What are the Skaf gang rapes?

The Skaf gang’s reign of terror began just before the Sydney Olympics when a 14-year-old girl was indecently assaulted on a train by a group of young men.

In August 2000 the only topic of discussion across Sydney should have been the Olympics, which were then only weeks away from starting.

But instead, the city was reeling in fear after a series of heinous rapes on women by a group of young men.

Planned, systematic and so brutal that one woman was raped more than 25 times in a single night by a total of 14 men, the incidents became known as the “Skaf rapes” due to those involved being led by brothers Bilal and Mohammed Skaf.

Victim Jessica told A Current Affair she was lured to a public changeroom in a southwestern Sydney park by Mohammed Skaf, held at knifepoint then locked in there for six hours as 15 men sexually abused her. Picture: A Current Affair

Despite the lengthy sentences they received, the Skafs have never shown any remorse or guilt for the crimes they carried out.

The Skaf gang’s reign of terror began on August 4, 2000, when a 14-year-old girl was indecently assaulted on a train by a group of young men, a number of who would also be involved in the gang’s later offences.

On August 10, two girls aged 17 and 18, were offered a lift and drugs by a group of men and driven from Chatswood to a park in Greenacre.

Convicted rapist Mohammed Skaf.

On the way, the men in the car with the two teenagers had rung other friends and, speaking a language the girls could not understand, encouraged other men to come and join them.

Once at the park the two girls were forced to perform oral sex on members of the gang before they were abandoned in the park.

“They had no phones, no money, did not know where they were. They were distraught, crying and feeling the effects of these repeated rapes and assaults. They were terrified,” Judge Michael Finnane QC saidof the girls, when sentencing their attackers.

Mugshot of convicted rapist Bilal Skaf.

Two days later on August 12, Mohammed Skaf convinced a girl he was friends with to meet him at a park in Greenacre.

There she was raped by his brother Bilal and another man, while 12 other men watched on.

The gang committed its next attack on August 30, just less than a fortnight out from the start of the Olympics.

This time they approached a woman at Bankstown Train Station and told her they were going to smoke cannabis and encouraged her to join them.

However the woman was taken to a public toilet in Bankstown and raped, while other members of the gang called their friends, who eventually joined them at the location.

Police surveillance video pictures of Lebanese gang rapists at Bondi Beach in 2000, including Mohammed Skaf (left) trying to drag away one of two unidentified girls who fortunately resisted going with the youths and man.

Bilal Skaf pictured with relatives in Goulburn Jail in 2002.

The woman was then passed to another group and forced to have oral sex with another gang member.

After being tricked to get into a car which she thought would take her to safety, two carloads of men then took turns in raping the woman.

In total, the woman was sexually assaulted more than 25 times in a single night by the group.

On September 4, gang members approached two girls – both aged 16 – at Beverly Hills Train Station and took them to a house nearby.

Over a period of five hours they were repeatedly raped, with their attackers using racial slurs and telling the two girls they “deserved” it.

Sydney was left horrified by details

of the gang rapes.

Judge Michael Finnane QC said the attacks were “violent and disgusting acts”. Picture: Craig Greenhill

Gosling Park in Greenacre, where one of the gang rapes occurred in August 2000. Picture: Dan Peled

Judge Finnane, QC, who had only stepped onto the bench of the NSW Supreme Court less than a year before he oversaw the trials of some of the men involved, said all of the crimes were “violent and disgusting acts”.

“Each crime was callous, violent, sordid and degrading,” he said.

“Moreover, the crimes were not something which happened on the spur of the moment and none of the assailants were in any way affected by alcohol or drugs.

“The crimes were planned and premeditated. In each instance they involved gang activity and the selection of a helpless young female victim.”

In a book he later wrote, Finnane would go on to compare the rapes to acts carried out by invading armies in times of war centuries ago.

Mohammed, now 38, is set to soon be released on parole after serving more than two decades in prison.

His brother Bilal, 39, who received a longer sentence for his role in charge of the gang, will remain behind bars until at least 2033.