“I’m innocent until the day I f---ing die!” one of the men cried out,through tears,as his mother clung to his neck in the dock in the chaos.
Adam Kabbout has been convicted of orchestrating the gang rape of a woman in her Belmore unit. Three of his friends are also guilty.Dion Georgopoulos
Adam Kabbout and three of his friends,Mohammed Ali,Rami Katlan and Omar El-Sayed,faced trial accused of having sex with the 23-year-old woman on Good Friday,2022,without her consent.
At the opening of the trial in August,each of the men pleaded not guilty to charges mostly composed of aggravated sexual assault in company.
The jury returned just before lunch on Tuesday and found each of the men guilty of the majority of the sexual assault charges before the courtroom erupted with noise.
The men were cleared of some charges,but all were found guilty of at least one count of sexual intercourse without consent over the incident at the woman’s Belmore unit.
“How could they do this?” one woman screamed as multiple families converged on the dock where the four men sat,shaking their heads in disbelief.
“It’s not fair,” another family member said.
Judge Leonie Flannery sat patiently,head rested on her hand,as the dozen-or-so family members wept and screamed.
One elderly couple screamed at the police detective who investigated the group as he sat silently in the far corner of the room.
“She’s a liar!” one of the guilty men’s mothers yelled.
“I’m destroyed,I’m destroyed.”
Her son,still in the dock,called back to her:“Why are you destroyed? I’m still alive.”
Some of the lawyers for the men,too,were in tears until Judge Flannery ordered the four to be detained by the sheriffs and the families were ushered out.
The court had heard Kabbout had matched with the woman on Tinder and the pair had discussed group sex with multiple men.
Among Kabbout’s messages to the woman,the jury heard,were invitations to have sex with three of his friends who “all look like me”.
The woman replied that it was “tempting,but maybe not”.
Despite that,police alleged Kabbout brought his friends to the woman’s home hours after they watched a Bulldogs-Rabbitohs match.
“I don’t want them here,” the woman told Kabbout.
Kabbout,however,urged his friends into the room to have sex with the woman.
“I want to stop,” the woman told Kabbout.
The jury was told the woman had looked up pornography involving multiple men after the gang rape.
“I just wanted to see if the women in the videos were crying the way that I was crying,” the woman told the court.
“She was keen on sexual activity in what I might call a group setting and this was conveyed to accused in provocative and graphic terms,” Kabbout’s barrister told the jury.
The men were taken into custody and will return to court to begin the sentencing process in October.
Support is available from the National Sexual Assault,Domestic Family Violence Counselling Service at 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732).
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