WA: Racing industry teenagers jailed for gang rape

AAP General News (Australia)
08-18-2000
WA: Racing industry teenagers jailed for gang rape

By Andrea Mayes

PERTH, Aug 18 AAP - Four teenagers associated with the West Australian racing industry
have been jailed for up to four years for the "depraved and sordid" repeated gang-rape
of an 18-year-old stablehand.

Two other teenagers found guilty of unlawfully detaining the woman received intensive
community supervision orders.

In the WA District Court today, Judge Michael Muller said four of the youths - three
of them apprentice jockeys and one a schoolboy - had subjected the woman to a "prolonged,
sordid and humiliating" series of sex attacks on May 22 last year.

The court was told the woman was lured to one of the jockey's quarters after meeting
him and two others at a McDonald's restaurant and receiving an assurance from him that
nothing untoward would happen.

When she arrived at the quarters, which had a reputation in the racing industry for
group sex, the light was turned out and she was dragged to a bed, stripped and held down
while the assaults began.

The remaining three teenagers, who had hidden themselves so she would not flee in fright,
then emerged from their hiding places and one of them joined in the gang rape.

Judge Muller said the depravity of the situation was exacerbated by the fact that the
woman was hit with a jockey's whip and had Vaseline smeared all over her body.

At one point one of the teenagers produced a cigarette lighter and threatened to burn
off her pubic hair, which Judge Muller said "could only have added to her sense of helplessness
and degradation".

He said her humiliation was increased still further by the crude remarks by one of
the teenagers that she "bucked like a horse", and the sexual attack was "like riding a
bicycle".

Judge Muller told the court the "appalling nature" of the attacks left no option but
detention for the four teenagers involved.

As family and friends in the public gallery wept, the two ringleaders of the attack
- both aged 16 at the time - were ordered to serve minimum terms of 20 months' detention
for deprivation of liberty, aggravated indecent assault and multiple counts of aggravated
sexual penetration.

A third teenager, now aged 19, was sentenced to three years and six months in an adult
prison for his involvement in the sex attacks. He was 17 at the time of the offences and
sobbed uncontrollably as his sentence was read.

A 17-year-old schoolboy also involved in the sexual assault will be behind bars for
at least 14 months, while the two teenagers convicted only of deprivation of liberty -
one also a schoolboy - received 12-month intensive youth supervision orders.

Judge Muller said although none of the youths were likely to reoffend, none had shown
any remorse and all still believed the woman had consented to the sex acts.

Outside the court, the distraught father of two of the teenagers said he blamed the
racing industry for not taking better care of his sons.

"I think the Turf Club's got a bit to answer to - they've just turned their backs on
them and as far as I'm concerned, they really should have stuck up for these kids because
these kids earn them money," he told journalists.

"My two find it very hard to show remorse for the girl when they're sitting jail for
something they don't believe they did."

Lawyers for five of the teenagers have lodged appeals against their convictions.

AAP alm/cat/bwl

KEYWORD: JOCKEYS NIGHTLEAD

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