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Little Has Changed in 100 Years: The Mount Rennie Rape Case

While we are quick to condemn the gang rapes in recent years by young men of Middle Eastern origin, it is easy to forget that the majority of our most heinous crimes and gang violations against women have been perpetrated by Australians whose families have been here for many generations. So hideous were some of these crimes that they are deep-etched into our culture forever.

For example, the 1973 torture, rape and murder of Mrs Virginia Morse after she was abducted from her lonely farmhouse in rural New South Wales by the beasts Allan Baker and Kevin Crump; the 1986 rape-murder of nursing sister Anita Cobby by five men in Sydney’s western suburbs; and the abduction, rape and murder of bank clerk Janine Balding by a gang of teenagers as she made her way home from work in Sydney’s western suburbs in 1988, come immediately to mind.

The killers had typically Anglo-Australian names: Murphy, Baker, Crump, Elliot, Blessington, Jamieson, Travis and Murdoch. And it’s not news that vile crimes against women by packs of men have been going on since the new settlers began arriving. But among them, there is one crime that stands out for its initial ferocity and then, to pander to a public demanding justice, the punishment of some of its perpetrators. It happened a long time ago, more that 130 years ago in fact, in Sydney, and became known as the Mount Rennie Rape Case. Tragically, it seems as though little has changed in all those years.

On 9 September 1886, 16-year-old orphan Mary Jane Hicks left home on the outskirts of Sydney, headed for the city in search of work as a domestic servant. So innocent was Mary to the ways of the world that she had never been kissed by a boy, let alone being aware of what else went on between consenting adults.

When the child was offered a free ride by a hansom cabbie, Charles Sweetman, Mary thought nothing of going with him, as cabbies were trusted and respected members of the community. Not so Mr Sweetman. He pulled the cab over to the side of the road in the disused area of a rope factory in Waterloo, climbed down from his perch and sat next to Mary.

As Sweetman was attempting to assault the lass, a small gang of teenagers from the notorious local Waterloo Push arrived on the scene and saved her. Glad to be away from Sweetman, Mary was only too happy to go with the youths, who led her along a bush path heading towards Randwick Road. Once in the cover of the undergrowth, they threw her to the ground and while two of the teenagers held her down the others had their way with her.

A labourer working nearby, Bill Stanley, heard Mary’s screams for help and as he ran through the bushes to her rescue, the gang fled. As Stanley was comforting Mary, covering her up and making her as comfortable as he could so he could carry her to help, he looked up to find the gang was back, only this time with a lot of their mates. Now there were about 20 of them.

Stanley did his best against the gang but he was beaten and kicked to the ground, where he was set upon and belted with rocks, tree branches, fists and boots. Mary was ripped from Bill Stanley’s grasp and dragged screaming to a sandy hill nearby, which stood in what we know now as the Moore Park Golf Course. The hill was the highest part of the reserve and was known as Mount Rennie.

When Bill Stanley, who had fled to the nearby Redfern police station, returned with help, they found Mary laying naked and covered in blood, battered, bruised, barely alive and soaking wet. It turned out that she had tried to commit suicide by drowning herself in a drain rather than face the humiliation of the brutal mass assault.

Mary was rushed to Sydney Hospital but was so badly injured both physically and mentally that it was almost a week before she could give police a full account of what had happened, descriptions of her assailants and the names by which they called each other. The police knew them all very well.

The police dragnet rounded up 15 teenagers who were charged with ‘carnally knowing and ravishing’ Mary. By the time police broke it all down as the youths gave each other up in an attempt to save themselves, 11 of them were charged and sent to trial.

In the meantime, the trusted cabbie, Charles Sweetman, was found guilty of attempted rape, given a public flogging on two separate occasions and sent to prison for 14 years.

Nine of the defendants claimed they were not at the rape scene and provided alibis. Two admitted having had sex with Mary but said it was with her consent. But the prosecution had little trouble identifying the offenders thanks to eyewitness accounts from Mary and the man who had tried so desperately to save her life, the brave Bill Stanley.

After a trial that lasted six days, during which the court heard from almost 100 witnesses, the jury retired and in just two and a half hours returned a guilty verdict on nine of the 11 charged, content that the other two had watertight alibis.

Mr Justice Windeyer was damning in passing sentence. ‘This poor, defenceless girl, friendless and alone, is like some wild animal hunted down by a set of savages, who spring upon her and outrage her until she lies a lifeless thing before them…I warn you to prepare for death.’ With that he sentenced all nine of them to be hanged and concluded with the words, ‘You committed a most atrocious crime: a crime so horrible that every lover of this country must feel it a disgrace to our civilisation.’

All of the condemned men lodged appeals against the severity of the sentences and after their lawyers had lodged one appeal after another, five of the youths were successful and had their sentences commuted to life imprisonment.

The four that remained – George Duffy, Joseph Martin, Robert Read and William Boyce, all of whom were under the age of 20 – went to the gallows at Darlinghurst Gaol at 6am on the morning of 7 January 1887.

The remaining five rapists who narrowly escaped the noose were released after 10 years of hard labour. Little is known about what became of them except for one – Mick Donnellan – who devoted his life to social work in the Waterloo district near where the rape had taken place. Later in his life he became a city alderman and earned great respect among those who knew him and forgave him for his crime.