A JURY has found two men guilty of touching up a 14-year-old girl in the public toilets of Nelson Bay Park, almost certainly sending them to jail.
Francis Leigh, 37, and Neil Wood, 32, were found guilty on Wednesday of eight counts each of sexually touching the girl on February 12, 2019.
It was a joint criminal enterprise where both men were knowingly involved in the assault on the girl in the public toilets, and again later in a car when she was driven home.
Both men appeared shocked at the verdict, shaking their heads at the outcome.
The girl was walking home to Shoal Bay from a shopping trip with her friend when she was beckoned over by Leigh, who introduced himself to her as 'Franky' after inviting her to have a cigarette with him.
They talked about a girl they both knew, before 'Woodsy' joined them.
Franky had planned to meet his mate, Woodsy, in the park to get a hair cut because he was going to a funeral the next day and wanted to look respectable, the jury was told.
He worked as a fisherman and the boat he worked on was moored nearby at Nelson Bay Marina.
He asked the teenager if she gave haircuts, and asked her to do it for him instead, to which she agreed.
She pointed to a table, out in the open and under lights, but said the two men convinced her to do it in the toilets where the light was better.
She found it hard to say no, she told police in her evidence. In the toilets the men groped her, one after the other, and she felt that she couldn't leave.
When she moved out of the reach of the first man, the second man touched her, the court heard. They whispered things to her, saying she was "sexy".
She was terrified, the jury was told, and believed that she was going to be raped, but tried to act as if she wasn't scared.
She then got into a car with them to be driven home where the two men assaulted her again, reaching to her in the back seat from where they sat in the front of the car.
At first they said they were going to drive her to Newcastle instead, and drove past the friend's house, but then did a U-turn and came back and let her out.
Once out of the vehicle the two men demanded hugs from her and took a selfie with her to which she agreed, she said, so there'd be evidence of the fact they'd been together.
When the men left, the friend whose house she was staying at turned up on a bicycle. The friend had become concerned because the 14-year-old was late getting back.
He found her sitting in the driveway, crying, and she shared some of the details of what had happened that night.
The maximum penalty for the offences is ten years imprisonment and Justice Christopher Hoy made it clear both men would likely go to jail over the offences.
They were granted bail with conditions including regular reporting to police, ahead of their sentence date on July 16.
