UK rapper and YouTuber Yung Filly has been found not guilty of raping a young woman after performing at a nightclub in Australia in 2024, but a jury has convicted him on two counts of assault occasioning bodily harm.
The 30-year-old social media star, whose real name is Andres Felipe Valencia Barrientos, cried when the verdict was read out in a Western Australian court on Friday, local media reported. The jury found him not guilty on three counts of sexual penetration without consent but could not reach a decision on three other rape charges. Barrientos was also found not guilty on one count of assault occasioning bodily harm and also on a strangulation charge.
The allegations stemmed from an incident in his hotel room in Hillarys, a coastal suburb of Perth, after he had performed at a nightclub in the area. The woman, who was 20 years old at the time and cannot be named for legal reasons, had accused Barrientos of sexually assaulting her after they met at the concert venue. The court heard that the pair had engaged in consensual sex before Barrientos allegedly turned violent and the young woman told him to stop. The woman accused the social media star of biting, bruising and even trying to choke her, with photos of bruises and bite marks on her face and neck shown in court.
During the trial, Barrientos told the court that he had “fancied” the woman when they met at the concert venue. He said he had been in the VIP area while she leaned over the barrier from the general area and recalled putting his hand on her waist. However, he denied touching her inappropriately or putting his hands down her pants or touching her breast. He said the “vibes were good” between him and the woman when they arrived at his hotel later, and that his security guard had taken the woman’s phone away as a “standard practice” to protect their privacy. Barrientos denied the woman had repeatedly asked him to stop but acknowledged that he bit her several times, explaining that he gave her a “love bite”.
In her closing arguments, prosecutor Danielle Clarke painted a different picture, describing Barrientos as an “entitled” man with a “moderate degree of fame” who had violated the fan “in the most intrusive way possible”. His defence lawyer argued that the accuser’s evidence was full of “inconsistencies, embellishments and outright lies”. The jury ultimately convicted Barrientos on two counts of assault occasioning bodily harm but cleared him of the more serious rape charges.
Barrientos will remain on bail until August 21, when the court will decide his sentencing date for the assault convictions. Prosecutors will also determine whether to press ahead on the three hung jury verdicts or drop those rape charges entirely. The rapper, who was born in Colombia and brought up in the UK, has been on bail since being charged and was allowed to fly home to the UK in September for four months before returning to Western Australia ahead of his trial. Barrientos is known for his work with the YouTube collective Beta Squad and has appeared in the celebrity version of Bake Off on Channel 4 and presented BBC Three shows. He has 1.8 million YouTube subscribers, three million followers on TikTok and 2.4 million followers on Instagram.
