Former New South Wales MP Rory Amon is on trial in the Supreme Court, accused of sexual acts with a 13‑year‑old in 2017. He resigned from parliament after being charged and has pleaded not guilty to ten counts, including multiple charges of sexual intercourse with a child and indecent assault.
What the Crown says
Prosecutors allege the complainant — a teenager at the time — created a profile on a paid gay dating service during a free trial and misrepresented his age. The Crown contends Mr Amon, then in his mid‑20s, moved the conversation to Snapchat and met the complainant on two occasions in June and July 2017 in a communal bathroom beside the complainant’s apartment car park on Sydney’s northern beaches. The prosecution says electronic messages, timestamps and other digital records support its timeline, and that the meetings involved sexual activity that later left the complainant distressed.
What the defence says
Mr Amon’s lawyers accept there was some contact between the two but deny he knew the complainant was 13. The defence has argued the accused honestly and reasonably believed the other person was at least 16 — and in some versions, 18 — and disputes the provenance and interpretation of the digital material the Crown relies on. They also challenge the evidential weight of deleted or “disappearing” messages and question whether metadata can be relied on to prove the Crown’s chronology.
Key evidence before the jury
The prosecution’s case rests heavily on electronic communications, photographs of the meeting location, and witness testimony. Experts have been ordered to examine device logs, timestamps and whether material that appears to have been deleted can be recovered or authenticated. The complainant testified in court and reacted emotionally when shown photographs of the bathroom where the meetings are alleged to have taken place. Counsel for both sides are expected to call technical witnesses to explain message lifecycles on ephemeral platforms such as Snapchat.
Timing of disclosure
The complainant says he made early disclosures in 2017 but did not formally report the matter to police until years later, after recognizing the identity of the person he had met when that person’s public profile changed following election to local council and then parliament. The delay in reporting, and contemporaneous statements or disclosures, is a contested issue: the defence says the gap undermines reliability, while the Crown points to clinical accounts of increased anxiety and depressive symptoms as corroboration.
Legal questions at stake
Under Australian law, a person below the statutory age cannot legally consent to sexual activity. The jury must therefore decide not whether consent occurred in the ordinary sense, but whether the Crown has proved — beyond reasonable doubt — that the acts occurred and that the accused knew, or could reasonably have been expected to know, the complainant’s true age. Issues of chain of custody, authentication of digital records and the reliability of recovered metadata are central to those legal arguments.
Procedural status and next steps
The trial is being heard before a jury in the Supreme Court of New South Wales. Mr Amon pleaded not guilty to ten counts: five alleging sexual intercourse with a child and the remainder alleging attempted sexual intercourse and indecent assault. The court has heard opening addresses from both sides and has ordered further expert evidence on digital records. The coming phase will focus on witness examinations, technical expert testimony about messaging platforms and arguments over admissibility and the interpretation of electronic evidence.
Wider implications
Beyond this case, the proceedings highlight practical challenges for police, prosecutors and courts dealing with historical allegations involving social media and ephemeral messaging. For political parties and public institutions, high‑profile criminal charges can prompt scrutiny of candidate vetting and internal discipline processes. And for the justice system, the trial underscores the increasing importance of digital forensics in establishing timelines and corroborating or undermining witness accounts.
What to watch
Pay attention to expert testimony about the recoverability and authenticity of deleted messages, the credibility of witness accounts under cross‑examination, and judicial directions to the jury about how to weigh inconsistent narratives and technical evidence. Those elements are likely to determine whether the Crown proves each element of the charges beyond reasonable doubt. The trial will continue with contested forensic and testimonial evidence before the jury.