How behind Loubna’s fairytale wedding lurked an unthinkable secret of her husband and her two witnesses

• Loubna Yousif married a gang rapist before he was convicted
• Maurice Hawell raped teenagers at his stag party
• Fairytale wedding and marriage in ruins

EXCLUSIVE

As young healthcare worker Loubna Yousif prepared to walk down the aisle and meet the man of her dreams, lawyer Maurice Hawell, she had no idea that just two months earlier he had been involved in the gang rape of three teenagers.

Mrs. Yousif, known to her friends as Lulu, had ordered a beautiful hand-beaded Steven Khalil “princess” dress, a bouquet of perfect white roses and a white Rolls-Royce Ghost for the trip.

But behind the glamorous wedding reception – which took place in a $2.5 million home in southwest Sydney and featured a convoy of luxury cars, including a $500,000 McLaren 720S convertible – lurked a terrible secret.

On Ms Yousif and Maurice’s wedding day, Detective Sergeant Michael Keegan and the New South Wales Police had already been busy for a month with a thorough investigation into the rape of three teenagers that had taken place just 36 days before the wedding.

The girls – two 18 years old, one 19 – were raped on a Friday and Saturday night during the groom’s stag party at an Airbnb in Newcastle, about a two-hour drive north of Sydney.

A New South Wales District Court jury earlier this month found Hawell, 30, his brother Marius, 22, and 30-year-old Andrew David guilty of charges related to the attacks – and all three of aggravated sexual assault.

Daily Mail Australia does not claim that Loubna Yousif or anyone in her wedding party knew about the rapes.

The events of this bachelor party weekend had nothing to do with the celebrations for Hawell and wife Yousif’s wedding, which saw the Hawell family’s five-bedroom mansion decorated with giant garlands of white flowers in April 2022.

One of those involved in the wedding posted on social media: “Maurice and Loubna’s love story unfolded over the weekend and we shared some wonderful moments together!”

“One of the highlights of our day was witnessing the love this wedding party has for the bride and groom. That in itself is a blessing and capturing it is something we will always cherish.”

Airbnb rapes

On Friday, 22 February 2022, a total of nine men, mostly of Assyrian-Australian origin, travelled to a unit in Parry Street in Newcastle to the Bock weekend.

Within 24 hours, the Hawell brothers and their friend Andrew David had committed a series of sexual assaults on the young women.

After checking into the three-bedroom Airbnb apartment on Friday evening, some of them made their way 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 met four other friends at the Hunter Street bar.

Matt is not accused of any wrongdoing and Miss A later testified in court that she kissed him and that he bought her a can of Smirnoff Double Black vodka and citrus-flavored lemonade.

The prosecution would say that although Miss A did not know the names of his friends, Matt was in the pub with the Hawells and David.

Miss A entered the dance floor and took an ecstasy cap, her second of the evening.

“I was just on the dance floor with friends, dancing, singing and having fun,” Miss A told the New South Wales District Court last month. Then Matt invited her to the Parry Street apartment.

Mrs A agreed, but only if her friend Mrs B came along, “because I didn’t want to go alone”.

Maurice Hawell had asked Miss B around the same time if she wanted to return to the Airbnb.

Miss A, who had drunk a third Smirnoff in addition to two cans of rum and Coke, “started to slur my words but I still felt in control” as they left the hotel.

Once at the apartment, Miss B entered a bedroom with a man who prosecutors said was Maurice Hawell, and Miss A entered a bedroom with Matt.

Miss A and Matt had sex, and then, she said, Maurice Hawell came 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 spoke about how they “felt uncomfortable”.

They went into a darkened bedroom to get their phones, and Miss A said, “I just felt a swarm of people around me.” Miss A said she was pushed backwards onto a bed. “My shirt was unbuttoned and my skirt was hiked up,” she said.

Miss A said she was subsequently the victim of a series of sexual assaults by three men she could not identify but who police said were the Hawell brothers and David.

One of the teenagers said she was forced to have sexual intercourse with a man she could not see while another man knelt on her arms and put his penis in her mouth.

On the way out of the restaurant, the two passed three naked men in the kitchen.

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 accommodation for a taste of the evening – but led her into a bedroom instead.

The court heard that the trio of the two Hawell brothers and David raped the young woman in a dark room on Saturday evening.

The court heard that the teenager was “sobbling” and in her haste to escape the apartment, put her underwear on inside out.

Dark secret

The stag party ended on Sunday when the men returned to Sydney from Newcastle. Some time later, one of the women reported the assaults to the police.

Ms A said she did not go to the police until they contacted her on March 8, about two weeks after the alleged rapes.

Meanwhile, Maurice Hawell and Loubna Yousif were finalizing the details of their upcoming wedding in southwest Sydney.

Andrew David also planned to get married a few months later. The couple married on the weekend of April 2nd, “in the midst of such a wonderful group of people.”

On May 6, 2022, police arrested Maurice Hawell and charged him with eight counts of aggravated sexual assault in company, one count each of aggravated sexual touching of another person and attempted aggravated sexual assault in company.

In early June, police went to Andrew David’s luxurious $3 million family home on a 0.8 hectare site on the rural outskirts of Horsley Park in western Sydney and arrested the civil engineer.

The police charged David with the same crimes as Maurice Hawell. On June 14, they arrested Marius Hawell.

He was charged with six counts of aggravated sexual assault in company, as well as one count each of aggravated sexual touching of another person and attempted aggravated sexual assault in company.

David’s wedding, scheduled for June 18, 2022, had to be postponed because the guest list included possible witnesses to an upcoming rape trial.

For Maurice Hawell’s friends, family and his young bride, the cat was now out of the bag.

In October of that year, the Edensor Park villas were sold and the couple moved to a more modest house in Bossley Park.

All defendants were released on bail and pleaded not guilty in the Downing Centre District Court in Sydney on 11 August 2023.

The trial was scheduled to begin in June of this year. The defendants had each hired their own lawyer to defend them and claimed that the sexual intercourse had been consensual.

Mrs Yousif showed her support for her husband by accompanying him to court on several days of the trial, obviously hoping that he would be found not guilty.

Maurice Hawell and David insisted that all sexual activity was consensual, while Marius Hawell claimed he was not involved in any of the sexual incidents.

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But on Monday, July 15, a jury of eight men and four women returned a verdict on most of the charges and the perpetrators were immediately taken into custody.

The jury was unable to reach a verdict on the last remaining charge of aggravated sexual assault in a group against all three men.

The men will be sentenced in September, but if Loubna Yousif continues to support her husband and visit him in prison, she will have to prepare herself to be a prison wife for years to come.

NCA Newswire reported that Maurice Hawell has already asked his legal team to appeal against his guilty verdict.

The notorious gang rapes in the Skaf district in 2000 marked a milestone in the sentencing process: nine men were sentenced to a total of 240 years in prison, but most of the sentences were reduced on appeal.

But instead of the fairytale romance she could reasonably have expected, Ms Yousif will see her convicted husband, a rapist, every week in a cramped prison visiting room in his green prison uniform.

He is locked up every day from about 3 p.m. to 8 a.m. with his prison food and packed breakfast and is only allowed to make six-minute phone calls to his wife or family.