A woman who was called an ‘Aussie pig’ and begged to be killed as she was pack raped by the Skaf gang has bravely spoken out about the attack two decades later – revealing she wants to let her terminally ill mother know ‘it’s not her fault’.
Jessica said she was gang raped in the months before Bilal Skaf went on a 20-day rampage across Sydney ahead of the 2000 Olympics.
Speaking to A Current Affair 20 years after the horrific attack, Jessica said she was 16 when she was locked into a public bathroom at Punchbowl Park, in the city’s south-west.
The now 36-year-old said she decided to share her story after her mother was told she didn’t have long to live earlier this year.
‘I think I just want to be able to say, like, out loud that, you know, it wasn’t her fault,’ Jessica said.
Jessica said she was living in a hostel at the time, and became friends with a girl who invited her to spend time with two male companions.
The girls were picked up from Hurstville Station and after driving around the area for two hours they were taken to the park and into a change-room.
Jessica’s friend left the teenager alone with Bilal, who asked if she wanted to have sex and she responded ‘no’.
‘And he stood in front of the door and said, ”No, you can’t go”,’ she said.
‘He locked me in, and he wasn’t speaking English, but I knew something really bad’s about to happen.
‘Within ten minutes I heard another car turn up. And I was petrified by now. I knew I needed to get out of here.’
Jessica (pictured) said she was gang-raped in the months before Bilal Skaf went on a 20-day rampage across Sydney ahead of the 2000 Olympics
Jessica said she was dragged by the hair into a cubicle and she was repeatedly sexually assaulted.
The ordeal lasted for about six hours and she says about 15 men raped her.
‘By the end of it, I begged them to kill me,’ she said.
‘How am I going to live the next 20, 30 years, with this in my head?’
After the attack, Jessica said she was dropped off a Punchbowl Train Station and she went straight to the police to report what happened.
‘I remember walking in and [the police] saying, ”Oh, we’ve got another one”,’ Jessica said.
Bilal Skaf (left) was determined as the ringleader of the depraved gang who violated six young women in three pack rapes over 20 days. Mohammed Skaf (pictured) lured a 16-year-old girl to a park in Greenacre in August 2000, where she was gang raped
The 36-year-old said she didn’t understand what the police officer meant at the time, until she saw the Skaf’s in the news the year following.
Jessica has now re-established connections with police and gained access to the statement she made in the wake of the assaults.
She thinks she is now ready to take her attackers to court and hopes charges will be laid.
She said the assault has ‘moulded’ who she is today but she is proud of ‘how far’ she has come since.
Pack leader Bilal Skaf was sentenced to a record 55 years prison for his crimes by now-retired judge Michael Finnane, who said he believes it is possible there were more victims.
‘I felt pretty certain they’d done it to others,’ Michael Finnane said.
Jessica (pictured as a teenager) said she was 16 years old when she was locked into a public bathroom at Punchbowl Park, in the city’s south-west
One of the gang’s victims, an 18-year-old woman, was raped 40 times by 14 men over four hours in an attack coordinated by mobile phone. She was then dumped at a train station after being hosed down.
During her ordeal the woman was called an ‘Aussie pig’, told she was going to get it ‘Leb-style’ and asked if ‘Leb c*** tasted better than Aussie c***’.
Many of the rapists have never been identified and police fear there were more victims who did not come forward.
Mohammed Skaf lured a 16-year-old girl to a park in Greenacre in August 2000 after convincing her he would drive her to look at the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
Instead, she was met by him and two men she didn’t know, with each of them pressuring her to have sex with them.
Nearly 20 years later, Jessica returns to the park where she was attacked with A Current Affair
When she refused, Mohammed Skaf called his brother, Bilal, who arrived in a van with 11 other men, who would never be identified.
They dragged her to the middle of the park and ripped off her clothes, before Bilal and one of the men raped her while others laughed at her.
She eventually broke free and was rescued by a passer-by.
Mr Finnane compared the Skaf gang’s depravity to outrages committed by invading armies in times of war and said their crimes were ‘worse than murder’.
‘These were not random attacks and, in my view, they were aimed at creating terror in the community,’ Judge Finnane said.
‘It seemed clear to me that these men were sending out a message to the community in Sydney. Skaf and the members of this gang clearly wanted public recognition for what they had done.’