Halfway through his historic 10-year reign over the state and riding high on the Olympic euphoria that was sweeping the city, Mr Carr was told of a brutal gang rape that had taken place in Western Sydney, mere kilometres from where the world’s best athletes would soon be competing.

It would be a case that would spark racial debate across the city and lead to sweeping changes to how victims of sexual assault were treated in court and how offenders were punished.

Two girls, aged 17 and 18, were lured from a shopping centre in Chatswood to a dark and empty park in Greenacre where they were brutally assaulted by eight men behind a toilet block before being left helpless and wounded far from home.

Sydney wasn’t accustomed to this sort of violence - a sustained attack carried out by so many men. When told of the incident Mr Carr was in disbelief.

“It was hard to digest. Gang rapes weren’t common and these seemed vicious and predatory so it was very hard to get a handle on,” he told The Daily Telegraph.

“My first question was whether the police can confirm the media reports that it was systematised, there was a gang and they were all engaged in the rape of the young woman they captured. The idea of a rape gang was something new.”

News_Module: Miss C outside Downing Centre District Court in Sydney, after Mohammed Skaf was given a 34-year jail sentence

But the horror wasn’t an isolated incident. Just two days later on August 12, the pack of rapists struck again.

A 16-year-old girl was lured to a park - again in Greenacre - by a boy she had considered a friend. There she was brutally raped by the boy’s older brother as carloads of other men - who had been summonsed by text messages arrived to watch.

Panic on the streets of Sydney

The victim was taunted and laughed at during the sickening assault before a gun was held to her head and she was repeatedly kicked in the stomach.

Police threw everything at the case in a desperate effort to get these despicable men off the street, but not before the group were able to shatter the lives of three more young women.

On August 30 the attackers approached a woman at Bankstown train station and lured her away with the promise of smoking some weed with them. Instead she was abducted and subjected to an unimaginable assault that would last for more than six hours across three different locations in Western Sydney.

The girl was raped 25 times by 14 men before being sprayed down with a fire hose and left for dead.

Several days later two more girls fell for the initial charms of the young men at Beverley Hills station and accompanied them to a house nearby where they were repeatedly raped by three men over five hours.

The men were eventually caught following this final attack and city breathed a collective sigh of relief. Life could go on and attention was diverted back to the looming Games.

But Mr Carr had the horrible fear at the time that the sickening attacks could trigger a series of copycats.

“My fear in 2000 was this might presage a trend; it might be the start of a trend, which would have been horrific,” he said.

With so much focus on the case and with billions of people about to train their eyes on the city, there was pressure for Mr Carr to step in and take a more hands-on approach.

News_Module: Bob Carr on the phone: A call in 2000 would rock his time as Premier.

But the Premier had a renewed confidence in the police force and believes now the faith he put in them at the time was vindicated by the arrests and conviction of the men involved.

“The police force had been reformed because of the Royal Commission that we forced from Opposition and whose recommendations we’d implemented so I had more trust in the police force than in the past,” he said.

“All the indications were that they were handling it professionally and in the end I was very pleased that they cracked it and they got the culprits and the prosecution was secured and the third ingredient of course was a very severe sentence, which is what the community was hoping for,” he said.

“So police work, the prosecution and the sentencing met community standards.”

The arrests of nine of the 14 men involved brought with it the news that many of those responsible for the terror were related and all came from Lebanese-Australian backgrounds.

The gang was led by Bilal Skaf, who was 19 at the time, and included his younger brother Mohammed. Two other brothers - Mohammed and Mahmoud Sanoussi - were also convicted for the wave of terror.

Despite some of the offenders being teenagers - with one only 14 year old - Mr Carr called for them to be named.

“These were adult crimes and they were treated as adult crimes by the court fortunately and I think it would have been somewhat farcical to have not named them given the severity of the crimes,” he said.

News_Module: Like children in court: An artist’s impression of the defendents (sketched in 2003 during their appeals)

The call was met with horror by some in the Muslim community who felt the move was an attack on their community and unnecessarily brought race and religion into a case they believed was simply a crime by troubled young men.

