A woman who says she was gang-raped by three strangers in her home told a friend the next day that her alleged attackers had been “very rude” when she told them to leave the apartment.
The text exchanges between the woman and her friend were played this week in Sydney’s Downing Centre District Court, where the three men are facing a joint trial for rape.
Also on trial is a man the woman met on Tinder and agreed to meet for sex on the night she was allegedly raped, but who is instead accused of bringing three of his friends to her home.
Omar El-Sayed, 25, Rami Katlan, 26, and Mohammed Ali, 21, have pleaded not guilty to two counts of sexual intercourse without consent and two counts of aggravated sexual assault in company.
Adam Kabbout has pleaded not guilty to six counts of aggravated sexual assault in connection with what happened at the woman’s apartment in Belmore, southwest of Sydney, on April 16, 2022.
The 26-year-old did not have sexual relations with the woman, but the Crown says he encouraged the three other men to repeatedly rape her as part of a joint criminal enterprise.
El-Sayed, Katlin and Ali, none of whom had met the 23-year-old woman before going to her apartment, insist that any sex they had with her was consensual.
The alleged rapes occurred in the early hours of a Saturday morning and the woman gave her version of events in a series of text messages sent to a friend on Sunday.
A woman who claims she was gang-raped by three strangers in her home told a friend the next day that her alleged attackers had been “very rude” when she told them to leave the apartment. Alleged rapist Rami Katlan is pictured outside court
The two women would meet later that day and discuss preparations such as transportation options and whether to wear full makeup.
The friend sent a text saying that someone had asked her to bring ‘snacks’ to an event everyone was attending, followed by four skull emojis.
“There’s something I want to tell you by the way,” the woman later wrote.
“It’s not good at all. Something happened to me on Friday night.”
Friend: ‘What?’
Woman: “I was raped.”
Friend: For whom?
The woman then described how she had met Kabbout on Tinder a few months earlier and how when he came to her apartment that night she had been taking a shower.
“And when I left his friends were at my house,” he wrote.
“This has been wearing me down lately and I didn’t know who to tell or what to do. Sorry for telling you now haha…
The text exchanges between the woman and her friend were played this week in Sydney’s Downing Centre District Court, where Adam Kabbout, Omar El-Sayed, Rami Katlan, 26, and Mohammed Ali are facing a joint trial for rape.
The woman described how she met Kabbout on Tinder a few months earlier and how, when he went to her apartment that night, she had taken a shower. “And when I came out, his friends were at my house,” she wrote.
When the friend asked how many men had entered her room, the woman replied: “4, including him.”
“Only two really caught me,” he wrote.
“But when he came into the room he saw me crying and I told them to leave and they were very rude.”
That night, Kabbout, El-Sayed, Katlan and another man had watched Souths beat the Bulldogs in a Good Friday NRL match at Olympic Park and Ali later joined them.
The woman, now 25, told a jury of nine men and five women on Wednesday that when Kabbout arrived at her home, they both went straight to her bedroom.
After showering, the woman said she found Kabbout and four other men outside her bedroom. The fifth man had been playing soccer with the group and is not charged with any crime.
“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.'”
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.”
A woman who says she was gang raped in her home by three friends of a man she met on Tinder had discussed the possibility of having group sex that night. Adam Kabbout, who is accused of encouraging his friends to rape the woman, is pictured leaving court
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.
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.
In text messages to her friend about 36 hours after the alleged rapes, the woman wrote: “Just two during the whole thing” and later said of Kabbout: “He would come over and kinda search.”
In her testimony, the woman said she told her friend that only two men had raped her because she was “ashamed.”
The woman told the jury of nine men and five women that after the alleged rapes she tried to find Kabbout on Snapchat, but he had blocked her.
“I just wanted to know if we were still friends,” she said. “I didn’t try to get in touch with him.”
The woman said four men, including Kabbout, had entered her room. “Only two of them grabbed me,” she wrote. “But when he came into the room he saw me crying and I told them to leave and they were very rude.”
In the hours before the alleged rapes, Kabbout and the woman had discussed the possibility of her having group sex with her friends on Snapchat.
“That’s what they like,” Kabbout wrote.
When the woman replied, “Really?”, he replied, “Yes.”
Woman: ‘Eep. Maybe not, to be honest.’
Kabbout: “They’re just three guys”
Woman: ‘I don’t know, sorry LOL’.
Kabbout: ‘They look like me, hahaha.’
Woman: ‘Hahaha, eh, tempting, but maybe not.’
After meeting Kabbout at her house, the woman asked him: “Do you have any condoms?”
Kabbout said no and the woman asked him, “What size are you, lol?”
He replied, “Big,” and she said, “I’ll check when I get home, but I think it’s normal.”
In another exchange, the woman asked Kabbout, “Do you smoke?” and then added, “It’s okay, it’s fine (because) I’m not sober,” when he said yes.
The trial before Judge Leonie Flannery continues on Monday.
