WE BACK
Court plays footage of Paul Kent’s distraught alleged choking victim
Warning: Graphic content
Rugby league journalist Paul Kent allegedly held a woman to the ground and grabbed her neck, leaving her with injuries to her arms and chest, a court has heard.
Kent, 53, who has temporarily been stood down from his roles as a senior writer for
The Daily Telegraph and host of Fox Sports show
NRL 360, is defending the domestic violence allegations. He is accused of attacking the 33-year-old woman at his home in Lilyfield in May.
Paul Kent arriving at the Downing Centre Court in Sydney on Monday.Credit: Kate Geraghty
He is facing a two-day hearing at Sydney’s Downing Centre Local Court, charged with common assault, intentionally choking a person without consent and assault occasioning actual bodily harm.
As the first day of the hearing got under way on Monday morning, the court heard Kent and the alleged victim had been dating on-and-off for some months and Kent broke it off the night before the alleged assault.
Kent sat on one side of the courtroom – dressed in a navy dark blue suit with a striped black tie – while the alleged victim’s supporters sat on the other.
The court was played body-worn police footage of the alleged victim speaking to police on the side of the road in the aftermath of the alleged attack.
In the recording, the distraught woman can be heard saying she visited Kent the day before – on May 11– and saw a bottle of prosecco while she was making coffee.
She told police that she asked Kent who owned the bottle, since “he’s trying to sort his mental health out”, and she left soon after.
She said that, the day after the prosecco conversation, she was “messaging him a lot” and called him before walking through his back door about 10.30am.
The woman told police Kent either “gets really angry and aggressive or shuts down and won’t respond to messages” when he’s angry.
“I walked into his office, and he said, ‘What are you doing here?’ and he was screaming,” she said in the body-worn footage.
The woman told police that, after a short argument, Kent pushed her to the ground and assaulted her after she took his phone from him.
“He grabbed me and … he moved his hands onto my neck, and when he got his phone and he let go, I was trying to reach my phone and he had his hand on my mouth,” the woman can be heard saying in the video.
The footage showed police taking photos of the woman’s arm and hand, which she alleged had marks on them, as well as her chest, which she claimed was red.
Kent gave a different version of events in separate police body-worn footage taken shortly after that conversation.
The recording showed Kent opening his front door to police and leaning on it as they spoke to him.
At first, he told police she was “just being nasty” and he didn’t want to say anything about the incident.
When the police officer told him there had been an allegation of assault against him, he said, “No.” He told police he had been ignoring the woman’s calls and messages after an argument the previous day, and was doing work in his office that morning when he saw her standing in his hallway.
“I told her to leave and went to walk her out … and she grabbed my phone,” he told police in the footage.
“She fell to the ground and screamed … She called a friend … and then she rang you guys.”
When police prodded further about his attempt to grab his phone back, Kent made an action of clasping his hands together close to his neck.
“She had it [the phone] like this,” he said in the footage.
“I didn’t do anything like that [she is accusing]. I didn’t strike her, she fell to the ground. I said she has no right to be in this house.”
Kent alleged the woman was “going through all [his] drawers and stuff”, adding later, “I’m not a f---ing lunatic.”
“If I get charged, there’s every chance I’ll get sacked,” he said in the footage.
“She’s f---ing irrational, mate.”
Kent alleged the woman called his boss after the incident, as she knew he worked in the media.
The body-worn footage cut to several other people standing outside the house, including one man who said he “runs Fox Sports”.
That man said: “She’s a nice girl. I f---ing feel for her, but she makes it up.”
After the footage was shown, defence lawyer Phillip Boulten, SC, cross-examined Constable Jack Winkler, who attended the scene.
Boulten asked Winkler if he’d seen photos that showed Kent had “a scratch to his right arm and two small nicks to his finger”, to which Winkler said, “I did.”
The court heard the only conviction on Kent’s criminal record was a low range drink-driving offence from August 1994.
