Sarkis El Bayeh: Parramatta construction manager sentenced for sex assault at Double Bay

A man who paid the price for of his dad’s “criminal lifestyle” bought a woman drinks and snorted drugs together at a city bar. Then, he told her to relax as he performed sex act in her mouth without consent.

Bedouin restaurant at Double Bay in Sydney. Picture: Richard Dobson.

A man who paid the price for of his dad’s “criminal lifestyle” was found to have “recklessly” harmed a woman when he “held her head in place” and thrust inside her mouth outside a Double Bay nightclub.

Sarkis El Bayeh, 39, was sentenced for the 2021 sexual assault of a woman in a car park in Sydney’s eastern suburbs at Downing Centre District Court on Friday, after pleading guilty earlier this year.

The Parramatta construction manager was arrested and charged after he engaged in non-consensual intercourse during a cocaine-fuelled encounter near the Bedouin restaurant and bar at Cross St, Double Bay.

El Bayeh’s barrister Mark Tedeschi AM QC described the interaction as being like a “dominatrix and a client”, telling the court it should separate “words uttered” by his client during the sexual encounter only minutes before the assault occurred because it constituted “entirely consensual” behaviour.

The crown prosecutor told the court it should consider El Bayeh’s earlier conduct with the woman “influenced his state of mind and degree of recklessness” in its sentencing.

The assault occurred nearby Bedouin restaurant at Double Bay in Sydney. Picture: Richard Dobson.

The court heard about 11pm on May 29 El Bayeh met a woman who was with a group of friends at the upscale Double Bay nightclub, where he told her all her drinks were paid for.

He later took the woman and her friends into a lift that led to the stairwell of a nearby car park.

El Bayeh was sentenced at Downing Centre district court. Picture: Angela Brkic.

There, the group, including the woman, snorted lines of cocaine off El Bayeh’s phone, before the woman’s friends returned to the club.

About 12.30am, El Bayeh told the woman, “let’s do another line”.

Following a short conversation, the woman asked him “if we go and do another line, do you promise that’s all it is?”.

El Bayeh began touching the woman and grabbed her breast, telling her, “just relax, I’m not going to hurt you”, and “does it feel good, just shush” as he touched her.

Cross St, Double Bay. Picture: John Appleyard.

The judge noted during proceedings El Bayeh had been “reckless” as to whether the woman consented to the fellatio which followed.

The court heard the woman had told him “no, John, no” before he “held her head in place with his hands” while she used her hands to push him away, pleasured himself and ejaculated in her mouth.

Later when they met the woman’s friends outside the club and one of her friends asked if she was OK, the woman “shook her head no”.

She told her friend El Bayeh “put his cock in my mouth and I didn’t want to”.

Judge Sarah Hopkins said she found that El Bayeh had essentially considered consent “irrelevant” but accepted the matter was “complex” because facts submitted to the court states they had been “hugging and kissing and acting in a flirtatious way” earlier that evening.

Judge Hopkins noted agreed facts state “in the offenders’ mind, he was participating in a consensual act”.

Downing Centre courthouse. Picture; Angela Brkic.

Ms Hopkin said she had taken into account El Bayeh had previously been sentenced to a community correction order for three counts of stalk/intimidate and a failure to comply with court orders which demonstrated “a pattern of intimidating behaviour toward women”.

But she said she was convinced the Parramatta man had spent the past two years working to address emotional regulation issues stemming in part from his family’s underworld involvement.

The magistrate said El Bayeh grew up amid his father’s involvement in a “criminal lifestyle” that led to a “difficult” childhood.

She said he had completed a six-week drug program and had told the court in a letter he was “sorry and remorseful” about the woman’s negative experience as a result of his actions.

El Bayeh told the court, “what I did was wrong, and I now realise the impact”.

The court heard the maximum penalty for the charge was 14 years imprisonment.

Judge Hopkins convicted El Bayeh and sentenced him to a 28 months jail with a 10-month non-parole period.

The full term of imprisonment will end in August 2025.