Paul Sheehan February 22, 2016
Sydney Morning Herald columnist
Illustration: Michael Mucci
Louise was exhausted after a double shift when she made a fateful decision. She parked in a lane not far from St Mary's Cathedral and went to sleep.
She was a nurse. Unusually, she also had a degree in psychology. She had been working as an agency nurse, doing casual shifts.
"I was doing shifts at St Vincent's Hospital and I'd just done a 10-hour shift," she told me. "As I was driving away, I got a call to do a four-hour shift at Sydney Hospital. It was a Saturday night, good money, so I said yes."
"I worked through until 1.30am. By then I was so tired a security guard walked me to my car."
She had parked near the back of St Mary's Cathedral but found that after driving a short distance she was too tired to go on. She pulled into a secluded lane, got into the passenger seat, and fell straight to sleep. She was wearing her nursing uniform.
She woke when she felt someone grab her leg. Then she was punched hard in the face.
"I was pulled out of the car and thrown to the ground. There were six of them and they all started kicking me. They were speaking Arabic ...
"Three of them raped me on the footpath. They spread-eagled me. A fourth guy sodomised me. He put me in a doggy position and put a knife to my throat.
"He started to cut me. He was cutting through the scalene [neck] muscle. I knew I was going to die ... I was in incredible pain. I could hardly breathe. I was swallowing blood.
"Then I heard shouting in Arabic. One of the guys who had not raped me knocked the knife from the guy's hand. He said in English, "This is f---ed.
"The guy who had the knife, this mongrel, big, bearded, he wrenched my jaw open, pulled my head back, and stuck his hands down my throat. I had no top teeth left, they had been kicked out.
"They started urinating in my mouth. They were all laughing. One of my eyes was closed with blood. Then they just took turns kicking me. They spat on me and left.
"A couple of homeless guys found me ... At the hospital they were asking my name and I couldn't speak. They called me Jane Doe.
"I couldn't speak for two months. My jaw was broken. My top lip was torn. I had 79 fractures all up. A broken ankle, a broken T10 [back vertebrae], broken face, nose, eye orbit, mandible, hands, both knees fractured. That was the end of my nursing career."
It was August 2002. Sydney would be rocked by a series of gang-rape trials between 2001 and 2006 but the full notoriety of the problem had not yet peaked.
I spoke with Louise last week. After I gave a speech at a gathering at NSW Parliament, I was approached by someone who told me that hers was a story that had never been told, given that I had written Girls Like You, a book about the epidemic of rapes in Sydney in the early 2000s. I contacted Louise.
"Nearly 14 years later," she told me, "I am still being treated for the injuries caused by these six pieces of shit."
When the police came to visit Louise in hospital, she couldn't speak. They said they would come back. They never did.
After several months in hospital, she was taken to a women's shelter in Victoria Street, Kings Cross. "I was an emotional mess. Extreme mood swings."
Six months after the attack, she finally felt strong enough to report the crime. It was March 2003. She vividly remembers the police constable on desk duty when she walked into the station at Woolloomooloo. She gave me his name. I checked and he is still in the force.
"He was not at all sympathetic. He told me that it was six months ago and I could never prove that it happened. He was an absolute prick. He wouldn't even take my statement ...
"A couple of homeless guys had seen it. A lot of homeless sleep down there because it's near where the food van parks. One of them told me later, 'I'll never forget what happened when the MERCS got you. We thought you were dead'."
MERCs?
"It had been going on for years and was so frequent it had a name: MERCs. Middle Eastern raping c----. They would drive around William Street and Darlinghurst and pull prostitutes into the car.
"I don't think there is a prostitute I know at the Cross who hasn't been bashed by a MERC. I don't think anyone has investigated the scale of it."
That is true. Sexual assault is one of the least-reported crimes, and for years the NSW Police contributed to this phenomenon by pretending it did not exist. This was a root cause of the Cronulla riots.
In the gang-rape cases that did go to trial, the victims collectively described about 24 men involved in the Skaf gang rapes in 2000, the K brothers gang rapes in 2001 and 2002, and the El-M gang rape in 2000.
The alleged regular assaults on prostitutes has never been discussed. The alleged assault of Louise took place when this epidemic occurred. She would not be the only unknown victim.
As for her credibility, I interviewed her for several hours. She has 11 school exercise books filled with diaries. She has extensive medical records. She was consistent in her answers. When she gave me verifiable facts, they were verified. Her years working as a nurse in the inner city gave her extensive contact with prostitutes and the homeless. She has a degree in psychology.
Louise is her middle name. At her request, I did not use her first name. She is right about the big picture. The scale of the sexual intimidation of women in Sydney was never assessed, let alone acknowledged.
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