WEDNESDAY THEME POST
WEDNESDAY THEME POST: TRUE CRIME
WARNING: The following story includes many gory details of an attempted murder.
In December of 1994, 23 year old Allison Botha was abducted by two men who raped her, cut her throat, and disemboweled her -- and she survived.
Allison's book.
The full story can be found here. Here's an excerpt:
She sees headlights through the foliage, a car on the road, and then she's back inside her body. In her attempt to get up, she feels a wetness in her stomach. Her intestines are outside her. She tries to gather them, to put them back inside, but they're slimy and she struggles to keep them in her hold. The sheer amount of her innards bewilders her-the adult small intestine, after all, is about 23 feet long. In the end she realizes it cannot be done. Next to her is the piece of material that one of the men threw onto her back earlier. It's her denim shirt and she packs her innards inside it, pulling it close against her.
Now it's time to move. She crawls, struggling through dirt and broken glass, her one hand holding the shirt. With each successive movement she becomes increasingly tired.
At some point she collapses onto the sand, exhausted. She remembers the peace, and longs for it. But then the thought of her mother enters her mind, and she can't surrender. The trail of blood will tell the story of her struggle, and she cannot bear to have her mother know that she suffered.
So she pushes herself up again. But crawling won't suffice. It takes too long, and time and stamina are both precious. She has to get to her feet.
It takes almost everything she has, and just when she accomplishes it, she's drenched in blackness.
Some facts:
- In 1994 South Africa, a woman was more likely to be raped than not.
- Allison's attempted murderers were satanists who later insisted they were possessed by demons at the time of the crime. One of them underwent an exorcism. They received life in prison. (South Africa doesn't have the death penalty.)
- Several factors contributed to Allison's survival: While being strangled, her bowels moved, preventing more serious damage and infection from the stabbing; when the men slashed her throat, it actually enabled her breathing and kept her conscious (they also missed her carotid artery and vocal chords); the killers threw her shirt over her body, which she used to keep her intestines inside; it was a warm night and the moon was full.
Allison is now happily married and has a daughter. I love it when horrific stories have happy endings!
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