The woman who was at the centre of the highly-publicised Luke Lazarus case has waived her right to anonymity in an interview with Four Corners, set to air on Monday night.
Saxon Mullins was 18 when, five years ago this week, she met a 21-year-old boy named Luke Lazarus at a Kings Cross nightclub part-owned by his father.
They met on the dance floor and after just four minutes together, Lazarus took her to a lane way behind the club. She told him she wanted to go back almost immediately, the now 23-year-old said in Monday night’s interview.
“And he was like, ‘No, it’s fine’, and I went to move away and he kind of pulled me back and pulled my stockings and my underwear down. So, I pulled them back up and I said, ‘No I really have to go now’.
“He said, ‘Put your fucking hands on the wall’. And… so I did.”
It was the first time she had ever had sex.
“I didn’t know him. And you know, the few things he said to me before we went outside were just nice, calm, normal things and then all of a sudden, after I tried to leave it was, ‘Put your fucking hands on the wall’, it wasn’t, ‘No, please, stay with me’.
“My heart was going at a million miles an hour, I don’t even think I was breathing for a majority of the time. I don’t even know how to describe it,” she said.
There, in that alley way, Luke Lazarus and Saxon Mullins had anal sex; sex she claims, five years on, was not consensual.
At his first trial in 2015, Mr Lazarus was found guilty by a jury of rape and was sentenced to five years in prison. He spent nearly a year behind bars before he was released on bail, when his conviction was quashed on appeal by a judge. In June last year, the Director of Public Prosecutions appealed against the acquittal, only for the bid to fail in November.
In May last year, Ms Mullins, then still unnamed to the public, wrote on social media about the weight of the case and the monumental impact it had on her life.
“I am mad and frustrated and heartbroken. Was it all for nothing? I’ve waited four long years. I’ve stressed and worried and stayed up all night – many many nights – thinking about it,” she said.
"I lost something that night all those years ago and I've been searching for it ever since," she wrote at the time.
"The reality is this doesn't get to be over for me. I don't get to know who I would be today had this not happened to me, and I mourn for that person. She seemed like she was on her way to being great.
"I don't want anyone to suffer, that would never bring me joy. All I've wanted since that night was to hear the words "I was wrong" and "I'm sorry". An apology for what was done to me is all I was ever after," she said.
Speaking to Four Corners on Monday night, Ms Saxon's best friend Brittany Watts, who was with her on the night she met Mr Lazarus, said her friend hasn't quite been the same since that 2013 night.
"I knew something had happened. I ran towards her and she actually collapsed in my arms,” Ms Watts said.
“It was from that moment that everything in her ... changed. It was almost like she just crumbled. I will never forget that moment.”
Watch I am that girl tonight on Four Corners at 8.30pm on ABC TV or on ABC iView.
The Mamamia Out Loud team unpack the case:
Top Comments
I watched the Four Corners report last nigh with a heavy heart. This case so exemplifies the objectification of women. This man saw this young woman as nothing but an orifice to satisfy him. Any orifice would do. His perception of her as a human being was zero. He lied to her to lure her to an isolated spot where he could perform his despicable act undetected. Disgusting. I do wonder what role porn plays in this kind of thinking among men.
I have struggled with this case. In my view, the legal concept of "consent" has been completely misapplied and improperly interpreted. Crimes Act NSW s61H(3) says that there is no consent if the perpetrator is reckless as to whether the other person consents (yep, I'd say he pretty much ignored her saying no) and has no reasonable grounds for believing the other person consented (taking a girl's virginity - we KNOW he knew she was a virgin as per the texts) in a dirty alley, drunk at 4am with a complete stranger - who in their right mind would think a girl was consenting! The fact that he may have been intoxicated DOES not mitigate his culpability, whereas her level of intoxication does render her incapable of granting consent under the law! (Although in an obscene application of the law she was determined too drunk to be a reliable witness in identifying Lazarus, but not drunk enough to fall into the unable to give consent category - what a joke).
I am really, really perplexed by this decision and I think it is a incorrect application of the law. It stinks to high heaven. It stinks of entitlement and privilege and male patriarchy. It reeks of a young man's right to his "bright future" and an intact reputation and that's he's a good boy and a good son and his parents are wealthy and connected, overriding the word of a vulnerable, traumatised and abused young woman. I am glad his name is out there and I hope the stink follows him for the rest of his life.
Crimes Act NSW s61H(3) also says that if he was drunk he could not consent.
'The fact that he may have been intoxicated DOES not mitigate his culpability, whereas her level of intoxication does render her incapable of granting consent under the law!' - You don't find this statement a bit hypocritical?
No. Otherwise rapists could just use self-intoxication to reduce their culpability. This puts the responsibility of obtaining consent on the perpetrator.
I am in full support of consent only being enthusiastic consent. Only that is a YES. Anything else is a NO. I sincerely hope the law review into consent supports this interpretation.
So if was drunk and robbed by another drunk person, I should have some culpability and the drunk robber should get off lightly, because he was drunk? No, buddy. Same thing, he's drunk, he committed the crime, she has no culpability because she committed no crime.
If you robbed someone with their consent, sure.
While I believe in this case he committed the crime, it's not always like that.
If he was drunk he couldn't consent, how could he commit the crime?