A senior cop who lied while giving evidence during the high-profile rape trial of NRL star Jack de Belin has avoided jail after blaming his actions on mental health.
The NSW Police officer, whose identity has been protected by the courts, was sentenced in Wollongong District Court on Friday to a 12-month intensive corrections order to be served in the community after Judge Christine Mendes found he was under “extreme stress”.
Earlier this year “Officer A” pleaded guilty to one count of giving false evidence under oath amounting to perjury, an offence which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in jail.
De Belin and friend Callan Sinclair endured two trials after pleading not guilty to sexually assaulting a woman in 2018. The first ended in a hung jury, while the second found the pair not guilty of one sexual assault charge each but was stuck on other charges that were then dropped by the prosecution.
Mr de Belin, who played for the St George Illawarra Dragons at the time, reacted to Officer A’s sentence outside court by saying “it was obviously a little bit light, but it is what it is” and “what’s kept Cal and myself so strong throughout this is our innocence”, Newswire reported.
Mr Sinclair’s family called the sentence a “slap on the wrist”, and father Terry described the investigation as “nothing more than a blatant and concerted effort by the detectives involved to achieve an outcome – which was a conviction of a high-profile NRL rugby league player in Jack de Belin”, Nine News reported.
Officer A lied in cross-examination about 190 texts he viewed on de Belin’s phone after it was seized by police, saying he believed the messages between the rugby league player and a contact named “Craig Lawyer” were “Dragons business” when he knew they were protected by legal professional privilege.
The evidence was given during a pre-trial hearing where lawyers for Mr de Belin and Mr Sinclair argued that police accessing the material in the text messages robbed their clients of a right to a fair trial, but their application for a permanent stay of proceedings was dismissed by a judge.
Judge Mendes found on Friday that the lie was “crude and basic” and bound to be discovered, and said Officer A’s seniority and the seriousness of Mr de Belin and Mr Sinclair’s charges made the offence more serious, but took into account his mental health problems and described him as a “highly fragile, broken man”.
Officer A was medically retired from NSW Police in August 2023, and his barrister Peggy Dwyer SC told a sentencing hearing earlier this year that he was suffering from PTSD and depression at the time he gave false evidence.
Ms Dwyer said her client’s mental health issues were caused by being exposed to disturbing incidents while working as a police officer, and that they “impaired his capacity in terms of the evidence that he gave”.
The judge found the officer was “clearly unwell and suffering” from undiagnosed PTSD for years in the lead-up to his witness stand lies, and rejected a prosecution argument the perjury was committed as part of a well-thought-out and sophisticated plan.
Header image: The lying cop leaving court on Friday (Nine News).
