One courageous victim shares her harrowing tale: 'The brute who raped me may be in jail but I still fear he's hiding behind every door.'

One courageous victim shares her harrowing tale: 'The brute who raped me may be in jail but I still fear he's hiding behind every door.'

By Kathryn Knight

PUBLISHED: 19:11 EST, 13 February 2013 | UPDATED: 02:59 EST, 14 February 2013

Wherever she is these days, Cheryl Maddison feels she operates with something akin to  x-ray vision.

Every alleyway, every door, every face of every person walking towards her on the street, she takes them all in.

'I’m hyper-conscious,' she says. 'Before, like most people, I never really gave much thought to where I was. Now I process everything, constantly, working out if there’s a threat.'

Courageous: Cheryl Maddison hopes that by speaking out she'll be able to help others in a similar situation

But then you would, too, had you endured what she has â€" and lived to tell the tale.

Five years ago, Cheryl, then just 21, was raped, strangled, stabbed and left to die on the holiday island of Majorca.

She’d arrived there just six days earlier, leaving behind her small village of Murton, Co. Durham, to chase sun, adventure and an exciting new career.

She never got the chance. In the small hours of the morning, as she returned to her apartment, she was subjected to a sustained and violent attack by a dangerous sex predator who, not content with raping her, was hellbent on killing her, too.

Cheryl only survived by pretending to be dead â€" lying in a pool of her own blood and holding her breath as the life leaked out of her.

For years, she was haunted by the fact that her attacker continued to evade justice, terrified he would find her and finish what he had started. 

Only now have those fears been laid to rest, after her attacker â€" 31-year-old Moroccan waiter Mohamed Fadel El Anssari â€" was finally apprehended and brought to trial, after nearly five years on the run.

It took great courage for Cheryl to testify against her attacker.

Just last month, Frances Andrade, a professional violinist, killed herself after being accused of lying while giving evidence against a former music teacher over his indecent assaults on her when she was a teenager, and it is well known that rape victims can be treated harshly in court.

Despite finding it traumatic, Cheryl was treated far more gently, but, though her attacker was last week sentenced to 23 years in prison for rape and attempted murder, she says complete peace still eludes her.

Horrific: The appalling injuries inflicted on Cheryl were so severe she nearly died of them

'It changes you as a person â€" how can it not?' she asks. ‘At the same time you have to fight it, to not let it define you.'

Sweet-natured and utterly without self-pity, Cheryl, a customer service adviser, has worked hard to rebuild her life.

She has a new boyfriend, Kaine McDonald, 21, whom she met a year ago. They are saving for their first home and hope to get married.

Yet as the physical scars on her neck and chest â€" still visible if you look closely â€" fade, the emotional scars are taking longer to heal.

But Cheryl is determined that heal they will. And it is this determination, along with a desire to help other women, that has driven her to waive her anonymity to speak about what happened that night: 'If it helps just one other rape victim feel able to speak out then it’s worth it,' she says. 

It makes for terrifying reading, not to mention the most te rrible of endings to an otherwise ordinary young woman’s dream.

The youngest of five children, Cheryl had always yearned to travel. After leaving school at 16, she set about pursuing her goal. At 18 she started to apply â€" unsuccessfully â€" for holiday rep jobs. 

'It was so frustrating. I wasn’t getting anywhere, and eventually I realised that if I wanted to live abroad, I had to make it happen for myself. So, I decided I’d just take a chance, fly out to Spain and get a bar job.

'I booked a flight to Majorca and a hotel room for a few nights â€" I figured that if it didn’t work out, I could always come home.'

Her destination was Magaluf, a tourist town beloved by the British â€" and one where thousands of teenagers will be heading this summer.  

Evil: Cheryl's attacker, Moroccan national, Mohamed Fadel El Anssari, during his trial in Palma 

Understandably, her family were both worried and excited for her, and on the eve of her departure, in May 2008, they threw a party. 

At first, everything in Magaluf seemed to go swimmingly: Cheryl found a bar job and an apartment within hours of arrival.

'I was so excited,' she says. 'Even though the weather was terrible, I went straight to the beach as I’d dreamed of being able to do that. I loved the sense of independence.'

However, she would never sleep a night in that apartment. The attack took place the night she moved in.

As she climbed the stairs to her room in the small hours after her bar shift, she became aware of a man creeping around on the stairwell below.

Under normal circumstances, Cheryl would have run to her apartment, but having only been there briefly, she couldn’t remember which one it was.

'I started to panic. I pull ed off my heels and tried to make a dash for it past him to the street. But he was waiting at the bottom of the stairs, so I couldn’t get past.'

'He' was Moroccan waiter Mohamed Fadel El Anssari, whom Spanish police believe may have preyed on tourists in Majorca for years.

'He asked for a cigarette and, in broken English, said he lived in a neighbouring apartment,' she says. 

'I gave him a cigarette, but I didn’t want to get chatting, so I turned back up the stairs.' As she turned the key in her door, he appeared from behind and wedged it open with his foot. 'He went to kiss me. I was so shocked I just pushed him away.'

She pauses. 'And that’s when he punched me in the face.'

The blow was powerful enough to break Cheryl’s nose and send her flying backwards.

The crime scene: The popular holiday destination of Magaluf on the Spanish island of Majorca

'I remember grabbing the door handle to break my fall, but as I tried to pull myself up he grabbed me by my hair and dragged me on to the stairwell,' she says. 

'My face was dripping with blood, but I knew I had to fight back. I was lashing out, punching and screaming.'

