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Michael Finnane RFD KC died on Wednesday
The judge who sentenced one of Australia’s most notorious gang rapists to a record 55 years behind bars has died age 80.
Michael Finnane KC died on Wednesday after a 54-year career in law – first as a barrister, then as a judge in the District Court of NSW, and finally as head of Second Floor Wentworth Chambers in Sydney.
He has been at the helm of high-profile inquiries, Royal Commissions, and cases in the High Court of Australia, but gained the most public recognition little more than a year after his judicial appointment in 2000 – when he sentenced the Skaf gang.
Bilal Skaf, then 19, was the ringleader of a group of 14 men – among them his brother Mohammad – who conducted a string of terrifying sexual assaults shortly before the 2000 Olympics.
One of the 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.
She was called an ‘Aussie pig’, told she was going to get it ‘Leb-style’ and asked if ‘Leb c*** tasted better than Aussie c***’.
During sentencing, Finnane famously 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,’ he said at the time.
‘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.’
Mohammed Skaf (pictured in 2000) was granted parole in September last year and returned to live with his parents in Sydney’s western suburbs
Bilal Skaf (pictured) was the ringleader of a month-long rampage in which six victims were raped by more than a dozen young Lebanese-Australian men
Bilal was handed a 55-year sentence with a 40-year non-parole period. At the time, it was the longest non-life sentence ever handed down in Australia.
His brother Mohammad was sentenced to 32 years behind bars.
However, the Court of Criminal Appeal quashed the convictions and ordered a retrial in 2004 after it was revealed that two jurors had gone to the scene of the crime during the original trial and conducted their own experiments.
The retrial resulted in Bilal’s sentence being slashed to 28 years, but he was eventually handed 32 years with non-parole following an appeal in 2006. He is still in jail and will not be released before 2033.
Mohammad was re-sentenced to a minimum of 18 years, and a maximum of 26. He granted parole in September last year and returned to live with his parents at Greenacre, in Sydney’s western suburbs.
Despite the reductions, Finnane stood by his original sentence, opening up in his 2018 memoir, The Pursuit of Justice, about his life on the bench and at the bar.
Finnance chronicled his legal career and lifelong campaign for for social justice, particularly the treatment of those disadvantaged by the legal system.
A still from NSW Police surveillance video taken on October 7, 2000, shows Skaf gang members at Bondi Beach
He dealt with sadistic rapists before and after the Skaf cases. None generated anything like the public attention these trials drew.
‘There were other sexual assault cases I heard, some of children, some of adult women,’ Finnane wrote. ‘All of them were examples of depravity and cruelty.
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‘Many of the victims, I am sure, will be affected by these crimes for the whole of their lives.
‘However, although these cases attracted some media attention while the trials were proceeding, they passed largely with little comment.’
In the years following the milestone sentence, Finnane was regularly asked about the Skaf case – sometimes by strangers, at social functions and on other unexpected occasions.
‘What caused the unprecedented public interest in the Skaf trials, what set them apart from all other sexual assault trials, was the repeated attacks in a short time frame by a gang with a carefully planned strategy,’ Finnane wrote.
‘These were not random attacks and, in my view, they were aimed at creating terror in the community.
‘Sexual intercourse without consent must be the worst crime after murder, because it involves a person invading the body of another, usually violently. It is a crime that assaults human dignity.
‘During the sentencing process at the end of the Skaf trials, I expressed the view that what this gang did was worse than murder. I continue to hold that view.
‘What the Skaf gang did was to enable multiple men to defile and degrade four young women. None of these young women will ever forget their experience at the hands of this gang.’
He had been a judge of the New South District Court for a little more than a year when appointed to hear the Skaf gang trials, the first of which commenced on December 13, 2001.
Finnane was responsible for sending notorious gang rapist Bilal Skaf to jail for 55 years
On that day Bilal Skaf, Belal Hajeid and Mohammed Ghanem sat behind bullet-proof glass in the dock of a court room within Sydney’s Downing Centre complex.
Prospective jurors were told the trial might last a month and would involve allegations that the three accused men, with several others, sexually assaulted two young women against their will.
Finnane told these citizens that evidence might come out showing that those on trial were Lebanese by origin but that was irrelevant to the question of whether they had committed any offence.
In 2021, he told A Current Affair about the emotional toll the case took on him and his personal relationships.
‘I was very troubled by it. I found it extremely confronting. And it was I suppose crushing almost in a way,’ he said.
‘People sometimes, they walk into court, they see a judge and they go, he’s just sitting up there dozing away. He doesn’t have to do a thing, just sit and look and listen.
‘But they don’t know the inner turmoil; that I found it hard to sleep at times.’
Finnane will be laid to rest in a private ceremony.
Skaf gang rape rampage: A timeline
Bilal Skaf (pictured) was the leader of a gang of pack rapists who rampaged across Sydney in the weeks leading up to the 2000 Olympics
August 10, 2000: Two teenagers aged 17 and 18 were offered drugs. They were taken by car to the gang, who were waiting at Northcote Park in Greenacre. The pair was forced to perform sex acts on eight men.
August 12, 2000: Mohammed Skaf took a 16-year-old friend to his brother and other gang members at Gosling Park, Greenacre. Bilal Skaf and another male raped the girl in front of 12 men.
August 30, 2000: An 18-year-old woman was raped at Bankstown by Mohammed Skaf who told her he was going to ‘f**k her Leb style’. She was taken to two other locations and raped and assaulted by 14 men for six hours.
September 4, 2000: Two 16-year-old girls were taken from Beverly Hills train station to a home where they were repeatedly raped by three men over a five-hour period.
