[1] On 16 October 2023, Hayward was sentenced to two years and nine months jail, needing to serve half of that before becoming eligible for parole.
[2][9] He worked as a television journalist in the Pilbara region of Western Australia for GWN7, and for Channel 7 Perth,[10] winning a Media Award in 2007.
[9] On 2 December 2021, Western Australia Police charged Hayward with alleged child sexual abuse of an eight-year-old girl earlier in 2021.
However, on 28 August 2023, a jury found him guilty of directing an eight-year-old girl to indecently touch him on two occasions.
[23] A jury has convicted Hayward, a former MP, of two counts of indecently dealing with a young girl over a period of two years.
The prosecution said the girl's family discovered her browsing pornography on her device in November 2021, which led to her disclosing the abuse by Hayward.
The court heard that Hayward sent an email to his wife in which he appeared to confess to the allegations and threatened to kill himself, but he later retracted his statement and denied any wrongdoing.
The defence argued that the girl's testimony was unreliable and inconsistent, and that there was no physical evidence to support her claims.