Warning: This story contains graphic content.
When Cathy* was matched with a handsome Perth dentist on a dating app three years ago, she couldn’t believe her luck.
Tall, dark, fit and successful; there were no red flags getting in the way of a few drinks.
Farzam Mehrabi leaves court during his trial earlier this year.Credit: 9News Perth
Farzam Mehrabi was a catch. A qualified dentist working part-time while also studying medicine to become a maxillofacial surgeon.
Cathy was impressed, but made it clear she was only there to get to know him. The child protection worker was not into casual hook-ups, and she explained that to Mehrabi from the outset.
He concurred, telling her: “obviously I don’t do hookups on the first night either”.
“I’m a gentleman, what can I say?”, he added.
He was lying. Mehrabi wanted casual sex – especially violent sex, where he liked to slap and choke women.
Ideally, he liked them to be high on MDMA and drunk on alcohol, and if they weren’t that way inclined, he would spike their drinks to lessen their inhibitions and make the experience more pleasurable for himself.
But on that first date in Bobeche on Perth’s St Georges Terrace, Cathy did not know that she was the last of six known victims of Farzam Mehrabi.
When their conversation shifted to talking about drug-taking, she explained she was not an “out-there type person” and that she didn’t take drugs because she worked with vulnerable children and thought it would go against her morals.
Instead of honouring her views, Mehrabi waited until Cathy went to the bathroom and spiked her glass of water with a blend of MDMA and methylamphetamine.
He then encouraged her to drink it and invited her back to his house in Shelley to see his newly renovated garden.
During the 20-minute journey to the riverside southern suburb, the drugs Cathy had unwittingly consumed kicked in, and she became anxious, dizzy, disorientated – and scared.
She couldn’t hear herself speak. Her heart rate increased, and she felt like she was going in and out of consciousness. She began compulsively chewing, and began to think she was going to die.
When the car stopped at a red light near Leach Highway, Cathy jumped out and ran to a nearby train and bus station, pleading with Transperth employees for help.
Mehrabi drove on and did a U-turn, but couldn’t see her and left.
Paramedics and police were called and took Cathy to hospital for tests. She told them she had only a few cocktails, but a blood test painted a different picture and officers began an investigation into the man she had been out with.
They released information to the media and within weeks, five more girls came forward with a similar story. Theirs did not end in quite the same way.
A pattern of lies, drugs and violent rape
On Tuesday, Mehrabi was sentenced to 15 years behind bars for his horror spate of sexual assaults.
Cathy’s bravery and willingness to go to police led to others coming forward and, ultimately, Mehrabi’s arrest.
The women’s stories were eerily similar. Mehrabi would meet them on a dating app – either Tinder or Bumble – where he bragged about his career, his education, and showed off his gym-honed physique.
“[One of the victims’] personality has been affected, and she is riddled with paranoia and anxiety, and has developed self-loathing.”
Judge Troy Sweeney
Once he had struck up a connection, he would meet them mostly at the same bar – Bobeche.
The girls all reported having similar conversations with him, with sex and drugs featuring the most.
Living with his parents – Iranian immigrants who brought Mehrabi and his brother to Australia as teenagers for a better life – the then-31-year-old had qualified as a dentist but then embarked on a medical degree with the hope of becoming a specialised surgeon.
He told prospective dates that he was 24 and six feet tall. Both were lies.
He also said he had little downtime outside of work and study, but seemed to have plenty of time for an active dating life.
Mehrabi was also an avid drug user and regularly took MDMA, as well as other illicit substances.
He had been in an on-again, off-again relationship with a woman for a few years who willingly took drugs with him before embarking on consensual “rough” sexual encounters.
Whether the end of that relationship led Mehrabi to begin drugging and then violently raping other women remained unclear.
But what was revealed during his sentencing this week was that Mehrabi did not believe he had done anything wrong.
Multiple women woke up in his bed with bruises to their faces and their necks and asked him what happened because they couldn’t remember.
Women vomiting in his bathroom and his garden, despite only having one or two alcoholic drinks. Dates being too intoxicated to fend off his sexual advances. Multiple woman repeatedly saying “no”.
Apparently, the sentencing judge noted, none of that made Mehrabi question his behaviour.
And neither did 25 police charges and a month-long criminal trial, which meant each of his victims had to come to court to reveal intimate details about themselves, and nights they had struggled to forget.
Mehrabi’s defence barrister accused them of taking drugs willingly with the dentist, of enjoying the rough sex, of wanting to be choked and slapped and thrown around his bedroom.
But the jury saw through this defence and found Mehrabi guilty on all but one of the charges of stupefying, and of sexually penetrated the women without their consent.
The ordeal has left a lasting impact on the women involved.
“[One of the victims] was profoundly affected by the offending itself, and then the aftermath, and the long wait until trial, and then the experience of testifying not once, but twice,” Judge Troy Sweeney told Mehrabi while sentencing him on Tuesday,
“And she feels that this offending completely altered the trajectory of her 20s, and what should have been a decade of growth and self-discovery has now become an effort to just survive the trauma of these offences.
“Her personality has been affected, and she is riddled with paranoia and anxiety, and has developed self-loathing.
“She’s gone from someone who was self-assured to someone who is plagued by doubt. She was isolating herself and withdrawing from friends and family, and found she was unable to react to people the way she used to. At times, she felt suicidal.”
Mehrabi will be eligible for release in 13 years’ time.
*Cathy is a pseudonym used to protect the victim’s identity.
Crisis support is available from Lifeline: 13 11 14
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