Geelong midfielder Tanner Bruhn revealed as player cleared of rape charge

3 months ago 15

Geelong midfielder Tanner Bruhn can finally be revealed as the player who spent the 2025 season fighting a rape charge, as the case against him was officially dropped on Tuesday.

A suppression order has prevented the naming of Bruhn, 23, since he was charged earlier this year with raping an intoxicated woman he met outside a strip club.

Bruhn applied for the media blackout on the basis that it was needed to protect his safety.

His co-accused and close friend, Patrick Sinnott, also tried but failed to have his name withheld. The Geelong Magistrates’ Court heard the pair were former housemates who had known each other since primary school.

The alleged victim in the case was to provide evidence at a preliminary hearing this week, but prosecutors told the court on Monday that charges against the pair would be dropped.

Dermot Dann, KC, for Bruhn, told the court the case had been “a horrible stain on the criminal justice system”.

Bruhn (far left) with his Geelong teammates on the ground after the team’s grand final loss in September.

“When it came to these allegations ... the complainant admitted she had lied,” he said.

“It was a case where Mr Bruhn’s liberty has been put in jeopardy, his career put in jeopardy. He’s been to hell and back.”

Dann said his client had also been attacked on social media, despite the court order preventing him from being identified publicly.

“Those people who did attack him on social media, we say should step away from their keyboards and hang their heads in shame because they failed to adhere to or respect … the presumption of innocence,” he told the court.

“Thereafter anyone who wants to comment on this case, should do so on understanding that Mr Bruhn was presumed innocent … he should be regarded now and forever as someone who was 100 per cent innocent.”

Moya O’Brien, for Sinnott, said her client and his family had borne the brunt of publicity about the case while Bruhn’s name remained suppressed.

The court had already heard that the two men met the complainant at Geelong’s Alley Cat strip club at about 4am on February 5, 2023.

They then allegedly coaxed the woman into her car, before driving off and allegedly raping her in a suburban car park.

However, two witnesses gave evidence that the woman had lied about the alleged attack, telling the court they were told that the men had paid the woman for sexual services, but, after she demanded more money and they refused, she had reported the interaction as rape.

“[I concluded that] if she consented and requested payment for services, she provided consent; therefore it is not right … if she then reported it as rape – that would be lying to the police,” one of them said.

A crucial witness to the prosecution’s case, Harrison Martin, also admitted lying during his evidence, conceding in court that he actually had no memory of the night.

He said the alleged victim had told him what to write in his police statement and that she had made up the rape accusations levelled against the pair.

“I have no memory of the two accused really even being there in the first place – let alone the night,” Martin told the court.

The admission followed a day of evidence in which Martin recalled watching the complainant being coaxed into her car by Bruhn and Sinnott. He also claimed one of the men had pushed him to the ground when he tried to intervene.

He also claimed to have made a phone call to the woman, answered by one of the accused, and that he heard the alleged victim in the background call out, saying she was in trouble.

But Martin abruptly left the witness box partway through his evidence, complaining of a medical issue.

The court heard that soon after he told the police officer in charge of the case that he had lied in his statement, had never been “bashed” by one of the accused, and made up evidence about the phone call.

Sinnott and Bruhn were later charged with several counts of sexual assault, including rape, but have always denied the charges.

Magistrate Kimberley Swadesir ordered the chief commissioner pay both men’s costs which O’Brien told the court were “significant”.

Geelong listed Bruhn as having sustained a finger injury in February, and he missed the entire season. He remains contracted until the end of 2027.

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