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The high-profile sexual assault trial of British rapper and social media influencer Yung Filly, real name Andres Felipe Valencia Barrientos, has reached its closing stages, with prosecutors and the defense laying out starkly conflicting accounts of the 2024 alleged incident at a luxury Perth hotel. Prosecutors have painted the entertainer as a fame-entitled figure who acted with brutal disregard for the boundaries of a 20-year-old fan he is accused of violently raping following a performance in Western Australia.

Leading the prosecution, barrister Danielle Clarke delivered her final address to the WA District Court, arguing that Barrientos showed no concern for the young woman he is alleged to have attacked inside Perth’s Intercontinental Hotel. Clarke emphasized the limited interaction the rapper had with the accuser before the alleged assault – just a brief encounter in a nightclub VIP area and a walk through the hotel lobby – to highlight his alleged indifference to her autonomy. “When you consider the very little time Mr Barrientos spent with her in the VIP section and walking with her in the (hotel) lobby before biting and strangling her, not only did (he) spend no time with her, he simply did not care,” Clarke told the court.

Clarke pushed back against any narrative that frames the incident as a consensual sexual encounter gone misunderstood, stressing that the accuser never agreed to violent, non-consensual acts. “He is here because what could have been and should have been consensual sex quickly escalated into sexual violence and a nightmare for (the woman),” she said. “Everyone has the right to say no … she certainly did not want to engage in sexual acts with him that involved violence and brutality.”

Barrientos, who boasts more than 2.4 million followers across his social media platforms including YouTube, has pleaded not guilty to a total of 10 charges covering sexual assault, common assault, and choking. The rapper took the stand in his own defense earlier in the trial, telling the court that all sexual activity between him and the accuser was fully consensual, and that she never communicated any desire for him to stop.

Barrientos told the court he was attracted to the young woman when they met at Perth’s Bar1 Nightclub at Hillary’s Boat Harbour, and extended an invitation for her to return to his hotel, clarifying that his intention was to pursue sex but that he would not have forced the encounter if she declined. When pressed by Clarke on whether he had assumed her attention as a fan meant she would automatically agree to sex, Barrientos replied: “No, I would never assume that. I invited her to my (hotel), that invite was just an invite. Like I said, my intention was to have sex.” He also denied prosecutors’ claims that he sexually touched the accuser in the VIP area, including allegations that he placed his hands down her pants and touched her breasts during their 10-minute conversation.

The rapper acknowledged he never discussed sexual boundaries or limitations with the accuser before they became intimate, but framed that as a mutual omission, noting “she didn’t ask me either.” Barrientos added that during the encounter, the woman gave every indication of enjoying the activity, saying: “She was kissing, she made sexual noises, grunting and moaning in a good way.” He confirmed he left “love bites” on her body, admitting some of the marks were more intense than others, and pushed back against the prosecution’s claims of violent assault, noting that any rough activity was consensual. Responding to the accuser’s claim that his bodyguard confiscated her phone during the trip to the hotel, Barrientos explained the action was a standard privacy measure for him during public appearances.

The accuser, who cannot be named for legal reasons, told the court she believed she was heading to a group after-party with Barrientos and his team when she left the nightclub, only to end up alone with the rapper in his hotel room. She testified that what began as consensual sexual activity quickly turned violent, alleging Barrientos bit, struck, and strangled her during the attack. Following the incident, the woman sought treatment at a hospital emergency department, where she received a tetanus shot for multiple injuries including widespread bruising, swelling, bite marks, and open wounds to her face, neck, and breasts.

As the trial moves forward, both sides have wrapped their core arguments, and the court is set to proceed to the next phase of the proceedings.

A disgraced British funeral director is facing a lengthy prison sentence after admitting to more than a decade of systematic fraud and neglect that left dozens of uncremated bodies decomposing in unregulated storage and forced bereaved families to grieve over incorrect ashes. The shocking case, which has already triggered widespread public outrage and renewed demands for sweeping industry regulation, opened its five-day sentencing hearing at Hull Crown Court in northeast England this week.

Forty-eight-year-old Robert Bush, who operated Legacy Independent Funeral Directors in Hull, has already pleaded guilty to 67 criminal offences committed between 2012 and 2024, affecting hundreds of grieving families across the region. The charges against him include fraud, theft, preventing lawful burial, and deception involving the remains of stillborn infants. When authorities launched a raid on his premises following an anonymous tip from a former staff member in March 2024, investigators made a grim discovery: 31 bodies that should have been cremated months or even years earlier, stored uncovered on metal racks in a cold storage room in varying stages of decomposition. Among the remains was a stillborn baby, who had been left uncremated for almost two full years. Officers also uncovered more than 100 unclaimed sets of ashes stored on site.

Prosecutor Chris Paxton described the conditions inside Bush’s funeral parlour as a “horror scene” in his opening remarks to the court, noting that the scope of the abuse was unprecedented. “There were bodies stored on the racks on both sides of the room,” Paxton told the court. “The vast majority were uncovered and in varying states of decomposition.”

In his initial police interview, Bush attempted to blame his actions on crippling cash flow issues, claiming that unpaid client bills left him with roughly £90,000 ($114,000) in debt and unable to keep up with lease payments. But prosecutors have completely rejected this explanation, pointing to financial records showing more than £3 million ($3.9 million) in revenue flowed into Bush’s business between March 2017 and April 2024, with a single cremation costing just £500 to complete. Paxton argued that Bush deliberately chose to neglect the remains entrusted to him to fund a lavish personal lifestyle. “Mr Bush chose not to deal with those bodies entrusted to him but to operate as he chose and spend the money on himself and others,” Paxton said, adding that Bush engaged in repeated “profligate personal spending” with client funds.

When Bush arrived at court this week to begin the sentencing hearing, he covered his face with a baseball cap and scarf to avoid press attention. For the families affected by his actions, the revelations about the conditions at his parlour have compounded the grief of losing their loved ones. Jasmine Beverley, whose stillborn son Sunny was left uncremated for nearly two years after Bush told her the baby had been cremated, said she had trusted Bush completely after he presented himself as a kind, respectful professional. “It was a shock to learn what had actually been going on behind the closed doors,” Beverley told BBC radio. “I discovered that he was still in there almost two years after we’d had the funeral. It’s unbelievably distressing.” Beverley eventually found Sunny’s remains stored in a brown envelope left on the floor of Bush’s storage facility.

Byron Lill, whose 61-year-old mother Muriel Winning died in 2023, broke down multiple times as he delivered his victim impact statement to the court. Lill works near the former Legacy Independent Funeral Directors premises and drives past it every day. “Knowing now that mum was lying inside for almost eight months destroys me,” he said. “Why? There will never be a good enough answer.”

The sentencing hearing is expected to hear statements from more than 100 affected victims over the course of five days. Four of the fraud charges against Bush relate to incidents where he gave grieving women false ashes, claiming they were the remains of their unborn children.

The case has sparked urgent calls for major regulatory reform of the funeral industry in England and Wales, where currently any person can legally work as a funeral director without holding an official operating license. Unlike Scotland, which introduced a statutory mandatory code of practice for funeral directors in March 2023, no similar regulation exists for the rest of the UK. Beverley, her husband, and dozens of other affected families are now leading a campaign to change the rules, backed by multiple members of UK Parliament. Paxton told the court that Bush’s betrayal of trust took place on an “almost industrial scale”, saying the funeral director had exploited the vulnerability of bereaved families who placed their full faith in his services.