PERTH, Australia — Lawyers made closing statements Tuesday in the Australian trial of British entertainer Yung Filly, whose real name is Andres Felipe Valencia Barrientos, over charges that he raped and choked a fan after a music performance two years ago. The District Court of Western Australia state is now leaving the case to a jury, after a trial built around a hotel room, a bodyguard, a phone taken away, and a young woman who cannot legally be named.
The accuser was 20 at the time. Barrientos, 30, has pleaded not guilty to six charges of rape, three charges of assault occasioning bodily harm and one count of choking in a Perth hotel room in September 2024. The court heard that he met the woman at a Perth nightclub after his performance, then later ended up in the hotel room where prosecutors say consent was withdrawn when she started to fear for her safety. That’s the core of the case. A fan, a performer with “moderate degree of fame,” and a setting where the power imbalance was already baked in.
Who Had the Power
Prosecutor Danielle Clarke told the court Barrientos was an “entitled man” with a “moderate degree of fame” who had been sexually violent toward an “impressionable” young woman. “She meant nothing to him,” Clarke told the court in her closing arguments. “What could have been and should have been consensual sex quickly escalated into sexual violence and a non-consensual nightmare,” she added. Those words landed in a courtroom, but the structure behind them is plain enough: celebrity, access, and the kind of social leverage that can turn a nightclub encounter into something far more coercive.
Barrientos testified Monday that he did not slap or choke the woman, but he agreed to the allegation that he bit her multiple times. “In England we would call it a love bite,” Barrientos told the court. He denied the woman repeatedly told him to stop and told him he was hurting her. “There was kissing in between; I would give her a love bite and then kiss her,” Barrientos said from the witness box. “I don’t recall any blood.” Photos of the woman with bruising and bite marks on her face and neck were shown to the court. The jury will have to sort through those competing accounts while the machinery of the legal system does what it always does: translate violence into procedure.
What the Court Heard
Barrientos agreed that his bodyguard took the woman’s phone before she entered the hotel room, but he denied the prosecutor’s accusation that the phone was removed to trap the woman. “It is standard practice for someone in the limelight to protect privacy,” Barrientos said. Standard practice for whom, exactly, and at whose expense? The court heard that a phone was taken, a bodyguard was involved, and the woman was then inside a hotel room with a man facing serious charges. That’s not a small detail. It’s the kind of control that can make a person far less able to leave, call, or resist.
Prosecutors previously said the woman initially agreed to have sex with Barrientos, but withdrew her consent when she started to fear for her safety. That shift matters. Consent isn’t a permanent stamp. It can be withdrawn. The case turns on what happened after that point, and on whether the court believes the woman’s account over Barrientos’s denials.
Barrientos had been touring Australia and had performed in Sydney and Melbourne before he encountered the woman. He was in Brisbane, where the tour was to end, when he was arrested several days later. The itinerary reads like the usual celebrity circuit, all movement and applause, until the legal system catches up with the fallout.
What Happens Next
The jury is expected to begin considering their verdicts Wednesday after defense lawyers finish their closing statements. For now, the court has the bruises, the bite marks, the phone, the bodyguard, and the testimony. It also has the familiar gap between public image and private conduct, where fame buys a lot of room until a courtroom starts asking questions.