By Perry Duffin and Angus Thomson
Notorious North Shore Rapist Graham Kay has been arrested for allegedly sexually touching a teenage girl in Sydney’s city centre just months after women who survived his violent attacks warned he would never be rehabilitated.
Kay is once again behind bars, held on remand, but horrified survivors have urged the courts to “throw away the key” and called on the government to harden laws to protect women.
Graham Kay, the North Shore Rapist, in 2018.Credit:
Police were called to a chemist on George Street in Sydney’s CBD about 6pm on Friday, where they were told a 16-year-old girl was allegedly sexually touched by a man not known to her.
About 1am on Saturday, investigators and the riot squad executed a search warrant at a unit on Oxford Street in Blacktown, where a 73-year-old man was arrested and taken to Blacktown police station.
He was charged with sexually touching another person without consent and refused bail to appear in Parramatta Local Court on Saturday.
Kay did not appear on the video screen when his matter was briefly mentioned by a magistrate, and he will remain in custody until Monday, when the matter returns to the Downing Centre Local Court.
Kay pleaded guilty in 2000 to sexual attacks on eight women and girls while armed with a knife – six rapes and two more attempts.
He spent two decades in prison for the series of violent attacks in the 1990s and returned to the community in 2023 despite reoffending in 2018 and 2022.
A history of reoffending
His reoffending happened despite Kay being subjected to extended supervision orders (ESO), which are designed to keep a short leash on the most dangerous offenders.
In 2018, Kay breached his ESO by approaching a 16-year-old girl working at a supermarket and giving her a “slobbery kiss” on the cheek. She was horrified, and it was media publicity that helped her realise the man who had assaulted her was the infamous North Shore Rapist.
In 2020, the State of NSW asked Justice Stephen Rothman to put Kay on a second ESO.
Despite Kay’s breaches in 2018, the state removed the requirement for Kay to provide his schedule of movements in the second ESO, although he would still wear an ankle monitor.
The Herald won a legal bid to identify Graham James Kay as the North Shore Rapist last year.
Kay told Justice Rothman that the negative media attention had cost him family and friends, jobs and housing.
The judge said negative press would “significantly impact upon (Kay’s) capacity to continue any process of rehabilitation” and suppressed Kay’s name.
Kay, in January 2022, followed a woman walking around Sydney’s Queen Victoria Building.
CCTV captured Kay stalking the woman through shops before following her home and sneaking into her unit tower.
“As he exited the lift, he placed his right hand under the complainant’s dress, placing it over her underwear and touching her genitalia,” a Supreme Court Justice would later say.
“She was significantly traumatised by these events.”
He was sentenced to two years and six months on appeal and granted parole in September 2023.
Kay was placed on a third ESO in August last year, the details of which could only be revealed after the Herald fought the long-standing suppression order over his identity.
He was attempting to convince another judge not to force an ankle monitor onto his leg as part of his new ESO conditions.
But Kay lost on both counts after his survivors broke their silence and told the court about the impact his attacks had on them since the late 1990s.
Survivors speak out
“I was fearful I was going to die at the hands of the offender and would not wish this of anyone else,” one woman told the court, recalling the moment Kay leapt from the shadows and put a blade to her throat in 1997.
Kay had not appeared before the judge in person, likely to avoid the cameras and the women he attacked.
“Graham James Kay will never be rehabilitated, and no matter his age, he must always be monitored,” one survivor told the court.
“He will always be a danger to the community, particularly to young women.”
On Saturday, one of those survivors told the Herald she was crushed to learn her warnings were allegedly borne out.
“This has to be the catalyst for harder laws,” she said.
“My concern is with that girl; she is my priority.”
The survivor urged the courts to “throw away the key” if Kay was found guilty.
“He is sick. He won’t get better,” she said.
Experts told a Sydney court last year that Kay continued to pose a high risk of sexual reoffending.
Forensic psychologist Marcelo Rodriguez diagnosed Kay with “sexual sadism disorder”, describing it as a chronic and relapsing condition that was linked to his offending.
A second psychologist, Michael Davis, said Kay felt the need to sexually touch women in “an attempt to reassure himself of his masculinity and coerce intimacy from his victims”.
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