An Australian journalist has admitted he regrets and did not sufficiently check the facts of an incendiary column reporting a Sydney woman’s claim that she was gang-raped by six Arabic-speaking men.

Paul Sheehan, a conservative columnist at the Sydney Morning Herald, wrote on Monday about a woman he called “Louise” who claimed she had been dragged from her car near St Mary’s cathedral and brutally raped, beaten and urinated on after finishing a nursing shift at a hospital in August 2002.

She was quoted in extensive and graphic detail, describing the attack and saying sex attacks by Arab men “had been going on for years and [were] so frequent [they] had a name: MERCs. Middle Eastern raping cunts”.

Louise said police had repeatedly spurned her attempts to report the alleged crime, the effects of which she said she was still suffering 14 years later.

Sheehan published a substantial correction on Wednesday acknowledging that after subsequent conversations with Louise he now doubted the veracity of her story. “I had not considered the possibility that her story had been carefully constructed on a foundation of embellishments, false memories and fabrications,” he said.

“Nobody but her knows what happened, and although I was given a considerable number of details about her experience that were credible, I acknowledge that there was not enough definite information to justify writing the story.

“Prior to writing the column I had Googled her name, and checked our files, and found no red flags. Now all I could see were flashing red lights, barriers and sirens.”

Sheehan said in his Wednesday piece that he learned after the publication of his original column that a woman had made “very similar claims” at a rally for Reclaim Australia, a rightwing anti-Muslim movement.

A video from the rally seen by the Guardian shows a woman telling a story with very similar details to the crowd of about 200, who respond with cries of “scum” and “fucking Muslims”.

Guardian Australia cannot verify whether the woman in the video is Sheehan’s source.

The person in the video says that in the months after her alleged rape she continued to be terrorised by Muslim men. “I witnessed carloads of Muslim men – yes, I identified them by their headwear, their beards and their dress – who would set fire to the homeless men, who would kick the shit out of us just because we were on the streets,” she said.

She also railed against halal certification of food, claimed to have regularly witnessed as a nurse “the female castration of nine-year-olds” and said Australia was under threat from sharia, or Islamic, law.

After the column’s publication Louise was given the opportunity to report the crime to police but declined. Sheehan apologised to the New South Wales police for giving the impression they were indifferent to the alleged crime.



Louise has claimed in other media reports she was held hostage for four days.

The Sydney Morning Herald has issued a correction and removed details of the alleged rape from the original column, which was shared or liked more than 12,000 times on Facebook.

Sheehan has repeatedly argued that Sydney experienced an “epidemic” of rape and sexual assault in the early 2000s, mostly carried out by Muslim and Arab men. Researchers have argued that although 80% of rapes are unreported, the rate and ethnic dimension of the alleged early 2000s wave of sex attacks was greatly exaggerated.

According to the Australian Institute of Family Studies the true rate of false rape accusations is difficult to ascertain but are thought to be very uncommon.