The 12-member jury in Kiama Independent MP Gareth Ward’s trial over sexual assault allegations will begin deliberations on Wednesday morning.

After more than eight weeks of the trial, Crown Prosecutor Monika Knowles and Ward’s barrister, David Campbell SC, have delivered the closing arguments and Judge Kara Shead on Tuesday instructed the jury on their duties to reach a verdict.

Judge Shead told the jury members that they had to be convinced that the prosecution had proved the burden of proof for each charge in order to declare the 44-year-old politician guilty.

Ward is facing five charges and has pleaded not guilty to each of them: sexual intercourse without consent, common assault and three counts of indecent assault.

He was charged after complaints against Ward from a man, aged 24 at the time, over an alleged incident at Potts Point in Sydney’s east a decade ago.

Ward has also been accused of indecently assaulting a recently turned 18-year-old at the politician’s Meroo Meadow home in 2013.

In his closing statements, Campbell had told the NSW District Court that police had conducted a flawed investigation.

Crown Prosecutor Monika Knowles had earlier told the Darlinghurst Courthouse in her closing address last Thursday that the similarities between the alleged incidents involving Ward were not a coincidence.

She told the jury that the two complainants had given “remarkably similar accounts of being assaulted.

Campbell accused the police officers who investigated the alleged incidents of holding a bias against Ward.

He has been involved in politics for more than two decades after starting out as a Councillor in the Shoalhaven before claiming the state seat of Kiama in 2011 and retaining it ever since, including as an independent, after he was banished from the Liberal Party, at the most recent election in 2022.

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