They are the sons of a medical doctor and they are rapists. Lee Glendinning reports on two of four brothers found guilty of gang rape in attacks that upended the NSW legal system.
There was a moment when they nearly got away. Just before midnight a police van drove past East Hills railway station as the two girls walked along the road. The officers were finishing their shift but they turned the van around and stopped, thinking the girls might want a lift home. But the teenagers thanked them, said they were fine and walked on.
Waiting that night at the station for a black Nissan Skyline and a group of young men they had met the week before in George Street in the city, something made 17-year-old LS turn to 16-year-old HG and tell her to put the number 112 into her mobile phone memory. This was an emergency number, she said; it made you traceable.
Two hours later, after the pair had been taken to a house in Ashfield, they were attacked by four brothers and a friend. Forced into separate rooms, the girls were repeatedly raped at knife point, their attackers telling each that the other was dead.
It was the early hours of Sunday, July 28 last year and Sydney had been gripped for months by a series of trials of gang rapists in the south-western suburbs that had received widespread media coverage. Talkback radio had gone crazy over the expression "I'm going to f--- you Leb-style", the words one victim told the court were used during her assault.
Bilal Skaf's name was not yet known. He was a month from being sentenced to 55 years for his role in the gang rapes. But the workings of Skaf's mind had become etched into the public's imagination.
Brothers MSK, 25, and MAK, 23, knew all about the gang rapes, too. And that night, when they had finished with the girls, they warned against going to the police because they did not want what "happened in that other rape trial to happen to them". Later, once charged, they started to talk about the holes in Skaf's case, where Skaf went wrong. It would not happen to them, they said.
To these men, brotherhood was all. Nothing could come between fraternal bonds. It was more important than any perjury, any crime, any victim. They called wives and families as witnesses; court procedures meant nothing.
Bound by birth, culture and crime, each brother share the first name and surname. Only their middle names differ. The sons of a general practitioner, they came from Pakistan and lived in a house in Ashfield. It was here they took the school girls that night.
The two best friends were handed a Jim Beam and Coke. It was too strong. They did not like the taste. "Drink, drink!" MSK insisted. "Don't reject something when we give it to you." Another brother, MMK, told LS he was "horny" and asked if she would come to his room. She refused. MSK slapped her across the face with an open hand. She ran to the bathroom but MSK yelled "Get in the bedroom or I will kill you."
MRK walked into the room. LS grabbed him. This was the 17-year-old youth who was their friend, the one whom they knew better than the others. "Please help me. Help me get out," she begged. "Don't let this happen." He replied: "I am only new to the group. I can't tell them what to do. He's only drunk. Do what he says."
She ran to the window but it was barred. The oldest brother, MSK, walked into the room and forced her pants off. "I was screaming and crying and telling him not to do it but he just looked at me in the eye and started taking his pants off." He pushed LS into the corner of the bed and raped her three times.
MSK left and MAK walked into the room holding a knife. "Take off all your clothes or I'm going to kill you." He placed three gold bullets on the bedside table and then raped her.
HG had been forced into the other room when she tried to call 112. Another brother, MRK, grabbed the mobile. A call was recorded from her mobile at 2.18am.
MMK walked into the room and pushed HG to the floor. He flicked a cigarette lighter and ran it along a 20cm blade of a green-handled diving knife. "Look at this knife. If you don't do what I say, it will be in you." He forced her to perform oral sex and then raped her, telling her that her friend was dead.
Then RS, 25, entered the room and raped her. After, she closed her eyes. Somebody else came in and raped her. She was unable to say who. She no longer looked.
HG then walked into the loungeroom and RS offered her a cigarette. She stood in the centre of the room, crying, holding their belongings. The men forced the girls into the back of a car and dumped them in Campsie. As the car did a three-point turn, one of the men yelled: "You're just a slut." Later, the court would hear it was an incantation, something which absolved guilt or responsibility.
The girls ran down a street, but HG collapsed in pain. They hid in the bushes, scared the car might return. LS rang 000. "My friend and I have just been raped. We don't know where we are. I don't want them to come back. I don't want them to get us."
Fifteen minutes later, in the back of the ambulance, HG wailed: "Where is my dad? I just want my dad."
On Friday, October 24, MSK and MAK's trial began in court 3 of the Darlinghurst Criminal Court. A week earlier, their younger brothers, MRK and MMK, and RS had stood in the same court and were found guilty of nine counts each of aggravated sexual assault. The younger brothers had scratched their names into the wooden dock.
The four-week trial was to become the most trying in the long careers of Justice Brian Sully of the Supreme Court, prosecutor Margaret Cunneen and detectives working for Strike Force Westward investigating the gang rapes.
From the moment they were arraigned in March, MSK and MAK refused to be seated, throwing letters to the public gallery and raving about a police conspiracy. Over ensuing months, they sacked their barristers and began the mammoth task of mounting their own defence. Their brothers kept their legal counsel.
