Judge Michael Finnane, who locked away the Skaf rapists, has died

The judge who sentenced one of Australia’s most notorious gang rapists to a record 55 years behind bars has died aged 80.

Michael Finnane KC passed away on Wednesday after a 54-year career in the legal profession – 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 investigations, royal commissions and cases at the Supreme Court of Australia, but gained his most public recognition a little over a year after his appointment as a judge in 2000, when he convicted the Skaf gang.

Bilal Skaf, then 19, was the leader of a group of 14 men – including his brother Mohammad – who committed a series of terrifying assaults shortly before the 2000 Olympics.

One of the victims, an 18-year-old woman, was raped 40 times over four hours by 14 men in an assault coordinated by cell phone. She was then dumped at a train station after being hosed down.

She was called an ‘Aussie pig’, told she would 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 misdeeds committed by invading armies in times of war, saying their crimes were ‘worse than murder’.

“These were not random attacks and in my opinion they were designed to instill terror in the community,” he said at the time.

“It seemed clear to me that these men were sending a message to the Sydney community. Skaf and the members of this gang clearly wanted public recognition for what they had done.’

Bilal received a 55-year sentence with a non-parole period of 40 years. 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 overturned the convictions and ordered a new trial in 2004 after it was revealed that two jurors had gone to the crime scene during the original trial and conducted their own experiments.

The retrial resulted in Bilal’s sentence being reduced to 28 years, but he was ultimately given 32 years with non-parole after an appeal in 2006. He is still in prison and will not be released until 2033.

Mohammad was again sentenced to a minimum of 18 years and a maximum of 26 years. He was granted parole last September and returned to his parents in Greenacre, Sydney’s western suburbs.

Despite the reductions, Finnane stuck to his original sentence and opened up about his life on the couch and bar in his 2018 memoir, The Pursuit of Justice.

Finance wrote his legal career and lifelong campaign for social justice, especially the treatment of those who are disadvantaged by the justice system.

He treated sadistic rapists before and after the Skaf cases. None generated anything like the public attention these trials attracted.

“There were other cases of sexual assault I heard, some of children, some of adult women,” Finnane wrote. “They were all examples of depravity and cruelty.

“I am sure that many of the victims will be affected by these crimes throughout their lives.

“While these cases attracted some media attention as the trials progressed, they were largely passed with little comment.”

In the years following the landmark conviction, Finnane was regularly asked about the Skaf case – sometimes by strangers, at social occasions 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 space of time by a gang with a carefully planned strategy,” Finnane wrote.

“These were not random attacks and in my opinion they were designed to instill terror in the community.

“Unconsensual sexual intercourse must be the worst crime after murder because it involves a person entering another person’s body, usually by force. It is a crime that violates human dignity.

“During the sentencing process at the end of the Skaf trials, I expressed the opinion that what this gang did was worse than murder. I hold to that opinion.

“What the Skaf gang did was enable several men to defile and humiliate four young women. None of these young women will ever forget their experience with this gang.’

He had been a New South District Court judge for just over a year when he was appointed to hear the Skaf gang trials, the first of which began on 13 December 2001.

On that day, Bilal Skaf, Belal Hajeid and Mohammed Ghanem sat behind bulletproof glass in the harbor of a courtroom in Sydney’s Downing Center complex.

Prospective jurors were told the trial could take up to a month and would involve allegations that the three accused men, along with several others, had sexually assaulted two young women against their will.

Finnane told these citizens that there might be evidence that those on trial were of Lebanese descent, but that this was irrelevant to whether they had committed a criminal offence.

In 2021, he told A Current Affair about the emotional toll the case took on him and his personal relationships.

‘It bothered me a lot. I found it very confronting. And I suppose it was almost crushing,” he said.

“People sometimes walk into court, see a judge and go, he just sits there dozing off. He doesn’t have to do anything, just sit and watch and listen.

‘But they don’t know the inner turmoil; that it was sometimes difficult for me to sleep.’

Finnane will be buried privately.