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Luke Lazarus has pleaded not guilty to the rape of a woman outside a Kings Cross nightclub. Picture: Adam Yip
A MAN who allegedly raped a young woman in a laneway behind his father’s Kings Cross nightclub says her mood changed when he asked the woman to add her name to a “trophy list” of women he had on his phone.
The 18-year-old woman’s name was later found on the bottom of a list of 17 other women in the note section of Luke Andrew Lazarus’ mobile.
The 25-year-old is on trial accused of anally raping the woman, then 18 and on her first night out in Kings Cross, behind Soho nightclub in May 2013. Lazarus had met the woman only minutes earlier on the dance floor where he told her he was a part-owner of the night club and offered to introduce her to the DJ in the VIP area.
His father Andrew Lazarus was an owner of the nightclub at the time. He denied the woman was slurring her words and unsteady on her feet, adding he himself was only moderately intoxicated.
Lazarus led the women out a rear door into alleyway and told her to “turn around and put your hands on the fence and to go on her hands and knees”. After the alleged rape, Lazarus asked the woman to add her name to a list of women he kept in the notes section of his phone.
He said during cross-examination in the NSW District Court on Friday he asked her to do it because “I did not remember her name” adding “I had acted totally thoughtlessly”.
He previously testified that everything was consensual and that it soured when she saw the list of names on his phone.
When asked by Crown Prosecutor Cate Dodds whether it was a “trophy list” Lazarus replied: “Yes”, later adding “I wanted her name so I could put it on my list”. Ms Dodds asked why he didn’t take the woman to a hotel, back to his granny flat in Vaucluse or book her a taxi home as she was clearly upset to which he replied: “I agree I was not a gentleman.”
Earlier this week, the court heard the alleged victim was “crying on the street” when her friend found her.
Giving evidence on Wednesday, the friend said she was talking to someone on the dance floor and when she turned around her friend “was no longer there”.
She left the nightclub and tried to contact her friend to see where she was but she did not receive an immediate reply.
When her friend did finally call her she was “breathing heavily, crying and she sounded scared.” She found her friend on the street and said “she was just a mess”. “She was hunched over, she couldn’t really stand and she was very upset,” she said.
Lazarus is facing a judge-alone retrial after an earlier conviction was quashed on appeal.
The trial continues.