JiveSync

A LEGENDARY Sydney prostitute from Sydney’s world famous red light district Kings Cross has revealed life inside the iconic Love Machine brothel while giving court evidence.

Anne McGarry, believed to be aged in her sixties, told a District Court trial she “fought for her life” in the Love Machine’s top room with a young client before he allegedly tried to set fire to the brothel.

Ms McGarry took the witness stand on Monday, saying that after getting on top of her to have sex, Michael Joel Kay, 27, grabbed her by the throat.

During an ensuing struggle, he also stole her Nokia mobile phone after it fell out from between her breasts.

The struggle began inside Room One at the Love Machine bordello and strip club, where Ms McGarry works as the matriarchal sex worker.

Ms McGarry said she always worked out of Room One, while the other, younger prostitutes on duty that night — Champagne, Candy, Tessa and Nicole — were upstairs at the Love Machine.

An owner of the Love Machine, Bill Bayeh, has described Ms McGarry as “an icon of the Cross” who had been “around the area since the 1970s”.

She described to the court what happened to her four years ago after she invited Mr Kay up to Room One for a $285 sex act and he attacked her, and then allegedly set the brothel on fire.

Ms McGarry told the court Mr Kay told her he had been rejected by every other Kings Cross club that night and that he requested a bizarre sex act involving a chain.

“I said I don’t do that,” she told the Downing Centre court on Monday.

Mr Kay is on trial for intentionally or recklessly causing damage to a property by fire.

Now aged 30, he has pleaded not guilty in the NSW District Court.

After earlier pleading guilty to larceny for stealing Ms McGarry’s mobile phone and assault occasioning actual bodily harm, he is facing a judge-only trial on the property damage charge.

Ms McGarry told the court that if she hadn’t fought back when Mr Kay attacked her she believes she would have died.

“I fought for my life for seven, eight minutes in that room,” Ms McGarry said.

“I would have been dead if God hadn’t given me strength.

“He came round the back of me and he pulled me down and he kept on kicking my head in.

“I bit him on the finger and I scratched his face to get up.

“He didn’t have no feeling, he didn’t stop. This man is a sick man.

“I was scared he was going to choke me to death.

“Then we rolled all the way down the steps. He was kicking and punching me on the way down.”

A short woman, dressed in a blue linen shirt, black skirt and ballet flats, Ms McGarry gave a feisty performance in the witness box.

She declared that Mr Kay’s attack had left her “sick, bleeding” and that in all her years working as a prostitute he was “the only customer I’ve had trouble with, ask the police”.

Under cross-examination by counsel for Mr Kay, Anthony Barber, Ms McGarry heatedly denied trying to get Mr Kay the drugs ice or cocaine, or trying to rip him off.

Her evidence in the witness box on Monday before Judge Peter Zahra gave a detailed picture of life for sex workers in Sydney’s premier red light district.

Ms McGarry said she was leaning on a car outside the Love Machine where she was working a shift in the early hours of Saturday, May 3, 2013 when Mr Kay approached.

She said that he had been her first customer of the night, and that, depending on the night of the week, she could wait hours for a client to materialise.

She had worked “on and off” for several years at the brothel and had three prices for sexual services on offer, “a $165, a $220 or you could stay for a $330.”

She said a “very strange” Mr Kay, who had bleached blond hair and was mumbling, came up to her.

“I said ‘you want to go upstairs’ and he said ‘yes’ and that he couldn’t get into any other place,” Ms McGarry told the court.

“He said ‘I’ve been refused from every other club, I’ve been ripped off by a girl from another club’.”

Ms McGarry said she asked Mr Kay if he had any money before they went to her room, “because you don’t want to go up two flights of stairs and find they don’t have any”.

Ms McGarry took Mr Kay to Room One, which was fitted out with a bed, a spa, towels, scented candles, a large TV and a table with condoms and an ashtray.

When he gave her $285, she told him he could stay an hour if he got another $100.

She ordered him a bottle of Coopers beer and rang downstairs for a brothel staffer to collect the money.

