Suspects denied bail in 'bizarre and evil' sex case

A second suspect accused of sexually assaulting a woman who believed he could cure her of a black magic curse was denied bail today by an Australian magistrate.

Tony Golossian, 61, was charged on Friday with 151 offences but was taken to a hospital with chest pains and did not appear before the court until today, when details of the case were outlined in a 50-page police document at Parramatta Bail Court, near Sydney.

“I must say that if this is proven it would be one of the most bizarre and evil cases I have come across in more than 40 years,” Magistrate Graham Johnson said.

He denied bail out of concern that the suspect might try to contact the woman.

Another man, Arthur Tsichogius, was charged with Golossian on Friday. He faces 79 charges and was also denied bail on Friday.

The men are highly regarded members of Sydney’s Greek Orthodox and Coptic Orthodox communities, New South Wales state police said.

The woman, aged 23 in 2001 when the alleged assaults began, was told by the men that someone in the Greek community had put a curse on her using black magic.

The police papers said the two men told her that her mother would contract kidney cancer, her father lung cancer, and her 15-year-old sister would die before 2004.

“These alleged curses terrified the complainant and placed her under immense duress,” the police document said.

Between January 2001 and June 2005 the woman allegedly paid the men between 70,000 and 100,000 Australian dollars (€40,000 and €58,000) for a number of prayer sessions during which she was raped and coerced into performing oral sex on the men, it said.

Golossian told the woman he was an angel sent to help her, and that if she told anyone about their meetings the curse would not be lifted, the police document said.

The two men were earlier arrested in June – along with Tsichogius’s wife – over allegations of sexual assault on another woman, and charged with similar offences, including sexual assault and extortion, police said. They were released on bail.

Police said they were investigating the possibility that other women were also assaulted.