A young woman has told a jury that three friends of a man she met on Tinder came to her apartment unannounced and gang-raped her when she got out of the shower.
The now 25-year-old described the alleged multiple assaults when she gave evidence against all four men in Sydney’s Downing Centre District Court on Wednesday.
Omar El-Sayed, 26, Rami Katlan, 26 and Mohammed Ali, 22, are standing trial over 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 in her home at Belmore in Sydney’s south-west, but the Crown alleges he encouraged the other three 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.
All have 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 game between the Bulldogs and Souths.
The alleged victim said she met Kabbout on Tinder about a year before that night, and the pair had exchanged messages on Snapchat, where he used the name ‘Adam Kay’.
‘They would just be quick messages – “Hey, are you free? Are you doing anything?” – just stuff like that,’ she told the jury.
On April 15, 2022, the woman had gone to dinner with friends in the city and communicated with Kabbout over Snapchat.
‘He asked me if I was free and I knew that dinner wasn’t going to take long so I said “Later on tonight, yes”,’ she told the jury.
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 only three guys’.
‘When he said it’s only three guys I assumed that they were going to, like, it was going to be sexual with three guys,’ she told the jury.
‘I said maybe not.’
The woman, who was then 23, said she met Kabbout in person for the first time outside her apartment and they went straight to her bedroom once inside.
‘He told me to come over to where he was sitting,’ she said. ‘And then we were kissing. And then I said that I was going to take a shower.’
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 offence – outside her bedroom.
‘I went back into my room and kind of closed the door,’ she said. ‘Adam came inside and I said, “Who are they? What are they doing here” and “I don’t want them in here”.
‘I think he dismissed me and my questions. [Kabbout] just said, “It’s OK, don’t worry about that”.’
The woman said Kabbout left her bedroom and she heard the men outside have a conversation in a language she did not understand.
Kabbout then came back into the bedroom with one of the group, she told the jury.
‘He goes, like, “Suck him off”,’ she said.
‘I moved closer to them and I said that I didn’t want to and I didn’t want to do anything but I was scared and he told me to just do it so I did.’
The woman said after Kabbout left the room she had intercourse with the man.
‘I just remember I kept saying that 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 inside.’
The woman said when she told Kabbout she wanted he men to leave he replied, ‘Not yet’.
She told the jury a second man came into the room and raped her in a similar way to the first and that he was then followed by a third.
The woman said she was in tears while being allegedly raped by the second and third men and continued to protest about what was being done to her.
During the alleged assaults Kabbout came in and out of the bedroom, the woman said.
‘He would just watch what we were doing,’ she said. ‘He would just come and look.’
The woman said after the third man left her room Kabbout came back inside.
‘I said “I don’t want to do it anymore, can you please leave?”,’ she told the jury. ‘He said, “OK, your loss” and then they left.’
Kabbout’s lawyer April Francis previously told the jury the woman had ‘positively misled police’ about her communications with Kabbout and the nature of their relationship.
Ms Francis said it was in dispute the woman had not agreed to Kabbout inviting the other men to the apartment.
‘She led the accused to believe that she was interested in sexual activity of this kind,’ Ms Francis said.
‘That explains why the topic was raised… before the accused arrives at her premises.’
Ms Francis has also said that before and after the alleged rapes the woman conducted internet searches for ‘very graphic’ material featuring multiple men having sex with one female.
James Trevalion, for El-Sayed, said on Wednesday there was no dispute his client had sex with the woman but he maintained any such activity was consensual.
Mr Trevalion told the jury at the time of the alleged offences El-Sayed had been about to get married and they must not make moral judgements about him cheating on his fiancee.
Angela Cook SC, for 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 deception’ and had told a friend after the alleged rapes, ‘Only two actually f***ed me’.
Ali’s barrister Julia Hickleton told the jury her client had consensual sex with the complainant and ‘this is not a one-sided story’.
‘You may find it a little confronting that [the alleged victim] willingly participated in sequential sexual acts with three men,’ she said.
‘This is not a court of morality. It is a court of fact.’
The trial before Judge Leonie Flannery continues.