A British musician and YouTube personality on trial for allegedly violently raping a fan in a Perth hotel has been acquitted of three sexual penetration charges.
But the jury found the rapper Yung Filly guilty of two assault offences related to his September 2024 encounter with a 20-year-old woman after a show.
The 30-year-old, legally known as Andrés Felipe Valencia Barrientos, had pleaded not guilty to 10 charges and faced an eight-day trial in the Western Australian district court, attended by dozens of his performer’s young fans.
He was acquitted on Friday of three of six counts of sexually penetrating the woman without consent.
Not guilty verdicts were also returned for one charge of impeding the woman’s breathing by applying pressure to her neck and one count of assault occasioning bodily harm.
But the media personality was found guilty of two counts of assault occasioning bodily harm for biting the woman’s neck, cheek and breast.
The jury was hung on three sexual penetration counts, with the case due to return to court at a later date when a decision as to whether there will be a retrial on those charges could be made.
Barrientos, whose bail was continued until that 21 August, was on his first tour of Australia when he met the woman. The tour opened in Perth before moving to Queensland, where he was arrested and extradited to WA.
Jurors heard that the pair had met in a nightclub VIP area in Perth’s northern suburbs. The woman told the court that Barrientos had been her idol and that she had loved him and wanted him to be her future husband.
She and the entertainer initially had consensual sex in the hotel.
Prosecutors said Barrientos had become aggressive during intercourse after the woman spotted him pointing his phone in her direction and asked if he was recording her.
The alleged assault started with the rapper repeatedly biting the woman’s face and neck. He was also accused of biting her breasts, allegedly causing an open bite wound on her right breast and bruising.
It was also alleged that Barrientos had choked and repeatedly slapped the woman on the face. It was at this point that prosecutors said consensual sex stopped, triggering six counts of sexual penetration without consent.
Barrientos admitted while giving evidence to biting the woman without consent. He called them love bites and said they involved sucking and tongue movements and his teeth had come into contact with the woman’s skin.
He said the sex had been great and the woman had grunted and moaned “in a good way”.
Photos of the woman with extensive bruising to her face and neck and a bite wound on her right breast were shown to the court.
The trial has halted the career of the Colombia-born South London singer and comedian.
As Yung Filly, he has featured in the BBC’s celebrity version of Bake Off and presented light entertainment programs, including the dating show Hot Property.
Those appearances helped grow a large following across TikTok (3 million followers), YouTube (1.8 million subscribers) and Spotify (850,000 monthly listeners).
During the trial, some of Yung Filly’s fans posted images illegally recorded inside the courtroom on TikTok, prompting the judge, Linda Black, to ban them from the main courtroom.
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