But when it was revealed in court that many of the girls were subjected to racist comments from their attackers, it became evident there was more to it than just a simple, if not horrific, crime wave.

“On the race thing, it’s very important to note - and I don’t always defend the media - that to the best of my recollection, race was introduced by the mother of (one of the) convicted, standing up in court and saying certain things,” Mr Carr said.

“That’s when race came in. Race also came in with the evidence. The accused were alleged to have said certain things in the lead-up to the rape that were unmistakably racist and then their mother stood up in court and elaborated on that sentiment. That was introducing race.”

News_Module: August 12: Bilal Skaf’s younger brother Mohammed Skaf lures his friend — a 16-year-old girl — to Gosling Park in Greenacre.

Despite his assertions that the evidence clearly showed race played a role in the attacks, Mr Carr was adamant the Lebanese-Australian and Muslim communities should not be blamed or targeted for the crimes of a few in it.

“It’s outrageous to say the Lebanese community has a responsibility for this. No one was saying when the convictions in the Anita Cobby murder trial that Australian-born families in that area of Sydney should accept a collective responsibility, it would have been ridiculous,” he said.

“I explicitly laid that down. It would be wrong to hold a Lebanese community responsible for the crimes of these convicted offenders. Just wrong and unjust.”

The gang rapes led to a number of sweeping law reforms in NSW, including increasing the sentences for gang rapists. Bilal Skaf was initially sentenced to 55 years in jail when found guilty of the attacks, a sentence that would eventually be reduced on appeal due to a technicality, but one that Mr Carr believes was instrumental in helping deter others from thinking such a crime would

“We significantly increased the penalty for gang rape and lifted it to life I think. People say the certainty of conviction works more than a threat of a long sentence but the community expected us to act and I wasn’t going to be caught out as premier justifying inadequate sentencing for what the public thought as a vile crime,” he said.

News_Module: Barrister Geoffrey Robertson QC, a leading human rights lawyer and UN War Crimes judge.

The moves for tougher sentencing even had the approval of renowned human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson who Carr said backed the changes.

“I remember talking to Geoffrey Robertson, the London-based, Australian-born QC, and he said he remembered a case of gang rapes in the Western Suburbs when he was growing up and he said there were convictions - they were apprehended, charged and convicted and that brought an end to it,” Mr Carr said.

“I thought if a big civil libertarian like him is seeing the effectiveness of a whopping great sentence (then it must be right).”

Bilal Skaf’s initial 55-year sentence sent a clear message, Mr Carr said.

“It was certainly a headline grabber, it met community expectations, it sent a powerful message to any punk with violent tendencies on the margins of gang activity that this was very dangerous behaviour,” he said.

“It’s not as if they were let off with a warning because of their age and tender years. They got put away for what was close to life.”

Mr Carr also led the push to have changes to how a victim of sexual assault was treated by the court during the appeals process.

When the convictions of two of the attackers were overturned on appeal because of juror misconduct, one of the victims refused to testify again given the toll the first trials had already taken on her. Without that testimony prosecutors didn’t have a case and those particular cases were dropped.

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The government introduced legislation that would allow the testimony of victims to be read from the initial trial in subsequent appeals, meaning those who had been through the trauma of reliving their ordeal wouldn’t be forced to do it again.

“That was one of a number of conventions that made it easier for victims, including victim impact statements in court and support for victims,” Mr Carr said.

Fifteen years on from those sickening attacks that gripped the city, Mr Carr believes things have changed for the better.

“I think (there is) greater support for victims. More effective policing. I think the ethos around the courts is more supportive of victims, there’s more support of victims to the trauma of rape and sexual assault,” he said.

“The system was very poor in supporting women who were victims of sexual assault. My impression is that there is much more support for them (now).

“I suppose the bottom line as far as one can judge, there aren’t gang rapes occurring.”

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