EXCLUSIVE
When young healthcare worker Loubna Yousif prepared to walk down the aisle to the man of her dreams – lawyer Maurice Hawell – she had no idea that, just two months earlier, he was involved in the gang rape of three teenage girls.
Known to her friends as Lulu, Ms Yousif had ordered a beautiful hand-beaded, embroidered ‘princess’ gown by Steven Khalil, a bouquet of perfect white roses, and a white Rolls-Royce Ghost to travel in.
But behind the glitzy wedding party – held at a $2.5million home in south-west Sydney and featuring a convoy of luxury cars including a $500,000 McLaren 720S convertible – lurked a terrible secret.
By Ms Yousif and Maurice’s wedding day, Detective Sergeant Michael Keegan and NSW police were already a month into a serious investigation into the violation of three teenage girls just 36 days prior to the nuptials.
The girls – two aged 18, one 19 – were raped over a Friday and Saturday night during the groom’s bucks party celebrations at an Airbnb in Newcastle, about two hours’ drive north of Sydney.
A NSW District Court jury earlier this month found Hawell, 30, his brother Marius, 22, and Andrew David, 30, guilty of charges relating to the assaults – and all of them guilty of aggravated sexual assault.
Daily Mail Australia is not suggesting Loubna Yousif, or anyone in their wedding party, knew anything of the rapes.
Loubna Yousif (above on her wedding day) with new husband Maurice Hawell, whom she was unaware was a gang rapist who had assaulted teens on his bucks night before the nuptials
Loubna’s fairytale romance and marriage to Maurice has now turned into a nightmare after he was convicted of gang rape and aces years in prison
The events of that bucks party weekend were a far cry from the celebrations of Hawell and Ms Yousif’s wedding, with the Hawell family’s five-bedroom mansion decked out with massive garlands of white flowers in April 2022.
One party involved in the wedding posted to social media: ‘Maurice and Loubna’s love story unfolded over the weekend and we shared some splendid moments together!
‘A highlight of our day was witnessing this bridal party’s love for the bride and groom. It is a blessing in itself and to capture it is something we will always cherish.’
Airbnb rapes
On Friday, February 22, 2022, nine men in total, mostly of Assyrian-Australian background, travelled to a unit on Parry Street, Newcastle, for the bucks weekend.
Within 24 hours, the Hawell brothers and friend Andrew David had committed a series of sex attacks on the young women.
After checking into the three-bedroom Airbnb apartment on the Friday evening, some of them headed out to the nearby Cambridge Hotel.
At the pub one of the group, ‘Matt’, met Miss A and her 18-year-old friend Miss B, who had joined four other mates at the Hunter Street venue.
Matt is not accused of any wrongdoing, and Miss A would later testify in court that she had kissed him and he bought her a can of Smirnoff Double Black vodka and citrus-flavoured soda.
Prosecutors would say that although Miss A did not know the names of any of Matt’s friends, he was at the pub with the Hawells and David.
Miss A hit the dance floor and took an ecstasy cap, her second of the evening.
‘I was just on the dance floor with friends, dancing, singing, having a good time,’ Miss A told NSW District Court last month. Then Matt invited her back to the Parry Street apartment.
On the big day, the bride and groom travelled in a white Rolls-Royce Ghost, with the wedding party in Mercedes four-wheel drives and a $500,000 McLaren 720S convertible (above, outside Maurice’s mansion)
Hawell and Yousif have now been married for more than two years but she faces many years being a ‘prison widow’ as he awaits his fate behind bars
Miss A agreed, but only if her friend Miss B came along ‘as I didn’t want to go alone’.
Maurice Hawell had asked Miss B about the same time if she wanted to go back to the Airbnb.
Miss A, who had consumed a third Smirnoff on top of two cans of rum and Coke, ‘was starting to slur my words but I still felt in control’ when they left the hotel.
Once inside the apartment, Miss B went into a bedroom with a man the Crown says was Maurice Hawell and Miss A went into a bedroom with Matt.
Miss A and Matt had sex and then, she said, Maurice Hawell walked into the room naked and asked if he could join in, saying: ‘I’m a better root than Matt.’
