2014 Sydney hostage crisis
After the siege began, a staged exclusion zone was established with thousands of people evacuated from nearby buildings, including from the floors above the café. The Sydney Opera House was evacuated after a suspicious package was found; however, reports were unconfirmed by police. The US Consulate General in Sydney, located in Martin Place, was also evacuated. Some Sydney schools were put in "white level lockout" due to the hostage situation, which meant that no school group was permitted to leave the school grounds.
Sydney gang rapes
The Sydney gang rapes were a series of gang rape attacks committed by a group of up to fourteen Lebanese Australian youths led by Bilal Skaf against Anglo-Celtic Australian women and teenage girls, as young as 14, in Sydney Australia in 2000. The crimes, described as ethnically motivated hate crimes by officials and commentators, were covered extensively by the news media, and prompted the passing of new laws. The nine men convicted of the gang rapes were sentenced to a total of more than 240 years in jail. According to court transcripts Judge Michael Finnane described the rapes as events that "you hear about or read about only in the context of wartime atrocities".