Australian Men Plead Guilty to Gang-Rape, Get to Go Home After Paying Victim €20,000

If anyone ever challenges you on the idea that Rape Culture is actually a thing in this world, go ahead and send them this story.

Three Australian men – Dylan Djohan, 23, Ashwin Kumar, 23, and Waleed Latif, 21 – were each charged with a year in prison after pleading guilty to raping a 17-year-old backpacker in Croatia in the summer of 2015, only to make a plea deal where their sentence has been commuted to 5 years probation and a financial settlement paid to the victim in the amount of €20,000. They are now back home in Melbourne.

Originally, they were supposed to stand trial this month, and the crime could’ve landed them 15 years in prison. In the beginning, two of the men said that the sex was consensual while the third said he wasn’t even there. Yet their lawyers were able to finagle a plea deal, the three plead guilty, and they were able to pay their way out of a trial.

They pleaded guilty to gang-raping a 17-year-old in a bathroom stall in a bar in Croatia, and now they just get to go home.

According to the Brisbane Times, Croatian women’s rights campaigner Sanja Sarnavka criticized the plea deal, saying that the state prosecutor shouldn’t have accepted a financial settlement for a crime that carries with it a 15 year sentence if convicted:

If they can afford it, those who are indicted will pay for the best lawyers, pay the damages and receive a minimum sentence or even go free. In a democratic state, everyone should have the same treatment, regardless of their wealth or assets.

It’s understandable that the victim would take the settlement just to put the whole thing behind her and not have to look at their faces ever again. What’s infuriating is that this basically tells young men As long as you have the money to pay someone who accuses you of rape, you can assault whomever you want!

Meanwhile, these Award-Winning Douchenozzles continue to express their toxic masculinity on social media. They’re all part of this hyper-masculine bodybuilding community. Now, there’s nothing wrong with getting in shape in and of itself, but these guys take that mentality to a whole other level. Take this post from Djohan’s Instagram while he was in Croatia:

4 days into my Adonis shred and these cuts are coming in deeper than the Baltic seas. My gift from the gods was this blessed block of heathen marble … My curse from the gods is that I must sculpt it with my bare hands.

In another post on Instagram, Djohan writes, “Let me teach you the secret to living a 10/10 heavenly blessed life; Disregard work, acquire attractive women.” Women are like Pokemon, I guess, and he’s gotta catch them all?

Now, there’s a call for them to be put on the Sex Offender Registry in Australia:

One can only hope. People should be able to see these guys coming a mile away. And as these three rapists are thinking about how their “lives have been ruined” by this, they can also think about having ruined the life of that 17-year-old girl.

(via Jezebel, images via Twitter and Flickr/Brian Turner)

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Teresa Jusino

Teresa Jusino (she/her) is a native New Yorker and a proud Puerto Rican, Jewish, bisexual woman with ADHD. She's been writing professionally since 2010 and was a former TMS assistant editor from 2015-18. Now, she's back as a contributing writer. When not writing about pop culture, she's writing screenplays and is the creator of your future favorite genre show. Teresa lives in L.A. with her brilliant wife. Her other great loves include: Star Trek, The Last of Us, anything by Brian K. Vaughan, and her Level 5 android Paladin named Lal.

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