Asked by Mr Barber, Ms McGarry said it was her custom to hand over the money and then get “paid at the end of the night” a wage or fee.

Mr Kay stood “umming and ahing” and she told him, “you’ve got to take your clothes off. This is your time”.

Eventually Mr Kay undressed and lay on the bed and Ms McGarry said she tried to make him erect and put a condom on him.

Mr Kay then told her, “I hate my father, I’ve had a fight with him”, but she “wasn’t interested”.

“He said ‘I haven’t had sex before’ and I said ‘yes you have, I’m not silly. I’ve worked. You have had sex before’.”

He lay on top of her and was “trying to have sex” when he began assaulting her.

“Yeah, he started doing it then he grabbed my throat and I flung him back and said ‘get off and get dressed’,” Ms McGarry told the court.

“He jumped up, he started to get dressed. I started to get dressed too.

“He was standing by the spa and I went to go for the door and he came around and with his right arm put it to my throat and I went to ground.

“He was kicking me in the head ... I suddenly reached for the door and as I opened the door, he grabbed the back of my hair.”

With Ms McGarry biting and scratching Mr Kay, the two rolled down the stairs to a fire door.

Ms McGarry said she pushed that open and said to a bartender in the club, “ring the police, quick”.

“I had my phone, it was a Nokia, I put it in between my breasts,” she said.

“Everything fell out from between my breasts when we were struggling on that long stretch.”

Ms McGarry said Mr Kay passed her on the stairs and kicked her.

“He mumbled ‘I’ve set the place on fire’ or ‘I’m going to set the place on fire’, I’m not sure,” Ms McGarry told Judge Zahra.

She said that security officers had grabbed Mr Kay and an ambulance arrived for her.

Counsel for Mr Kay asked Ms McGarry if she hadn’t realised his client, who court documents say has been diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, “was not a normal person”.

Mr Barber asked her if Mr Kay had requested she get drugs for him, and if she had returned saying she could only get ice, not cocaine.

“That is the most ridiculous thing, I am offended by it,” Ms McGarry told Mr Barber.

“I get drugs for no-one. It’s a bit late it life don’t you think?

“I don’t touch drugs. I’ve never done that.”

She agreed that with Mr Barber that on the night of the assault and the alleged fire, four younger prostitutes who “would have all known me” had been working on an upper floor of the Love Machine.

She described them as “Candy, she’s Asian, Nicole, she’s a tall blonde girl, Champagne ... Tessa, black hair, Maori girl”.

Asked whether she occupied room number one on the first floor “because you are one of the older ladies, Ms McGarry replied there were “others” who were older prostitutes at the club.

Each sex worker occupied a room and they shared a communal toilet or bathroom on level one, as well as dryers and a washing machine to clean the towels used for clients.

Mr Barber: “Were there strippers there?”
Ms McGarry: “Yes, of course, there’s a show on”.

Mr Barber: “How many customers?”
Ms McGarry: That was my first job of the night”.

Mr Barber: “You weren’t standing there four hours?”
Ms McGarry (laughing): “It’s possible. It could be six hours, eight hours.”

Asked by Mr Barber if she had ripped off Mr Kay and “took two lots of $440 from him”, Ms McGarry heatedly denied it.

“I took five $50 notes, a twenty, a ten, a five, then he gave me two $50 notes when I told him he could have the extra.”

Ms McGarry said “it was the biggest mistake of my life” taking on Mr Kay as a customer.

“I wish to God I didn’t go with him,” she told the court.

“I’m very lucky to be here. I have gone through a lot of drama and shock and stress.”

ncG1vNJzZmimlazAb6%2FOpmWarV%2Bhtqex0q2wpZ1fp7KiuIyloJ%2BdX6m%2FtrGMrKuoqpmawHDCxK2cq5meYr2zu9KtoK2tpJp6s7HVnpilq12htqexjKKlrKGUmnq4u9Glm2aekaK8tr%2BMm6morJiauW7Ax55kpaemmnqurcKhoKedX6OyuL%2BMrKuoqqlkhaOEw29snWuRl4J4sZBvbmpoZ2t%2FooWTbGienmdmrqM%3D