'Begged them to kill me': Alleged gang rape victim breaks silence after 20 years
A woman who says she was one victim in a series of horrifying gang rapes in Sydney 20 years ago says she begged her attackers to kill her during a six-hour-long ordeal.
Jessica told A Current Affair on Monday there were 15 men, who she believed were led by notorious criminal Bilal Skaf, that raped her in Sydney’s southwest ahead of the 2000 Olympics.
“They were calling me a pig. All sorts of names. You know, they were calling me names and none of them were nice. I begged them to kill me by the end of it,” she told the program.
Jessica, aged 16 at the time, said she travelled in a red car with a friend to Bankstown, and ended up in a change room alone with Skaf.
She said he asked if she wanted to have sex, and she responded saying “no, I’m not interested”, but he insisted that she was going to anyway.
Despite her desperate attempt to escape, someone locked a door and trapped her inside for several painful hours while more than a dozen men raped her.
When the brutal assault ended, she was taken to Punchbowl Station and dumped. Traumatised, she went to Fairfield Police Station to report the ordeal.
She said when she arrived, an officer greeted her saying “oh, we've got another one”.
Skaf led nine teens and men in a string of gruesome gang rapes which a judge at the time described to be “worse than murder”.
Skaf, who was convicted alongside his brother Bilal over a series of rapes in Sydney in 2000, became eligible for parole in January 2018.
The State Parole Authority refused his release in February that year.
But Skaf applied for it to reconsider the decision under “manifest injustice” provisions, which allow offenders to seek parole without having to wait 12 months.
A spokeswoman from the parole authority in August this year said the 36-year-old's application under the provisions was declined “given advice from the Serious Offenders Review Council that release to parole was not appropriate.”
Skaf will be eligible for parole consideration in January 2020.
Jessica has re-established contact with police, and now at age 36, she said she is ready to take the matter to court and press charges.
She said that in the process of gathering documents to build her legal case, she discovered Fairfield Police still had the clothes she was wearing and the initial statement she made 20 years ago.
If you or someone you know has experienced sexual violence, you can contact 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732 or through online chat via their website.
–– With AAP
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