A young woman has told a jury that three friends of a man she met on Tinder turned up at her apartment unannounced and gang-raped her as she came out of the shower.
The young woman, now 25, described the alleged multiple assaults when she gave evidence against the four men in Sydney’s Downing Centre District Court on Wednesday.
Omar El-Sayed, 26, Rami Katlan, 26, and Mohammed Ali, 22, are on trial on two counts of sexual intercourse without consent and two counts of aggravated sexual assault in company.
Adam Ahamd Kabbout, 27, is charged with six counts of aggravated sexual assault in company.
Kabbout is not accused of having sex with the woman at his home in Belmore, southwest of Sydney, but the Crown alleges he encouraged the three other men to rape her.
El-Sayed, Katlin and Ali, none of whom had met the woman before the alleged rapes, say any sex they had with her was consensual.
They have all pleaded not guilty to assaulting the woman in the early hours of April 16, 2022, after they attended Olympic Park for a Good Friday NRL match between the Bulldogs and Souths.
The alleged victim said she met Kabbout on Tinder about a year before that night, and that the pair had exchanged messages on Snapchat, where he used the name “Adam Kay.”
A young woman told jurors that three friends of a man she met on Tinder showed up at her apartment unannounced and when she came out of the shower they gang raped her. Adam Kabbout is pictured outside court on Wednesday
“They were just short messages: ‘Hey, are you free? Are you doing anything?’, things like that,” he told the jury.
On April 15, 2022, the woman had gone to dinner with friends in the city and communicated with Kabbout via Snapchat.
“He asked me if I was free and I knew dinner wasn’t going to last long so I said ‘later tonight, yeah,'” she told jurors.
The woman, who gave her testimony via audio-visual link, was shown transcripts of her conversation with Kabbout which allegedly included him telling her: “It’s just three guys.”
“When she said it was just three guys, I assumed she was going to have sex with three guys,” she told the jury.
-I said maybe not.
The woman, then 23, said she first met Kabbout in person outside her apartment and that they went straight to her bedroom once inside.
“He told me to come over to where he was sitting,” she said. “And then we kissed. And then I told him I was going to take a shower.”
Omar El-Sayed, Rami Katlan (above) and Mohammed Ali are on trial on two counts of sexual intercourse without consent and two counts of aggravated sexual assault in the company of a man.
After showering for 10 or 15 minutes, the woman said she found Kabbout and four other men (the fifth man is not charged with any crime) outside her room.
“I went back to my room and locked the door,” she said. “Adam came in and I asked him, ‘Who are you? What are you doing here?’ and ‘I don’t want you here.'”
“I think he dismissed me and my questions. (Kabbout) just said, ‘It’s okay, don’t worry about it.'”
The woman said Kabbout left her room and heard the men outside having a conversation in a language she did not understand.
Kabbout then returned to the bedroom with one of the group, he told the jury.
“He tells me something like, ‘Suck it,'” she said.
“I approached them and told them I didn’t want to and that I didn’t want to do anything, but I was scared and he told me to do it and so I did.”
The woman said that after Kabbout left the room, she had sex with the man.
“I just remember I kept saying I didn’t want this, I didn’t want to do this,” she said.
‘When he finished he went to the bathroom and Adam came in.’
The woman said that when she told Kabbout she wanted the men to leave, he replied: “Not yet.”
She told the jury a second man entered the room and raped her in a similar way to the first and was then followed by a third.
The woman said she was crying while she was allegedly raped by the second and third men and continued to protest what they were doing to her.
Omar El-Sayed, Rami Katlan and Mohammed Ali (pictured above, outside the court) say any sexual relations they had with the woman were consensual.
During the alleged assaults, Kabbout was in and out of the bedroom, the woman said.
“He just watched what we did,” she said. “He just came and watched.”
The woman said that after the third man left her room, Kabbout came back in.
“I said, ‘I don’t want to do this anymore, can you please go away?'” she told the jury. “He said, ‘OK, you lose,’ and then they left.”
Kabbout’s attorney, April Francis, previously told jurors the woman had “positively misled police” about her communications with Kabbout and the nature of their relationship.
Ms Francis said it was disputed that the woman had not agreed to Kabbout inviting the other men into the apartment.
“She led the defendant to believe that she was interested in such sexual activity,” Ms Francis said.
“That explains why the issue was raised… before the accused arrived home.”
Adam Kabbout (above) is not charged with having sex with the woman at his apartment in Sydney’s west, but the Crown alleges he encouraged the three other men to rape her.
Ms Francis also said that before and after the alleged rapes, the woman searched the internet for “very graphic” material showing several men having sex with a woman.
James Trevalion, for El-Sayed, said on Wednesday there was no dispute over whether his client had sex with the woman, but maintained the activity was consensual.
Mr Trevalion told the jury that at the time of the alleged offences El-Sayed was about to get married and they should not make moral judgements about him cheating on his fiancée.
Angela Cook SC, representing Katlan, said her client had engaged in a single consensual act of oral sex with the alleged victim.
Ms Cook said the woman had “demonstrated dishonesty and deceit” and told a friend after the alleged rapes: “I was actually only caught by two.”
Ali’s lawyer, Julia Hickleton, told the jury that her client had consensual sex with the complainant and that “this is not a one-sided story.”
“You may find it a little confronting that (the alleged victim) willingly engaged in sequential sexual acts with three men,” he said.
“This is not a court of morality. It is a court of facts.”
The trial continues before Judge Leonie Flannery.