Miss A said no. Maurice Hawell had already had consensual sex with Miss B, who had also had consensual sex with Andrew David, but the two women then discussed ‘feeling uncomfortable’.
One of the bedrooms in the Newcastle Airbnb where the teens were raped by Maurice Hawell, his brother and friend Andrew David over two nights
They went into a darkened bedroom to retrieve their phones and Miss A said ‘I just felt a swarm of people around me’. Miss A said she was shoved backwards onto a bed. ‘My shirt was untied and my skirt was pulled up,’ she said.
Miss A said she was then subjected to a series of sexual assaults by three men who she could not identify but police said they were the Hawell brothers and David.
One of the teens said she was forced to engage in penetrative sex with a man she couldn’t see while another man knelt on her arms and thrust his penis into her mouth.
The pair passed three naked men in the kitchen as they made their escape from the premises.
The following night, groom-to-be Maurice Hawell approached a 19-year-old woman on the street and persuaded her to come back to the rented Airbnb for pre-drinks – but instead ushered her into a bedroom.
The court heard that the trio of the two Hawell brothers and David gang raped the young woman inside a dark room that Saturday night.
Dark secret
The bucks party ended on the Sunday, with the men returning from Newcastle to Sydney. Some time after this, one of the women reported the assaults to police.
Miss A said she did not go to the police until they contacted her on March 8, about two weeks after the alleged rapes.
Meanwhile, in south-western Sydney, Maurice Hawell and Loubna Yousif were tying down the final details of their approaching wedding.
Andrew David was also planning to get married a few months later. On the weekend of April 2, the couple were married, with ‘such a beautiful group of people around you’.
On May 6, 2022, police arrested Maurice Hawell and charged him with with eight counts of aggravated sexual assault in company and one count each of aggravated sexually touching another person and attempted aggravated sexual assault in company.
In early June, police went to Andrew David’s plush $3million family mansion, set on two acres of ground, on the semi-rural outskirts of Horsley Park in Sydney’s west and arrested the civil engineer.
Police charged David with the same offences as they had Maurice Hawell. On June 14, they arrested Marius Hawell.
He was charged with six counts of aggravated sexual assault in company and one count each of aggravated sexually touching another person and attempted aggravated sexual assault in company.
Loubna Yousif accompanies her husband Maurice Hawell to his rape trial last month. He has now been convicted and is behind bars awaiting sentencing
The mansion where the couple held their wedding reception has now been sold and Ms Yousif has moved to a more modest abode amid big changes in her life
As far as Maurice Hawell’s friends, family and his young bride went, the cat was now out of the bag.
In October of that year, the Edensor Park mansions was sold. The couple moved into a more modest house in Bossley Park.
The accused men were all granted bail and entered pleas of not guilty at Sydney’s Downing Centre District Court on August 11, 2023.
Ms Yousif showed her support for her husband by accompanying him to court on several days of hearing, clearly hoping for him to be found not guilty.
Maurice Hawell’s co-offenders, Andrew David (left) and younger brother Marius Hawell (right), are all in jail awaiting sentencing for gang rape
Maurice Hawell and David maintained that all sexual activity was consensual, while Marius Hawell claimed he did not participate in any of the sexual incidents.
Jurors were unable to reach a verdict on the final remaining count of aggravated sexual assault in company against all three men.
The men will be sentenced in September, but if Loubna Yousif is still supporting her husband and visiting him jail, she will have to adjust to years of being a prison wife.
NCA Newswire reported that Maurice Hawell has already asked his legal team to appeal his guilty verdict,
The notorious Skaf gang rapes in 2000 were a benchmark in sentencing, with nine men receiving a combined total of 240 years prison, although most sentences were reduced on appeal.
But for now, instead of the fairytale romance she should have reasonably expected, Ms Yousif will see her convicted rapist husband, dressed in his prison greens, in a cramped jail visits room each week.
He will be locked up daily from around 3pm to 8am with his jail dinner and breakfast pack, and allowed six-minute calls to his wife or family.