In the year 2000 a group of young Lebanese-Australian Muslim men went on a spree of gang rapes that lasted nearly a month totaling four attacks and seven victims.

The victims were all in their late teens and Caucasian, indicating that the attacks may have been racially motivated hate crimes. The case took center stage on the Australian media and became a highly publicized affair for the time during the trials with people on both sides decrying racism on the part of the attackers and the media’s “sensationalist” coverage.

The attacks are believed to have been motivated by race and religion in that the attackers considered the victims to be indecent by not wearing a hijab (the headdress worn by some Muslim women) and therefore deserved to be raped. The attackers were also quoted by the victims some time after the trials as making such statements like “Aussie Pig” and “You deserve it because you’re an Australian”. The attacks reportedly involved retaining the victims against their will for several hours during which they were subjected to rape and degrading mistreatment by a number of different assailants. The girls were lured by their attackers, in some cases with offers of marijuana, and taken to locales were more collaborators awaited.

To this day however, Bilal Skaf, who orchestrated the attacks, maintains he was only involved in situations that were consensual. His composure during the trial was reported to have been uncooperative and has been charged with making a terrorist hoax while in imprisonment. Police recovered from his seized mobile phone a message that read,

When you are feeling down … bash a Christian or Catholic and lift up.

Another rape attempt was reported to have happened while the victim, 14 years old at the time, traveled by train. During her attack it was reported that the assailant received a phone call from a friend in which he told the caller,

I’ve got a slut with me bro, come to Punchbowl.

he girl managed to escape without being abducted.

The event has resulted in increased racial tensions within Australia involving residents of Middle Eastern decent, in particular Lebanese. The year 2005 saw the unfolding of the ‘Cronulla Race Riots’ in Cornulla, a beachfront suburb in Sidney. Members of the Muslim community felt that during the trials the media vilified the community as a whole for the actions of a few. Since September 11th the Muslim community in Australia has felt an increase in racial tension particularly after events such as the Bali Bombing and the Sydney Gang Rapes. “There was definitely more racism around after these events,” said Iman Eid, a student at NSW during an interview for The Sydney Morning Herald in 2004.

Members from their own community, who stand on the more conservative side of things, have not helped their cause. In late 2006 the most senior Muslim cleric in Australia suggested that the rape victims were to blame for the attacks.

If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside … without cover, and the cats come to eat it … whose fault is it, the cats’ or the uncovered meat’s? The uncovered meat is the problem. If she was in her room, in her home, in her, no problem would have occurred.