Officers discovered the video on the GoPro and found the girl who said she blacked out at the party and had no memory of the assault. Photo / 123RF
Officers discovered the video on the GoPro and found the girl who said she blacked out at the party and had no memory of the assault. Photo / 123RF
A painter and decorator smiled as he avoided jail over the GoPro gang rape of an intellectually disabled 16-year-old girl who was drugged and raped by a line of men.
Adam Butler, 24, smiled in the Downing Centre District Court on Friday as he was given the reduced sentence ofa 10-month intensive corrections order for his role during the gang rape.
Butler, who wrote a pleading letter to the judge saying he has "not drunk alcohol in the last 12 months, not even on Anzac Day", then left with his mother.
The Sydney home an impaired teenage girl was gang raped and filmed on a GoPro camera. Photo / News Corp
Caught on a May, 2015 GoPro video, the sickening 17-minute assault shows the teenager on a bed as men say, "She will do us one by one," and "next, next, next".
The victim, who at times during the filmed assaults appears to be comatose, has the verbal skills of an eight-and-a-half-year-old girl.
Adam Butler had sat by the girl as she was raped and hit in a tiny bedroom at a party at which she was the only female present.
His presence in the rape room, seated in a chair by the bed as others had sex with the girl, came to light when "an enhanced version of the GoPro video revealed another person in the room," the court heard.
The video, only found when police interviewed one of the offenders about an unrelated crime, also contains comments such as "are you ready for the next one" and "just bend her over the bed".
Butler pleaded guilty in July this year to one count of concealing the indictable offence of aggravated sexual assault against the girl.
Butler's letter to Judge Sharron Norton pleading for a non-custodial sentence, said he had "done some thinking about his life" over nine months in prison before his release on bail.
He had been incarcerated following his arrest over the GoPro rape because of an earlier conviction for assault occasioning actual bodily harm.
Butler had been given a community service order after he was convicted of hitting a victim in the face with a large stick in 2014 at Penrith Railway Station.
Judge Norton noted Butler's letter to her about the GoPro rape "doesn't actually apologise to the victim".
Butler is one of seven men convicted and over the GoPro rape of the 16-year-old girl at a party at St Clair in Western Sydney.
Some of the men stood in line to have sex with the girl who had been plied with alcohol and cannabis and stripped naked.
The girl was unaware of the assault but was tracked down by detectives from the NSW Child Abuse Squad after the GoPro video came to light.
Ayden Devereux, who filmed the assaults, and the owner of the GoPro camera Frank Kordis were arrested by police on vandalism charges in 2015 and device was seized.
Officers discovered the video on the GoPro and found the girl who said she blacked out at the party and had no memory of the assault.
Devereux pleaded guilty to two counts of aggravated sexual assault in company and was sentenced to a maximum seven-and-a-half years in prison.
Devereux can be heard on the GoPro video urging on the others saying, "let's go, who is up?", "nah bro, one by one we will all get a f***," "let's get this party started c***s, respect the line, respect the line".
Tristan Carlyle-Watson appeared by video from prison but will be sentenced in January. Phpoto / Supplied
A juvenile, ML, received a five-and-a-half year sentence and Frank Kordis, who hosted the St Clair party was fined A$3000 and given a two year good behaviour bond.
Three others convicted on more serious offences appeared one-by-one via audio visual link from the Metropolitan Remand and Reception prison at Silverwater in Western Sydney. Judge Norton described the GoPro video of the assault as "gross and revolting".
The teenage girl was drunk and later said a beer spiked with a drug was "poured down my throat" before she was raped in the bedroom.
Judge Norton described the "abhorrent" series of assaults "with offenders urging and encouraging each other".
