A judge criticized the online mockery and teasing of a young woman who was held responsible for her own sexual assault and said it amounted to a sort of emotional rape.
The woman, who was 19 years old, was picked up outside a Collingwood nightclub where she was celebrating a friend’s birthday by a rideshare driver who picked her up and said he was giving her a free Uber trip.
Abdouslam Alsharif, a father of five who is 50 years old, instead took advantage of the young woman by locking his car doors and going to a remote street where he carried out a predacious and intentional attack.
In his car, she was the passenger when Alsharif began to sexually abuse her, despite her repeated pleas for him to stop.
After passing out, she awoke to find him raping her.
Police discovered the woman at a nearby street where Alsharif had left her after the woman used Facebook to share her whereabouts with a friend.
Since the attack, the woman has had two years of dedicated trauma-based therapy, which included three weeks in a hospital psychiatric unit.
“In the back of my mind, I truly don’t think I will ever recover from what has happened, which breaks my heart because I just really miss who I used to be before it happened,” she added.
The woman disclosed that the development of a meme and vicious statements made on websites and social media, including ones that blamed her for what had transpired, had further enraged her.
In addition to criticizing the internet critics, County Court Judge Liz Gaynor sentenced Alsharif to seven years in prison for his crimes.
She said that their sister, daughter, or partner could have been the victim of the attack.
“As for those people who use social media to mock and taunt the complainant, their actions in my view were a form of emotional rape,” she claimed.
A young woman who was already stumbling under the weight of the trauma imposed upon her has suffered considerably as a result.
The financing for Alsharif’s PhD in biology was cut off after the Gaddafi dictatorship fell, which also resulted in his family being persecuted, the court heard. Alsharif had traveled from Libya to Australia on a scholarship to study the subject.
He was given refugee status in 2014, and a year later, he was given Australian citizenship.
He was only able to find low-paying research assistant jobs because of his poor English, so he turned to ride-sharing driving to make ends meet.
Following the persecution of his family, he went through anguish and battled to maintain other family members who were living abroad without his financial support.
Although his attorney acknowledged there was no connection between the offense and his psychological state, he portrayed him as weak.
Gaynor has previously criticized men who feel entitled to sexually abuse young women in order to vent their own personal pain and problems.
The idea that a male in anguish could turn to sexual assault against a woman as a way to calm himself is prevalent, she claimed.
She claimed that young women and all other rideshare customers have the right to a ride home free from predatory sexual attacks that ruin their life in every way, not males.
After completing his four and a half years of incarceration, Alsharif will be eligible for release.
