Hakan Halit Eren, who is in his mid-30s, leaves court during his trial. Photo: Albert McKnight.
CONTENT WARNING: This article refers to alleged sexual abuse.
A man alleged to have sexually assaulted a woman he met through the dating app Bumble was acquitted of all charges at the end of his jury trial.
Hakan Halit Eren, aged in his mid-30s, pleaded not guilty to seven charges when his trial began in the ACT Supreme Court earlier this month.
Jurors deliberated for about a day before returning to the courtroom on Wednesday (21 May) and announcing they found him not guilty of all charges.
These were four counts of sexual intercourse without consent, two counts of committing an act of indecency without consent and a single count of attempted sexual intercourse without consent.
“I told you,” Mr Eren was heard saying to his girlfriend, sitting in the courtroom’s gallery, after the jury had been discharged.
During the trial’s opening addresses, the prosecutor said Mr Eren met the woman on Bumble before they agreed to meet up one night in a Canberra pub in September 2022.
They kissed before she drove them to a nearby park and continued kissing in her car before he gave her consensual oral sex.
He is then alleged to have sexually or indecently assaulted her several times, despite her telling him “no”, “stop” or pushing him away.
When Mr Eren asked the woman what was wrong, she allegedly told him she wanted to go home and dropped him off in Civic before calling a friend and crying.
When the woman spoke to police, she said he “seemed like quite a nice guy” at first, but alleged he repeatedly tried to have sex with her in her car.
“I just got to a point where it didn’t really feel like he was going to stop either trying to have sex with me or trying to make me perform oral sex on him,” she said.
“I realised he wasn’t going to listen to me say no.”
Defence barrister Beth Morrisroe, in her opening address, said it was not disputed that some consensual sexual activity occurred in the car, but what happened next was disputed.
“From his perspective, this allegation has been made out of the blue,” she said about when police first spoke to Mr Eren three weeks after the incident.
She said he told police he had kissed the woman’s “parts” and she expected the jurors would find this was a reference to oral sex.
In Mr Eren’s interview with police, he said, “At some point she told me ‘stop’ and I stopped”.
“I did stop straight away, I swear on my family,” he said.
During the closing addresses, the prosecutor said that when Mr Eren spoke to police, he repeatedly told them the only sexual activity involved kissing or touching.
But she claimed he “downplayed” what happened, because DNA evidence potentially linked him to a swab taken from inside the woman’s genitals.
During the trial, Mr Eren’s girlfriend said she met him via the dating app Tinder when he was in Brisbane in September 2023, and he told her about his charges two months later.
“I knew he was telling me the truth. He was crying,” she said through an interpreter.
“I could see in his eyes he was suffering.”
Another woman said she dated Mr Eren for a short time after meeting him on Tinder in 2020 or 2021 and described him as “a really nice, open person”.
He told her he was not guilty of the charges, she said.
If this story has raised any concerns for you, 1800RESPECT, the national 24-hour sexual assault, family and domestic violence counselling line, can be contacted on 1800 737 732. Help and support are also available through the Canberra Rape Crisis Centre on 02 6247 2525, the Domestic Violence Crisis Service ACT 02 6280 0900, the Sexual Violence Legal Services on 6257 4377 and Lifeline on 13 11 14. In an emergency, call Triple Zero.
There definitely needs to be more awareness about parental alienation, and also more understanding… View