuniting with his friend, Jones, decades later. 'I believe we'd both be in the music industry today if it weren't for Michael Tait.' Jones has been sober since 2008. After leaving the music industry he worked in banking and co-directed a sober living facility. Today he travels around the country sharing his story of abuse and addiction (not mentioning Tait's name when recounting the experience). Shortly after getting sober Jones contacted a law firm to ask about potential compensation he could be owed from Evanescence. According to his 2008 correspondence with the law firm that he shared with the Guardian, the firm told him that, because of the statute of limitations, his window for a suit against Evanescence had closed years earlier. Jones said the lawyers told him that, had he pursued the matter sooner, he could be entitled to up to tens of millions of dollars in compensation. Moody disputed the notion that Jones has ever had the right to compensation for his management efforts in the early days of Evanescence. Looking back 27 years later, Jones recalled the night he told Moody about what had happened to him. Warning him not only about Tait, but about the music industry in general, he recited a quote from the magazine journalist Hunter S Thompson, who said: 'The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free.' 'And that's true for the Christian music industry as well,' Jones said. 'Even more so, in my case.'
Telegraph
12 hours ago
- Telegraph
Political censors have cynically hijacked vital child protections
Britons woke up last week to discover that their firehose of digital smut had been strangled, albeit temporarily for consenting adults. Undeniably, the introduction of age verification regulations does mark a huge change in our relationship with the internet, hitherto a pornographic free-for-all. It may feel like a shock to find a third party inserting itself between you and a website, apparently demanding to know who you are, but it shouldn't be a surprise: it's eight years since the UK Government published its online harms green paper under Theresa May, and The Telegraph launched its Duty of Care campaign the following year. After much wrangling, the result was the 2023 Online Safety Act. In March, the first part of went into effect, placing new obligations on platforms to remove content that is legal, but harmful to children: suicide advice, eating disorders or dangerous stunt challenges. The second phase went into force last week, requiring age checks for pornography sites. 'Companies have effectively been treating all users as if they're adults, leaving children potentially exposed to porn and other types of harmful content,' wrote Melanie Dawes, Ofcom's chief executive, in January. The UK is not an outlier in its desire to keep children safe, either. Texas and three other US states require age verification for adult material, and so will Australia. But critics of the law have warned of consequences for free expression from the start, and over-zealous interpretations quickly became apparent. X, previously Twitter, has already put material behind the age gate, with Benjamin Jones, director of case management at the Free Speech Union – of which I am a member – identifying a number of posts which were worryingly censored for unverified users. Some supported calls for single-sex spaces for women. One by Wuhan lab researcher Billy Bostickson (a pseudonym) fell foul too; it was part of a thread on the use of bamboo RNA in vaccines. Several posts in a thread discussing Richard the Lionheart were gated, which merely contained a reference to the crusades. Most troublingly, a post linking to a live stream of police arrests at a demonstration at a migrant hotel in Leeds was also taken down. All these bans appear to have been the work of an over-zealous algorithm. Some saw this coming. Baroness Claire Fox has written of her dismay at realising how outnumbered speech advocates were when she was in a room as the only free speech advocate, alongside dozens of groups all requesting some clause or addition. 'Only two of us [peers] consistently opposed the bill – myself and Lord Daniel Moylan. I was shocked that so many from the free speech camp of peers were silent,' Fox tells me. 'It became a Christmas tree bill with lots of other things put in it,' said Kemi Badenoch as she campaigned for the Conservative leadership last year. She also predicted 'it will go after people who aren't doing anything wrong'. That hasn't quite happened yet, but long overdue moves to enforce accountability on giant, transnational platforms, and better protect children unfortunately coincided with a renewed desire to control political speech. The good state must take an active role in removing inflammatory speech, the United Nations declared in its 2021 paper Our Common Agenda. It re-emphasised the point last year. William Perrin, one of the architects of Ofcom's approach to regulating online platforms, who was not involved in drafting the legislation, recently posted a paper for the think tank Demos called Epistemic Security 2029: Protecting the UK's information supply chains and strengthening discourse for the next political era. It explicitly calls for the policing of social media platforms. One gets the sense that as long as populists are rising, the impulse to censor will be irresistible to their political opponents. By controlling our discourse, they can control democracy. 'We have an establishment that is innately hostile to Free Speech,' Jones of the Free Speech Union tells me. There is very much wrong with this. Against a backdrop of widespread concern about street crime, shoplifting and rampant fraud, the energy devoted by police to what we say online is confounding, from enthusiasm for the category of 'non-crime hate incidents' to the creation of a special monitoring unit. The implicit idea seems to be that if we stop talking about something the underlying problem will go away. With Britain a tinderbox, and a long summer ahead, this seems a brave moment to test the proposition. It is understandable why age verification and clumsy algorithms sow suspicion of the system itself. In reality, however, online anonymity was always illusory. Your broadband operator has always known who you are and which sites you visit. So has the shady VPN provider. Google collected your pornography browsing history even while you were browsing in 'incognito' mode, for which it was sued, agreeing later to delete billions of records in a settlement. What our alarm reflects is a wholesale loss of trust in the Government. Ofcom points to polling showing the Online Safety Act is widely supported. It is highly regrettable that a bien-pensant blob has cynically hijacked child protection law to ensure it has a media landscape more in keeping with its views. But there's plenty of blame to go around. One lesson of the Online Safety Act is that free-speech advocates also needed a plausible child protection plan. They never came up with one – and were duly steamrollered. The consequences for Britain may be profound.
