Sex beast Maurice Hawell married his cousin at the wedding that followed the horrific gang rape of three teenagers at an Airbnb on his stag do, Daily Mail Australia can reveal.
Hawell took his younger brother Marius and best man Andrew David along with a group of friends for the stag weekend in Newcastle that ended with the trio being convicted of rape.
A few weeks later, the Hawell brothers and David were photographed together at the dazzling wedding when Maurice married his cousin, Loubna Youssif.
It has now emerged that the couple’s families are extraordinarily close, even in Sydney’s tight-knit Assyrian community. In Australia it is legal for cousins to marry.
Happy photos from Maurice and Loubna’s fairytale wedding belie the dark secret the men shared about raping the girls – two aged 18 and one aged 19 – just 36 days earlier.
In one image from the wedding, Maurice and Loubna gaze adoringly into each other’s eyes, while a smiling Marius and a beaming David lurk behind the newlyweds.
Walking through the 10-person wedding party, the three men appear well-dressed and relaxed, a far cry from the descriptions their victims gave of them during the trial.
What was done to three sobbing, frightened girls in dark Airbnb rooms is in stark contrast to the idyllic wedding scene filmed in a golden field.
Maurice Hawell’s wedding party in April 2022, just 36 days after the rapes, included his fellow gang rapists, his brother Marius (circled, centre) and Andrew David (circled, back).
Maurice Hawell (right) with his girlfriend, his cousin Loubna, in April 2022. A month later he was charged with multiple counts of rape and is now in prison after being sentenced in mid-July.
The sordid details of the rapes were heard at a trial in the New South Wales District Court that began in June and ended with all three being found guilty of multiple charges on July 15.
All three will be sentenced within two days in court in September.
But at her wedding on April 2, 2022, all of that was still a mystery to Loubna, her family and her wedding guests.
A video posted online by close relatives of the couple shows Loubna and her family at the typically raucous celebrations of an Assyrian bride leaving her home to the sound of a flute and drum.
Wearing a gorgeous hand-embroidered “princess” gown by designer to the stars, Steven Khalil, Loubna holds a bouquet of perfect white roses in triumph before climbing into a waiting white Rolls Royce Ghost.
Ms Yousef went with her father to the nearby Chaldean Cathedral of St Thomas the Apostle at Bossley Park, west of Sydney, to marry Maurice Hawell.
She was set to marry a man she had known all her life, but Loubna and her family were unaware that Newcastle detectives were already investigating the rape allegations.
The bridal party, with Loubna and Maurice’s mothers wearing stunning formal gowns, arrived in a convoy of luxury vehicles to the reception, including Mercedes G Wagon SUVs and a $500,000 McLaren 720s convertible.
At the reception, now sporting a crystal tiara on her head, Loubna gave the first dance with Maurice on the dance floor surrounded by white candles and with a fog machine slowly filling the air.
Loubna Yousif attends the trial of her husband, Maurice Hawell, after he pleaded not guilty to multiple rapes but was found guilty by a jury and now faces years in prison.
Guests joined them on the dance floor as a family member played the saxophone on stage with his band, while the newlywed couple looked relaxed and happy.
Elsewhere, however, the New South Wales police investigation had already been taking statements from one of the rape victims after she alerted detectives. Other people would also later come forward.
The rapes occurred over two nights, on Friday 25 February 2022 and the following night, at an Airbnb apartment on Parry Street, Newcastle, near the centre of the entertainment district of the capital of the Hunter Valley in New South Wales.
Nine men in total, mostly of Assyrian-Australian origin, travelled to the unit on Friday for Maurice’s pre-wedding party.
The groom-to-be and David, both 28 at the time, were forging successful careers as a lawyer and civil engineer respectively, and the Patrician Brothers College alumni enjoyed the support of their families.
The previous year, Maurice had attended his sister’s wedding where his fiancée Loubna had been a bridesmaid.
Maurice’s younger brother, Marius, was just 20 years old. Crown prosecutors told the joint trial of the three men that all three were part of the group that He headed to the nearby Cambridge Hotel on Friday for a drink.
Two of the three victims, Miss A and her 18-year-old friend, Miss B, were at the Hunter Street pub with four other friends.
Miss A began speaking to ‘Matt’, a guest from the stag weekend who was not charged with rape, and invited her back to the Parry Street flat.
One of the rooms at the Airbnb in Newcastle where the teenagers were sexually assaulted by brothers Hawell and Andrew David a month before they were to celebrate Maurice’s wedding.
Marius Hawell (left), now 22, will be sentenced on the same day as Andrew David (right) in September, the day before Maurice Hawell faces Judge Gina O’Rourke to learn his fate.
Miss A agreed, but only if her friend, Miss B, came with her “since she didn’t want to go alone.”
Around the same time, Maurice Hawell had asked Miss B if she wanted to return to the Airbnb.
Once inside the apartment, Miss B entered a bedroom with a man the Crown says was Maurice Hawell and Miss A entered a bedroom with Matt.
Miss A and Matt They had sex, but when Maurice Hawell walked into the room naked and asked if he could join in, she said no.
Maurice Hawell had previously had consensual sex with Miss B, who had also had consensual sex with Andrew David, but the two women later spoke of “feeling uncomfortable”.
The two women decided to leave, but when they entered a dark bedroom to retrieve their phones, Miss A was surrounded by “a swarm of people”, pushed back onto a bed and had her clothes torn off.
Miss A said she was then subjected to a series of sexual assaults by three men whom she could not identify but police said were the Hawell brothers and David.
One of the teens said she was forced to have penetrative sex with a man she could not see while another man knelt on her arms and put his penis in her mouth.
The following night, groom-to-be Maurice Hawell approached a 19-year-old woman on the street and convinced her to return to the rented Airbnb for pre-wedding drinks, but instead led her to a bedroom.
Loubna Yousif at the preliminary celebrations of her wedding with Maurice Hawell at the Chaldean Cathedral of Saint Thomas the Apostle
The court heard that the trio of two brothers Hawell and David gang raped the young woman inside a dark room that Saturday night.
The court heard the teenager was “sobbing” and put her underwear on inside out in her rush to flee the flat.
On the day Maurice and Loubna tied the knot and a relative posted a video of their preliminary festive celebrations, a well-wisher posted in Arabic: “May God bless you and congratulations on your marriage.
‘We wish the newlyweds a happy life, God willing.’
On May 6, 2022, police arrested and charged Maurice Hawell with eight counts of aggravated sexual assault in company and one count of aggravated sexual touching of another person and one count of attempted aggravated sexual assault in company.
In early June, police arrested Andrew David at his family’s $3 million mansion in Horsley Park, western Sydney, and on June 14 they arrested Marius Hawell.
All men have pleaded not guilty to multiple charges, with the elderly couple insisting it was consensual while Marius denied having sex.
The jury found all three guilty of multiple counts of aggravated sexual assault in the company of the three women, and of aggravated sexual contact and attempted aggravated sexual assault of a woman.
Maurice Hawell was found guilty of attempted sexual contact with a woman, but the jury could not agree on the final charge for the three men of aggravated sexual assault.
In dramatic scenes at Downing Centre Court, the Hawells and David were handcuffed and led by prison officers to the cells below, then driven away in prison vans.
Marius Hawell and Andrew David will be sentenced on 17 September, and Maurice Hawell the following day.