After the directions given by two consecutive trial judges were the subject of two successive appeals, the delays incurred in the re-trials must have weighed heavily in the decision of the Court of Appeal in 2017 not to order a third trial nearly five years after the original events in May 2013. The case of R v Lazarus illustrates the difficulties inherent in the complex directions required to be given in rape trials. In these circumstances, cases turn on the credibility of the complainant and the question of consent. However, the accused is often known to the complainant, or his identity (the accused is usually a male) can readily be confirmed by DNA evidence. There are usually no witnesses to serious sexual assaults. After hearing virtually the same evidence by both the complainant and the accused as the jury heard a year before, a judge sitting without a jury concluded that Lazarus had ‘reasonable grounds’ for believing that Mullins was consenting to the anal intercourse.Īlthough the NSW Court of Appeal in R v Lazarus NSWCCA 279 found that the judge in the re-trial had not misdirected herself in relation to Lazarus’ self-induced intoxication when considering the issue of consent, the Court of Appeal held that the trial judge failed to direct herself in relation to making a finding about the steps taken by Lazarus to establish whether the complainant was consenting to the intercourse.
On appeal, the New South Wales Court of Appeal found that the trial judge erred in his directions in relation to the reasonableness of Lazarus’ belief that Mullins had consented and ordered a re-trial. In February 2015, after Huggett DCJ gave detailed directions to the jury, Lazarus was convicted and was sentenced to 5 years’ imprisonment. 1 When asked by the interviewer whether she had wanted her first sexual experience to have been anal intercourse on her hands and knees in the gravel in an alley in Kings Cross, Ms Mullins shook her head and said: ‘I didn’t even get kissed until I was 17 years old’. “Well thank you and, you know, you weren’t married at the time, so yeah, I went for it because you were single and I felt like I wasn’t going to offend anybody,” she told him.On, during the ABC Four Corners programme entitled ‘ I Am That Girl’, Saxon Mullins gave up her anonymity as a victim/survivor and described how, as an 18-year-old, she believed she had been raped by 24-year-old Luke Lazarus less than 10 minutes after they met on a nightclub dance floor. “So what I did, in a panic, I just yelled cut, and bent over and said, ‘Oh guys, sorry, my back, I put my back out playing ball.’ … Anyway, I went off into my corner and … finally I was able to compose myself, and luckily the subsequent scenes went on without a hitch,” he explained, adding, “You are a very good kisser!”ĭrew was ultimately flattered by Michael’s confession. He continued, “The feelings were, they just happened, and I very quickly realized I was in a very bad spot because I was wearing very loose sort of like slacks and I thought, ‘This is going to be a disaster when they cut, I must preemptively end this.'” “I was not ready for it in the least, and I’m a man, I was a very young man back then, and I had uh, feelings.” I mean, you really kissed me,” he told Drew. “Yeah, there’s a story about the famous scene that very few people know about and I’m not sure I should … So, I get up to the mound, we embrace and we start kissing, and you really kissed me. While chatting about the infamous pitching mound scene, Michael got very candid about his then-crush on Drew. In September 2021, Drew Barrymore had a Never Been Kissed reunion on her daytime talk show with former castmates Molly Shannon, David Arquette and Michael Vartan. Michael Vartan needed to step away to, ahem, calm down after kissing Drew Barrymore.
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