“After everything she said that is done to her in that room, Mr Barrientos rings room service to ask for a burger and she asked for chips to go,” said her lawyer David Edwardson. “A request made by her to him, when minutes earlier he slapped, choked and raped her and she said, ‘Can I have chips to go.’ That is what her narrative is … what you might think is utterly improbable,” reports The Australian’s Emma Kirk from a trial in Perth.
British rapper Yung Filly assaulted a 20-year-old fan in a hotel room while on his 2024 Australian tour, but did not rape her, a jury has found. The YouTube star – whose real name is Andres Felipe Valencia Barrientos – was charged with six counts of sexual assault, three counts of assault and one count of choking relating to an incident at a Perth hotel after a gig at a Hillary’s Boat Harbour nightclub.
A jury was unable to reach a majority verdict on three counts of sexual assault, and was discharged on these counts. The jury found him not guilty of choking, slapping the alleged victim multiple times during the alleged encounter and three rape charges.
He was found guilty of assault that involved biting the woman’s face and neck, as well biting her breast hard enough to leave an open wound. During her closing argument, state prosecutor Danielle Clarke argued the rapper was an “entitled man” who had very little regard for the woman, who was excited and desperate to meet her idol.
However, Yung Filly’s lawyer, David Edwardson, told the court the young woman was an enthusiastic and willing participant when the sex started. “The question is whether the violence or sexual acts occurred as (she) said they did. It is common ground they had sex in the hotel room,” he said “This is not a court of morals, you are not here to say whether you agree or disagree about how this woman was treated by Mr Barrientos.”
“Mr Edwardson argued that when people were “in the moment” they did not ask whether sexual activity was consensual, frame by frame. “This notion of a power imbalance and he didn’t ask questions about sexual boundaries, or he somehow had a responsibility to ask her before each sexual act in the bedroom is nonsense,” he said.
“It applies both ways. There was an age difference of nine years, but she was an adult. “One thing is perfectly clear, she was an enthusiastic and willing participant when the sex started.” Mr Edwardson argued medical evidence shown in court was unable to establish that Mr Barrientos raped, assaulted or strangled the woman. He said the state and police also failed to gather critical evidence or interview key witnesses who spoke to the woman after the alleged rape. “We say (the woman’s) evidence is riddled with inconsistencies, embellishment and outright lies.”
Barrientos will appear in court for a sentence mention on August 21.
The Fragile Balance of Consent: When the Law Leaves Both Parties Exposed
In recent years Australian jurisdictions, including Queensland, have moved decisively toward an affirmative model of consent. From September 2024 Queensland law has required free and voluntary agreement that is mutually communicated through words or actions for every sexual act. Silence or the absence of resistance is not enough.
Consent may be withdrawn at any moment, and activity that continues after withdrawal occurs without consent. These reforms aim to protect genuine victims and to emphasise ongoing communication. Yet they also create practical difficulties that affect both parties and leave open the possibility of serious misuse. The difficulty is most acute in the realm of rough or intense sexual activity. Adults who wish to engage in biting, slapping, spanking or other forms of impact play face a legal environment that makes such activity almost impossible to conduct with any real safety.
Queensland’s own official guidance acknowledges that parties should ensure mutual understanding of the use of force. At the same time, if grievous bodily harm results, the injury itself is treated as evidence of the lack of consent unless the accused proves otherwise. Written agreements or prior discussions offer little protection. A signed document or a text-message trail may show that conversation occurred, but it does not override the requirement for continuous affirmative consent or neutralise the presumption created by injury.
The law effectively tells adults that they may negotiate boundaries, yet provides almost no reliable mechanism for proving those boundaries were respected if accounts later diverge. Video or audio recording might appear to solve the evidential problem.
Contemporaneous footage can cut through competing memories. The 2015 Gold Coast case involving Gable Tostee illustrates the point. After a Tinder date ended with Warriena Wright falling from his balcony, Tostee’s phone recording of the evening captured her escalating aggression, including the throwing of objects. That recording was central to his defence and contributed to his acquittal of murder.¹ Without it, the surviving party’s account would have dominated the narrative. Yet the person who records a sexual encounter risks being labelled calculating or predatory.
