The son of the Liverpool manager is one of a group of Championship footballers accused of taking pictures of themselves sexually assaulting a 19-year-old woman while she slept.
Anton Rodgers was one of four Brighton and Hove Albion players who took the young woman back to a hotel room after drunkenly celebrating victory for their club earlier in the day, the Old Bailey heard today.
They waited until she fell asleep and then sexually assaulted her in a humiliating way, taking photographs as “a permanent record of their conquest”, jurors were told.
Rodgers, 19, Lewis Dunk, 21, George Barker, 21, and their former team-mate Steve Cook, 21, who signed for Bournemouth in January 2012, are charged with one count of sexual assault and one count of voyeurism each relating to the incident at the Jury’s Inn hotel in Brighton on 17 July 2011. They deny the charges.
Richard Barton, for the prosecution, said: “This case concerns how a group of young professional footballers who were intoxicated after a night out celebrating a cup final victory, took advantage of a young woman who herself was intoxicated sufficiently so as to make her vulnerable to what they did.
“After taking her back to a hotel room, they waited until she had fallen asleep and so was unable to resist, and they sexually assaulted her in a deliberately humiliating way. They compounded the humiliation by taking photographs of themselves as they did so, in order to have a permanent record of what they had done to her.”
He added: “These were the actions of a group of arrogant young men, labouring under the misguided belief that by reason of their privileged position they could with impunity take a young woman and take advantage of her in that way, and that because of what they were, even if she realised what they had done to her, she would not report it through fear of the repercussions for her of doing so.”
The victim, then 19, did not tell the police for six months through “fear of repercussions” and finally made a complaint after being “repeatedly taunted” by another player at the club, the court heard.
The woman had arranged to meet up with the footballers in town on the night in question, and been in a number of nightclubs along the seafront. She cannot remember anything clearly after leaving the nightclub Lola Lo.
“It would seem that for [the young woman], either the amount she had to drink or possibly an adulterated or spiked drink caused her not to remember events later on that evening,” Mr Barton said, adding that this was “not a case about a young woman choosing to do things when drunk which she later regretted”.
The next thing she remembered was waking up in a hotel room strewn with toilet paper and shaving foam the next morning, with Mr Rodgers in the bed next to her. Her bra had been removed, and her dress pulled down to expose her breasts, the court heard.
She persuaded Mr Rodgers to lend her his phone to call her sister, and looked at the photographs on it, the court heard.
There were a series of photographs featuring a young woman in a pink dress with semi-naked men around her.
“She looked at some of the many photographs and then realised to her horror that she recognised the unconscious woman in the pink dress was in fact herself. She has no recollection of these photographs being taken,” Mr Barton said.
“She pleaded with Rodgers to delete the photographs but he told her ‘Sorry, we are going to a barbecue.”
The pair’s argument woke Ben Sampayo, another player in the room, the court heard. When the young woman asked him how he would feel if it was him in the photographs, he said “if there were a group of women with their genitals exposed near his face he would be proud of that and would put any photographs of it on Facebook”, Mr Barton said.
Mr Rodgers then locked himself in a bathroom and had a shower, while Mr Sampayo told the woman to leave, the court heard. Mr Barton said:
“The indifference shown towards her by Rodgers and the others that morning is indicative of the group’s overall attitude to her and the events the night before.”
Relatives of the accused, including Brendan Rodgers, watched from the public gallery. The trial continues.