Horror inside Sydney shoe repair shop

For decades, a “beloved” shoe repairer worked out of a small hole in the wall at a Sydney shopping centre. Now, the sick truth has emerged about what really happened inside.

EXCLUSIVE

WARNING: GRAPHIC

A “beloved” Sydney shoe repairer locked a 12-year-old girl inside a toilet paper store room and sexually assaulted her as her mother did her weekly grocery shopping.

Michael Zaidan, 76, was found guilty by a jury in November of six counts of indecently assaulting a child under 16 and will be sentenced in the coming weeks.

Zaidan assaulted the young girl on multiple occasions over a nine-month period between 1998 and 1999 at the Condell Park shopping centre and is now facing a maximum of eight years in prison.

Zaidan with a customer at his store in Condell Park. Picture: Facebook

The shop at Condell Park Shopping Centre which has now closed as a result of the convictions. Picture: Google Maps

In a victim impact statement obtained by news.com.au, the woman – who is now 40 – said the horrific ordeal has left her unable to tolerate the smell of shoe polish.

“It means I throw out my son’s school shoes and buy new ones,” she said.

Court documents revealed how Zaidan gained the trust of her mother before suggesting she leave the girl with him while she did her weekly grocery shopping.

It was during the weekly shops that Zaidan would take the girl behind his workbench and assault her in her school uniform.

Zaidan also would show the girl pornography which he hid behind photos he had in the store of Princess Diana.

“It means I will never see a rounded chrome door handle or a photo of Princess Diana in a Red Cross outfit without feeling nauseous,” the woman wrote in her statement.

The woman came forward in 2018 after telling her mother about the assaults.

She told the court she contemplated suicide before coming forward about the horrific ordeal.

“You drove me to the point of considering stepping in front of a truck or driving into the pillar of an overpass on many occasions,” she wrote to Zaidan in the statement.

“You drove me to the point of truly believing that my husband would be better off raising our son alone so that he wasn’t subjected to the disgusting suspicions I had about every interaction with our son.

“But I’m still here, and I’m not carrying that shame any longer – you can carry it now. Your family and friends know what you have done. They know how selfish and depraved you are. The shame is not mine to carry any more and it never should have been mine to carry in the first place.”

Zaidan was 54 at the time of the offences. Picture: Facebook

He will be sentenced in the coming weeks. Picture: Facebook

The victim said she had a lifelong fear of men – particularly Lebanese men – as a result of his crime and said she was often forced to make up excuses as to why she wasn’t able to go up to her local shops, where the crimes took place.

She also told the court how she was called a “f**king filthy lying b***h” by one of Zaidan’s family members.

“Several days after your guilty verdict I spotted a post in a Facebook group of 400,000 members from all over Sydney which lamented the fact that your shop had closed. The comment read, “The shoe repairer in Condell Park just closed. Wonderful gentleman and so obliging – he will be missed,” she wrote in the statement.

“And the story going around the community? The wonderful gentleman has retired from his trade due to health concerns. What a hero. His stoicism in preserving a dying trade until he physically couldn’t do it any longer.

“Where’s my chance to tell them that the shop is closed because he’s a pedophile who has gone to prison?”

Court documents detailed how Zaidan would assault the girl in the “workshop area” of his shops, where objects were only visible from an adult’s chest height.

In his final assault, Zaidan led the girl to a store room, claiming he had to restock the toilet paper in the shopping centre’s local toilets before sexually assaulting her.

“She became self-conscious and recalled being very wary of not letting her mother walk behind her in case she saw the stain,” the court documents state.

The girl then made “excuses” to not go shopping with her mother again.

Zaidan will be next in court on April 24.