Four men have been found guilty of gang-raping a woman after a jury rejected their claims that she consented to group sex after one of them met her on Tinder.
The woman said she cried and repeatedly asked the men to stop as one by one, three of them entered the bedroom of her apartment in Belmore, southwest of Sydney, and raped her in April 2022.
“I said I didn’t want to do it, but I was scared and I did it,” the woman previously told the court.
She had arranged to meet Adam Ahamd Kabbout, 27, whom she met on the dating app, but after letting him into her home and taking a shower, she found other men she did not know also in the unit.
The woman said Kabbout eventually agreed to leave, but first placed both hands on her cheeks and said, “It’s okay, it’s your loss.”
On Tuesday, a jury found Omar El-Sayed, 26, and Mohammed Ali, 22, guilty of two counts of sexual intercourse without consent in the New South Wales District Court.
Rami Katlan, 26, was found guilty of one count of sexual intercourse without consent, but acquitted of two aggravated counts of sexual intercourse without consent.
Kabbout was found guilty of four counts of aggravated sexual assault in company, but was acquitted of two other charges.
Adam Ahamd Kabbout, 27, was found guilty of four counts of aggravated sexual assault in company, but was acquitted of two other charges.
Mohammed Ali, 22, was found guilty of sexual intercourse without consent
It took the jurors just over 12 hours to reach their verdicts.
The men’s relatives cried and wailed as the group was arrested.
One of the men shouted: “This is not right! I swear we are innocent.”
While Kabbout was not alleged to have had sexual relations with the woman, the jury found that he had encouraged the other men to do so.
“He is therefore responsible as a party to what the other defendants did,” Crown prosecutor Danny Boyle previously told the court.
It was not disputed during the trial that El-Sayed, Katlan and Ali had sex with the woman, but their lawyers told the court that she consented.
Police recovered a used condom from the women’s bathroom that contained DNA matching El-Sayed’s, despite his initial statements to police that he had not been in the apartment.
His lawyer, James Trevallion, said one of the reasons his client initially lied to police was because he was compromised at the time of the assault.
“After that night he felt ashamed and uncomfortable,” he said.
“He was about to get married and he cheated on his fiancée.”
Documents filed during the trial detail searches by the woman for group sex material described as “highly sexually explicit.”
Omar El-Sayed, 26, was found guilty of two counts of rape.
Rami Katlan, 26, was found guilty of one charge but acquitted of two others.
Asked if the searches were evidence of her sexual interests, the woman replied: “I just wanted to see if the women in the videos cried like I cried.”
Judge Leonie Flannery told the jury that the searches of the woman should not be construed as consent to the sexual activity that was the subject of the trial.
“This is not a court of morality,” he said.
Mr Boyle told the jury that Kabbout asked the woman if she was interested in having sex with several men during their conversations on Tinder and then Snapchat, but she said she was not.
The case has been scheduled for a sentencing hearing on October 25.
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