Warning: This article contains discussion of rape and torture that some readers may find distressing
'I felt no pain, but it was not a dream, this was happening. The man was slashing my throat,' recalled Alison Botha.
At just 27-years-old, the South African woman endured one of the most brutal experiences any human being could go throug, and miraculously survived to tell the tale.
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Following a night out with her friends in December 1994, Alison drove back to her home in Port Elizabeth, now known as Gqeberha, but upon arriving in the car park she was met by a man with a knife who forced his way into her car.
He then drove her to pick up a second man, before driving to a desolate area on the outskirts of the city, where both men, Frans du Toit and Theuns Kruger, proceeded to rape her.
To make things even more terrifying for the young woman, the men told Botha of their plans on the drive over there, telling her they were going to have sex with her and asking whether she would put up a fight.
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After the men - dubbed the 'Ripper Rapists' by South African press - had finished with her, they then attempted to end Alison's life by suffocating her.
Frustrated that she managed to survive the ordeal, they then stabbed her at least 30 times in her abdomen, with Alison recalling how du Toit wanted to butcher her reproductive organs - but failed in doing so.
Again, Alison clinging onto life angered the two criminals and so after seeing her leg twitch they attempted to severe her head - slitting her throat as many as 16 times and almost decapitating her.
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Speaking about the horrific ordeal, she told South African news outlet IOL: "All I could see was an arm moving above my face. Left and right and left and right. His movements were making a sound. A wet sound, it was the sound of my flesh being slashed open. He was cutting my throat with the knife. Again and again and again.”
"It felt unreal but it wasn’t. I felt no pain, but it was not a dream. This was happening. The man was slashing my throat.”
Alison then overhead them speaking in Afrikaans, with one of her kidnappers asking the other 'do you think she's dead?', to which he replied 'no one can survive that'.
They finally left after believing they'd killed Alison, but little did they know she still had some fight in her. She then somehow managed to make her way to the road, aware that this would be her best chance of surviving if someone could see her.
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Incredibly, she pushed her intestines back inside her body and used one hand to contain them, while the other was used to hold her head up.
Alison explained: "As I struggled forward my sight faded in and out and I fell many times but managed to get up again until I finally reached the road."
Two cars are understood to have stopped - the first a man got out, looked at her naked body and drove off, while a second was driven by Tiaan Eilerd, a student vet, who helped her.
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Before calling the emergency services he first pushed her thyroid - a small gland in her neck located in front of the windpipe - back inside her body and then sought urgent assistance.
Speaking about it, he later said: “God put me on that road that night for a reason."
Alison went on to make a miraculous physical recovery, and the following year, du Toit and Kruger were sentenced to life in prison. But tragically, after serving just 28 years they were granted parole in July last year.
If you've been affected by any of the issues in this article, you can contact The National Sexual Assault Hotline on 800.656.HOPE (4673), available 24/7. Or you can chat online via online.rainn.org
Topics: Crime, World News, Africa
Joe Yates