WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT
A judge has blasted the actions of three young men who used dating apps like Grindr to lure, violently assault and rob men in Melbourne parks as a horrific example of groupthink.
Abdullah Bloch, Albin Idrizi and Madhi Nowruzi, all aged 20, pleaded guilty to charges including kidnapping, armed robbery and assault-related offences at the County Court of Victoria, claiming their actions were a case of “mistaken vigilantism” against men they suspected to be sex offenders.
Groups of teenagers and young men are using dating apps to lure, violently assault and rob men in Melbourne parks before posting footage they capture of the disturbing attacks on social media.Credit: Eddie Jim
However, Judge Simon Moglia flatly dismissed the claim saying there was “no reasonable basis” for them holding that view.
“I find that your offending can only be understood as a horrific example of groupthink and immature, misguided, mutual peer pressure aimed at attacking individual men in vulnerable circumstances in order to make ‘easy money’,” he said.
In May, police said at least 35 arrests had been made around Melbourne for assault, robbery, false imprisonment and even extortion in a new form of homophobic violence in which perpetrators use apps such as TikTok to post and boast about their crimes.
At a previous hearing, the court heard disturbing details of the trio’s crimes including how they lured men into parks or quiet streets after connecting with them on dating sites including Grindr and Scruff, using fake profiles before brutally assaulting and robbing them.
In one incident, a victim aged in his 50s was falsely told that he was meeting a 15-year-old boy after first matching with one of the men who used a fake profile of a 22-year-old man.
Graphic video footage of his assault, captured on a smartphone, showed the victim being set upon by the men, who accused him of sexual misconduct and being a paedophile. The man is seen screaming and pleading for his life as he is violently assaulted, choked and then beaten with a metal pole.
As he sits cowering on the ground with his hands over his face, the victim is forced to utter homophobic slurs and to beg “Jesus for forgiveness”.
“If you call the cops, it’s not going to end well for you,” one of the attackers can be heard saying. “We went easy on you.”
The victim asks if the men have assaulted others. “Yeah, we’ve done this before,” one boasts.
Moglia described it as a prolonged attack involving “substantial humiliation”.
He said each of the three men played a relatively equal role in executing the plan on the victim and, as such, their moral culpability was high.
A victim impact statement revealed the man no longer feels safe, suffers from troubling memories and continues to deal with ongoing physical complications including nerve damage and pain.
Moglia also detailed a case where a man was put in a headlock and choked after being ambushed at a park.
An unknown member of the group said to the victim, “you’ve got to stop f---ing around with gay guys”, and told him he would go to hell and should delete Grindr, get married, and have kids.
In sentencing the men, Moglia said he accepted that they each had varying forms of trauma in their childhoods, mental health or substance-abuse challenges.
However, he said each of their victims would be left with lasting psychological scars.
Moglia said the offensive comments, particularly about homosexual men, “were absolutely abhorrent”.
“Whether the hate crime provision applies or not, the comments made to your victims were aimed to denigrate and humiliate them,” he said.
“That much makes your offending more serious in as much as these views are deeply held and are retained by each of you. They make your prospects of rehabilitation worse.”
Bloch was sentenced to three years and four months’ jail with a non-parole period of 22 months.
Nowruzi was jailed for two years and seven months to be served in youth detention, while Idrizi was jailed for two years and eight months with a non-parole period of 18 months.
Rainbow Sexual, Domestic and Family Violence Helpline: 1800 497 212.
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