The act of creating evidence is itself treated with suspicion, leaving participants with an unattractive choice: remain unprotected against later allegations or risk social and legal stigma for documenting what occurred.
Australian courts have confirmed that consent can be withdrawn mid-act and that continuation after clear withdrawal can amount to rape or its statutory equivalent. In Butler v The State of Western Australia the complainant initially consented but later told the accused to get off, adding that she could have him for rape; he continued and was convicted.² In Casey v The Queen the accused admitted continuing until ejaculation after the complainant told him to stop; the jury convicted him of rape on that count.³ In Kazantzis v R repeated verbal and physical indications that the complainant wished the activity to cease were held sufficient to support a conviction for continuing penetration without consent.⁴
These decisions establish a clear principle: once withdrawal is communicated, the activity must stop. They do not, however, resolve the practical questions that arise in real time, how clear the communication must be under conditions of arousal, alcohol, darkness or noise, how quickly withdrawal must occur, or how the other party can demonstrate a reasonable belief that consent continued.
An English High Court decision has gone further on conditional consent, holding that deliberate disregard of an explicit condition (no internal ejaculation) could negate the original agreement and support a rape finding, with the presence of semen forming part of the evidence.⁵ Australian appellate courts have not produced an identical reported criminal decision, but the logic of mid-act withdrawal is already firmly embedded in domestic law.
The cumulative effect of these rules is an asymmetry of risk. The person who genuinely withdraws consent is protected by the requirement of immediate cessation. The person who reasonably believes consent is continuing faces the possibility that a later change of mind, imperfect recollection, or strategic narrative can convert an earlier agreement into a criminal allegation. Because rough play leaves marks and because biological evidence can prove continuation, the evidential pathway for a complaint is relatively straightforward once the claim is made. The pathway for the accused to demonstrate ongoing mutual agreement is far more difficult.
This imbalance creates space for a particularly corrosive form of misuse. A partner who wishes to harm the other after a relationship ends may initiate a final sexual encounter, participate enthusiastically, and later assert that consent was withdrawn at a critical moment. The presence of semen or minor injuries can then be presented as corroboration. The accused is left attempting to prove a negative; that consent was not withdrawn, or that any withdrawal was not communicated with sufficient clarity. While the law treats the complainant’s later account as the starting point. The result is not merely an individual injustice; it is an incentive structure that rewards the weaponisation of intimacy.
The central unanswered question remains how both parties can be equally protected. How does the law safeguard the right to withdraw consent without leaving the other party exposed to retrospective reinterpretation? How can adults take calculated physical risks with each other without every bruise becoming potential evidence of a crime? One modest practical step would be for prosecuting authorities to develop a standard dual-party form that records discussion of specific boundaries, acknowledges the possibility of mid-act withdrawal, and is signed by both participants before high-risk activity. Such a document would not be conclusive, but it would at least create a contemporaneous record of mutual understanding. At present no such instrument exists.
Until the law develops clearer mechanisms for mutual protection, adults who value intense or rough sexual expression will continue to operate in a climate of uncertainty. The reforms were designed to protect the vulnerable. In practice they also leave open the possibility that one party can turn a final consensual encounter into the foundation of a criminal allegation. A system that cannot protect both participants with roughly equal effectiveness risks undermining the very trust on which private relationships depend.
¹ The recording of the evening formed a central part of the defence case in the trial of Gable Tostee arising from the death of Warriena Wright on the Gold Coast in 2015; Tostee was acquitted of murder.
² Butler v The State of Western Australia [2013] WASCA 242.
³ Casey v The Queen [2014] VSCA 257.
⁴ Kazantzis v R [2020] NSWCCA 161.
⁵ R (F) v Director of Public Prosecutions [2013] EWHC 945 (Admin).