Frances Leate
A BRAVE rape victim has had to face her attacker in court four years after he brutally raped and beat her, leaving her for dead, on holiday island Magaluf.
Cheryl Maddison, 25, moved to Majorca in 2008 to start a new life but just six days after she was brutally attacked.
Appearing at Palma provincial court in Majorca’s capital earlier this month, she told a panel of judges how Moroccan man, Mohammed Fadel El Anssari, followed her to her rented flat and sexually assaulted her on the balcony before taking her into the bedroom and raping her.
She said: “I lost consciousness. When I woke up I was by myself in the bedroom. There was blood coming out of my chest. That’s when he entered the room again.
“He put a knife into my neck and it went right in.
“I thought he wanted me to die. My breathing was making gurgling sounds because he had stabbed me in the lung. So I held my breath so he thought I wasn’t breathing any more.”
After her attacker left, Miss Maddison used a pillow to stem the bleeding from her multiple stab wounds and staggered downstairs for help.
After undergoing emergency surgery on wounds to her neck, throat, chest and back and spending several weeks in hospital, Miss Maddison returned to her home in County Durham.
Jaime Guasp, prosecuting, told how Anssari, a 31-year-old cocaine addict, had followed her back to her flat as she walked home alone after working a shift in a nearby bar.
He then carried out the attack using a 7 inch knife.
Anssari wasn’t caught until 2011 following another attack on a British woman and a lengthy undercover operation.
Police were able to track him down from DNA left on a cigarette butt in Miss Maddison’s flat.
Anssari, who has admitted the attack, was also once arrested for an alleged sexual assault on a minor in the Canary Islands where he was a regular visitor.