Around the Supreme Court, word got out about their antics and their numerous bail applications. It was Justice Sully who drew the short straw and, because two of the accused were unrepresented, he decided to split the trials and run them back-to-back. Exasperation built and he would say that it was a dark day when this matter came onto his list.
For weeks after the trial began, the possibility of reaching even an opening address grew increasingly remote.
First, MSK and MAK demanded six Muslim jurors. "They look at my name ... and I need six Muslim jurors in this trial, your honour, or I will be found guilty," MSK said. Then they asked for a trial by judge alone. This was refused by the Director of Public Prosecutions, Nicholas Cowdery. They were warned not to make political speeches to the jury, but four days into the trial, MSK screamed that the laws had been changed because they were Muslim.
Changes to the Criminal Procedures Act have stopped self-represented accused in a sexual assault trial from cross-examining complainants. They can use a court-appointed intermediary.
Justice Sully cautioned the brothers to reconsider and take legal assistance. The judge had representatives from the Muslim community talk with them, and arranged for legal aid. Even then, the brothers had to be cajoled into talking but refused offers of assistance.
The trial sometimes threatened to degenerate into a circus. The brothers rarely kept quiet or heeded the ordinary civilities, they had no legal training, and phoned Pakistan nightly for advice - intent on conspiracy theories. They interrupted proceedings with mindless raves and sometimes appeared deluded.
As evidence mounted, the brothers seemed to become more convinced of their innocence. MAK laughed constantly and became hysterical during routine questioning. His replies were an echo: "Same as my brother." MSK was angry and waved to quieten his sibling. He controlled the situation.
When police arrived at their Ashfield home with a search warrant, MSK fled over the back fence. He was fleeing again when police arrested him at Melbourne Airport on his way to Pakistan. He was, Cunneen said, a person who could not keep track of his own lies. The brothers' defence was that they were at another brother's Ashfield house the night of the rapes.
Justice Sully had heard it all before. In the trial of the other brothers, MMK said he was not there and had no involvement. MRK said, however, he was there when something happened but he was drunk and being sick outside.
MSK and MAK stood day after day, repeatedly consulting copies of the Justices Act and beseeching Justice Sully to look up sections of the Crimes Act. When they spoke to the bench, they bowed ostentatiously to the judge, whom they repeatedly called "your honourable your honour".
During the fasting month of Ramadan, MSK complained that his mind was not working properly. "I am feeling headache in my head because of fasting, your honour. I can't break my fast. I want a cup of tea but I can't have one ... so I cannot continue today."
And so it went, day after day. At times Justice Sully seemed to seethe. He reddened sometimes but continued to patiently and repeatedly instruct the brothers, even when their arguments kept the court open two hours past the 4pm daily adjournment. "Mr ..., I cannot stop you making statements like that. You can make them until the proverbial cows come home," Justice Sully said on one occasion. Later he sighed: "Mr ... I am not a social worker. I am not a psychiatrist. I am not an expert in race relations. I am just a judge."
The brothers also poked their tongues out at Cunneen. During one recess she said she was going for coffee and asked if anyone wanted one; the brothers chimed in with their orders.
While Cunneen has a deftly soft talent of drawing emotional and sensitive evidence from sexual assault victims, her cross-examination technique was blunt and brutal. The brothers knew its sting and refused, as was their right, to give evidence. However, they told the jury they could not give evidence because they were depressed, had no stamina and were in shock.
They did not call other brothers. Instead, they called a wife, a sister and sister-in-law and their father.
MSK's wife was their first witness. She never lied, she told the court. He was not fleeing to Pakistan when he was caught at Melbourne Airport but going there to help as their son needed an operation. She was living in Pakistan at the time.
His sister-in-law had her statutory declaration torn to shreds during cross-examination but she answered "I won't tell lies because Islam says Islam followers should never lie."
No family members would swear on the Koran. They instead chose to make an affirmation on the witness stand. Others had written statutory declarations and some, like MAK's girlfriend of two years, admitted they were ordered to write the documents, destroy all mobile phone chips and disconnect the phones.
She told the court: "He [MRK] told me I was his sister. Then he said they did do it. They did rape them. When I asked why, he said, 'Just for fun."'
The father of the accused, a GP, told the court he was at the Ashfield house the night the girls said they were raped and recalled turning in just before sunrise, having prayed on a mat in the corridor for much of the night.
He told the Herald repeatedly that his boys were innocent. He also spoke about Australian girls who should not be out at that time. "What do they expect to happen to them? Girls from Pakistan don't go out at night," he said.
The doctor may never see his sons outside jail again. He said his wife in Pakistan knew about the trials. " The boys talk to her once a week on the phone. She is sobbing, crying 'How could this happen?"'
And if his sons were guilty? "It is to go before Allah," he said. "We all have to stand before God in the end."
