Posted on 01/10/2004 3:24:58 PM PST by aculeus
For Sydney it was shocking enough, but for one 18-year-old girl the news report on New Year's Eve held particular resonance: an accused rapist was allegedly planning to make good his threat to silence his victim with a hit man's bullet through her head.
It was the greatest fears of police close to coming true.
The 18-year-old, who asked to be called Miss G., was already part of one of the city's more shocking episodes and one of a new era of victims.
When the gang rapes in new millennium Sydney started going through the courts, tales emerged of teenage girls threatened with death if they reported their experiences to the police.
The young women braved the interview room and the court.
You heard their stories . . . raped by queues of men, dumped on roadsides, branded "sluts" with a screech of tyres and a shouted warning: "Don't tell the police, because if you do we'll come back and kill you."
The response of Miss G., then 17, and her 16-year-old friend in July, 2002, was to call the police immediately.
"We didn't discuss whether we would or not, I just did it," she said.
"Going to court was . . . hard. The first day I felt I was sitting in a room with all these people around me who knew everything about me and I didn't know who they were."
The younger victim, H. G., has not fared well psychologically and has left the country, while Miss G. awaits the sentencing of the four brothers who raped them.
She is not the first victim of the new gang rape era whose life was threatened.
In August 2000, 16-year-old Miss D., one of four women repeatedly raped by Greenacre brothers Mohammed and Bilal Skaf and their gang of up to 14 men, earned the attackers' displeasure by resisting. To stop her struggling, one man produced a gun, held it to her head and threatened to kill her.
When she managed to break free and run off, Mohammed Skaf and others pursued her in a white van.
One produced the gun and ordered her to get inside.
Miss D. was lucky. A stranger saw the affray and her assailants fled.
Judge Michael Finnane passed maximum sentence of 55 years on Bilal Skaf, 40 years on gang member Mohamed Ghanem, and 32 years on 19-year-old Mohammed Skaf.
In the wake of such stunning sentences for the crime of rape, some law enforcers predicted it might not be an unusual step for the callous young rapists to begin killing their prey.
According to a police fact sheet tendered in court last month, but for a police intercept on an accused rapist allegedly plotting with his father to have his victim executed, the forecast might have been about to come to pass.
The gang rape era's next victim may prove the theory.
As she waits for the four brothers to be imprisoned for "it won't be 55 years, but I hope it's for a very long time", Miss G. has some advice for gang rape prevention.
It's her mantra for her post-rape existence: don't trust anyone.
"Now I look back at it, I have learnt a lot," she said.
"I can see how people are beneath the surface and you shouldn't ever get into a car with anyone you don't really know.
"Since this happened, I haven't trusted anyone and I am going to stick by that."
Miss G. and fellow victim H. G. met the four sons of a Pakistani national doctor about July 20, 2002, in George Street, Sydney.
The boys were unfailingly polite, respectful and courteous. When the girls visited their home, they behaved like gentlemen.
"They just seemed like really decent people who enjoyed themselves on weekends and couldn't do enough for you," Miss G. said.
The following week, on Sunday, July 28, the brothers invited the girls over once more.
They offered them Jim Beam and Coke, urging them to "Drink, drink! Don't reject something when we give it to you."
The youngest brother, M. M. K., then 16, told Miss G. he was "horny".
When she refused to accompany him to his room, brother M. S. K., 24, slapped her across the face.
Miss G. ran to the bathroom. M. S. K. yelled: "Get in the bedroom or I will kill you."
The girls had three mobile phones between them, one programmed with an emergency number, but it was too late. The trapdoor was shut.
The other brothers, M. A. K., 22, M. R. K., 17, and a friend, 24, lined up in the corridor to rape the girls in separate rooms.
The doors kept opening and closing. Miss G. was raped again and again at knifepoint. The boys threatened the girls with gold bullets as they raped them.
At one point, H. G. was told Miss G. had already been killed because she had resisted the boys. The girls were dumped outside a real-estate agency in Campsie.
"The police were never, ever doubtful about our story, the whole time they believed us," Miss G. said.
Her friend never returned to school. "She was a mess," said Miss G., who completed an albeit disrupted HSC. Because she sat for the exams in special circumstances she still awaits her results.
She could not bear more than a couple of sessions with a counsellor.
"Family and friends were really good but I couldn't open up about it," she said.
"I preferred not to talk about it with anyone. It was too painful."
At three separate trials of the five men, Miss G. had no choice.
Throughout the final trial, last October, the two elder brothers winked at the police who had arrested them, flashed offensive notes at journalists and spent time in court buckled over in laughter.
The accused claimed they were the victims of an anti-Muslim conspiracy.
"On the first day, I was really, really nervous," Miss G. said.
"They stared, [one of the brothers] winked at me three times, blew kisses at me.
"I did get him back. I mouthed 'f--k you' and did the finger and he turned round to tell on me to the judge [Justice Brian Sully of the Supreme Court]. They were pathetic.
"Everyone else at the court was great to me. It was a relief when the jury came back, because they had been out for two or three days.
"I was pretty sure they would find them guilty, but it took a load off my shoulders."
Prosecutor Margaret Cunneen has nurtured several sets of young women through gang rape trials, including that of the Skaf gang and the Pakistani brothers.
She told the jury in Miss G.'s case that DNA linked the accused to the victims and mobile phone logs showed the men's phones had been used on the night of the attacks to contact one victim.
The jury found M. A. K. and M. S. K. guilty of nine counts of aggravated sexual assault.
Justice Sully will sentence Miss G.'s rapists on February 20 and 27.
She has a friend who was raped before the current spree. That girl's rapist received five years' imprisonment.
Miss G. expects she will earn much more breathing space from her attackers, time to travel to her favourite country, Egypt, and perhaps have her own business one day.
[COMMENT: WHAT CAN YOU DO WITH SUCH A FUCKING IIDIOT?]
Meanwhile, school marks permitting, she'd like to start a career.
"I'd like to do a lot of things," she said.
"After what happened I would call the kids' care line or the rape crisis line, just to speak to someone I didn't have to see about what happened.
"Maybe I could be an ambulance officer. I want to do something that's helping people."
Miss G. has had a boyfriend for six months, but marriage or children are not on the agenda.
"I'm not thinking of anything like that in my life," she said.
The justice system was Miss G.'s salve. She will attend both sentencing hearings to hear Justice Sully's judgement.
In the sentencing of the Skaf gang, Judge Finnane called Bilal Skaf "a vicious, cowardly bully, arrogant and a liar, as well as being a rapist".
The victim, Miss D., he said, was "extraordinarily brave, assertive and determined".
This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/01/10/1073437521706.html