Sydney gang rapes

The Sydney gang rapes were a series of gang rape attacks committed by a group of up to fourteen Lebanese Australian youths led by Bilal Skaf against Anglo-Celtic Australian women and teenage girls, as young as 14, in Sydney Australia in 2000. The crimes, described as ethnically motivated hate crimes by officials and commentators, were covered extensively by the news media, and prompted the passing of new laws. The nine men convicted of the gang rapes were sentenced to a total of more than 240 years in jail. According to court transcripts Judge Michael Finnane described the rapes as events that "you hear about or read about only in the context of wartime atrocities".

A further series of gang rapes were said to have been attempted but thwarted. Four of the attackers were also convicted for an attack on Friday 4 August 2000 when they approached a fourteen-year-old girl on a train where she was threatened with violence, punched twice, slapped, and told that she would be forced to perform fellatio on several men and that she was going to be raped.

There was evidence to convict only nine men of the fourteen suspects. The sentences totalled 240 years in prison.

Conservative commentators such as Miranda Devine categorised the crimes as racially motivated hate crimes.The Sydney Morning Herald reported that the rapists had stated to a victim during the attack, "You deserve it because you're an Australian" and "I'm going to fuck you Leb-style". Two thirds of Muslim and Arab Australians said that they experienced an increase in racial vilification towards them after a number of events including the September 11 attacks, the Bali bombings, and these rapes.

The gang rapes led to the passage of new legislation through the Parliament of New South Wales, increasing the sentences for gang rapists by creating a new category of crime known as "aggravated sexual assault in company".

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