,was handed to police at Castle Hill in September 2015,several years after it was found in a garage following a marriage breakdown.
Boghos “Paul” Parizian pictured at a cafe on February 24.Kate Geraghty
Boghos “Paul” Parizian,58,had repeatedly insisted to his wife Mona Bennett that he needed to access the garage of their Rouse Hill home to collect some of his property,but she was adamant that he already had everything. “So I became curious,” she told a court.
She searched the double-car garage with her brother,Jonar Nader,who described it as being “chock-a-block with things and boxes”. High up in one of the cupboards they found two VHS tapes. One had a handwritten label reading “big mama”.
Bennett didn’t think much of this tape until several weeks later,when she pushed it into her video player to see if it was worth keeping. What she saw shocked her.
“I saw a younger version of Paul with another woman,and it looked to me like she was being forced to do things,” Bennett said.
She fast-forwarded through the video,which lasted for 1 hour and 54 seconds,and became nervous about what she had seen. She ejected it from her machine,but it got stuck inside.
“Not wanting to damage it,I actually broke my machine to get it out. As in,took the machine apart,unscrewed it,and broke bits to pull out the tape without damaging it,” Bennett said.
She arranged for the VHS to be copied onto a DVD,and – unbeknown to her – her brother separately did the same. “It turned my stomach,” Nader said.
Bennett called the general police number,but thought the tape was so old they wouldn’t be interested. Years later,she told police she feared that “without knowing the identity of the female,this matter would be impossible for police to solve”.
“I thought if Paul became aware that I reported him to police,my life and my family’s life would be in danger,” she said in her police statement,read out in court. “Paul had recently told me I didn’t know him and didn’t know what he was capable of.”
In 2009,weeks after the tape was found,Nader went to Granville police station with his father and had an informal chat over coffee with an officer who was a friend of a friend.
He inquired about handing the tape in anonymously,due to concerns for his safety,but the officer told him it would be better if the complaint came from the woman in the video. Nader said the officer didn’t watch the video,and wasn’t given a copy.
Years later,when Parizian moved back into the Rouse Hill home,he asked Bennett about the DVD copy of the video (the original VHS had been lost over time). Bennett said she retrieved the DVD,and he broke it in front of her.
‘I saw a younger version of Paul with another woman,and it looked to me like she was being forced to do things’
Mona Bennett
It was only in 2015,when she was speaking to a lawyer about something else,that her brother revealed he had a copy as well. Bennett and Nader were encouraged to hand the footage to police so it didn’t look like they were concealing a crime. They complied. But the mystery remained:who was the woman in the video?
The case was assigned to Detective Senior Constable Ryan Mitchell,who formed Strike Force Ister. He watched the video multiple times,finding an important clue.
Parizian will face a sentencing hearing in April.Kate Geraghty
The woman made frequent verbal protests,and at one stage mentioned the country she lived in before migrating to Australia. Parizian had mentioned the woman’s first name,which had a distinctive spelling in that country.
Detectives began a search of all women in NSW with that name,comparing their driver’s license photos to the woman in the video. Soon,there was a woman who bore a striking resemblance.
More than two decades after that night,the woman was contacted by police on December 28,2015 and told she might be able to assist as a witness in an investigation.
When she spoke to detectives,it emerged that she had no memory of the sexual acts depicted in the video. She recalled that she went to dinner with Parizian in the early 1990s and drank orange juice that he bought for her,then felt woozy and got a headache.
Although she remembered going to his home at Liverpool,she did not remember the rest of the evening including how she got home. After police took an initial statement,they showed her the video of what happened.
It began with Parizian walking from the camera towards a bed,which was skewed at a strange angle from the wall. It ended with him once again standing close to the camera as the tape cut to static. The woman on the bed made protests including “just let me go” and “don’t touch me” as Parizian started to undress her.
The woman sobbed and shivered as she watched the vision and was at times inconsolable. She required constant breaks and said out loud,“How can I not remember this?” and “How can anybody say that I want this?”
When she finally gave her account of that evening at Downing Centre District Court,a series of upsetting claims were put to her. She enjoyed watching videos of women being raped;she was engaging in a consensual role-play. The woman rejected these assertions emphatically.
also rejected the claims after several days of deliberation,and after watching the video themselves. It was broken into three clips,each lasting about 20 minutes,and played in a closed court.
Before the general public was asked to leave the room,Judge Jane Culver asked the lawyers to keep an eye on the jurors as they watched the footage to see if they needed a break.
Police were unable to pinpoint the exact date the video was filmed,narrowing it down to some time between October 31,1991 and March 31,1993.
The first date was when Parizian’s mother died. In the video,he swore on his mother’s dead body that he was not filming the woman. The second date was around the time Parizian told the woman he had a sexually explicit video of her,and threatened to show it to people if she didn’t have sex with him again.
She didn’t believe him,but she became so distressed that she had to be hospitalised.
Detective Superintendent Jayne Doherty,commander of the NSW Police sex crimes squad,told theHerald she encourages anyone who is a victim of sexual violence to report the matter to police.
“Historic cases can be reviewed and investigated by specially trained and experienced detectives,regardless of how much time has passed,” Doherty said.
“We understand that reporting sexual assaults can be distressing and traumatic. Coming forward sooner and providing a formal report allows police to preserve evidence in a timely manner.
“If you do not wish to pursue a court outcome,detectives can explain all options available to you – however,reporting at the time can allow sensitive evidence to be captured and stored should you change your mind in the future.”
Parizian’s ex-wife and former brother-in-law were sitting in court last week when,then handcuffed and led away. Fourteen years after they discovered the tape,and 30 years after it was filmed,a comment made by the woman had come true.
Before the first assault on the woman began,she told Parizian:“You’re going to have your way,but you’re going to be sorry.”
Parizian will face a sentencing hearing in April.
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