A couple in the neighbouring apartment heard her screams, but assumed they came from a drunken couple arguing.

'I think about that a lot, of course,' she says. 'If one of them had opened the door, then things might have been different.'

Instead, Cheryl was left to her fate. 'I was still trying to fight, but he put his hand over my mouth and said: "Shut up or I’ll kill you." Even though his English wasn’t good, it was said with total conviction.

'He dragged me back into the apartment with a hand over my mouth and started to sexually assault me.

'Then suddenly he stopped and orde red me to strip and get in the shower. I was totally powerless, I didn’t know what was going on. In court, I learned he was scared by all the blood and wanted me to wash it off.'

After pulling her from the shower, Fadel dragged her into the bedroom and raped her.

It is a horrendous memory that Cheryl recalls matter of factly, the only way she can cope with it. 

'I tried to struggle, but the more I struggled, the more he hit me. In the end I lay looking at the ceiling praying for it to be over.

'Then I felt his thumbs pressing on my windpipe. I realised he wanted to kill me. With every second I was getting weaker. I could feel myself slipping away. 

'After a minute or two, I was so weak I could barely lift my hand. I could feel myself going.'

She came round to find herself slumped on the floor in a pool of blood. 'I looked down and saw a hole in my ches t. It was oozing blood and when I breathed it made a horrible gurgling sound.'

Fadel had stabbed her in the chest and side with a 7in blade, puncturing a lung.

Even then, her ordeal wasn’t over. Her assailant clearly wanted to finish her off.

'He started stabbing me in the neck. I remember the knife going in and out several times, with a sawing motion. That’s when I thought: "He really wants me to die."'

When he finally pulled away, Cheryl realised with astonishing clarity that her only chance of survival was to play dead. 

'It was so painful. Trying to keep quiet and hold my breath was one of the hardest things I’ve done.'

Satisfied she was dead, her attacker left. But paralysed with fear, she barely dared to breathe.

'I didn’t risk leave the bedroom, but at the same time I knew I was in a bad way and needed to get help. Finally, I gr abbed a pillow to cover my chest and dragged myself out of the apartment.'

Cheryl was so weak she had to descend the stairs on her bottom, finally collapsing outside a take-away on the street. 

She remembers regaining consciousness briefly in the ambulance, and again in hospital, where she woke to find herself surrounded by doctors. 

Her wounds were so severe that had she not received urgent medical attention, they would have proved fatal.

The chest wound had missed her heart by a millimetre, while the stab wound to the neck just missed a vital artery. 

Her mother Christine, 58, and one of her sisters, Beth, 32, flew out to be by her side. 'Seeing mum so devastated was one of the worst things,' says Cheryl. 'I would have done anything to spare her.'

Her return home ten days later was, inevitably, difficult.

'I was so glad to be back, but I was a total mess,' she says.

The knowledge that her attacker was still at large terrified her â€" while police had found Fadel’s shirt, stained with Cheryl’s blood, in a rubbish bin near her apartment, an extensive manhunt failed to track him down. 

'I lived in fear. My home town had featured in news reports on the attack on the internet and I was convinced he would come to Britain to find me. 

'For a while, I couldn’t even be in the bath on my own. I took all the door handles off so you had to use a knife to turn them and I had escape routes planned wherever I was.'

It was six months before she could face working again. Even then, the panic attacks continued, despite extensive counselling. 

But behind the fear, her determination was growing. 'I knew I couldn’t let him destroy everything,’ she says.

Though she had given a full statement in hospital a nd provided a photofit, police constantly came up against dead-ends. Her attacker, it seemed, had vanished without trace.

'The police kept me informed over the years, though it was difficult with the language barrier. The British Embassy was wonderful, but it was frustrating as there was very little they could tell me. But I never gave up hope.'

That is why, three years after the attack, she plucked up the courage to reprise her dream and apply for a role as a holiday rep. This time she was accepted and posted to the Greek island of Zante for two consecutive summer seasons.

'My family were terrified. They never said "Don’t go", but it brought back very difficult memories for them â€" and me.'

Cheryl was in Zante last year when she learned Fadel had been arrested following a renewed manhunt after a British woman suffered a similar attack in Magaluf in 2010. 

The link to Cheryl ca me when DNA found on a cigarette he had thrown in the street matched that found on the bedsheets in her apartment.

Finally, Fadel, who had fled to Tenerife, was arrested and jailed pending his trial. 

For Cheryl, the news was bittersweet. 'I was delighted he’d been caught, but I also felt this terrible guilt that I hadn’t been able to do more to help find him beforehand, to prevent another girl enduring the same nightmare. 

'I also knew I would have to give evidence against him.'

In January, she flew out to testify, with Kaine at her side. 'I was scared, but determined. Most of all I didn’t want that man to hear me cry â€" he’d taken so much from me that I didn’t want to give him that. It was hard, but I didn’t shed a tear on the witness stand. Not one.

'Thankfully, he was hidden behind a screen throughout the time I gave evidence, so I was glad I didn’t have to face him â€" the thought of setting eyes on him again made me feel sick.'

Despite an attempt by the defence to have the case struck out, arguing that using DNA from a discarded cigarette butt was an invasion of Fadel’s privacy, he was found guilty, the presiding judges saying Cheryl’s attack had taken place in a 'terrifying context of violence and intimidation'.

His incarceration takes a dangerous predator off the street, as well as bringing relief for Cheryl and her family. 

She will never be able to forget what happened. What she wants most of all is an ordinary life.

'I’m settled and I’d like to get married, buy my first house, have children,' she says. 'I want normality.'

Having fought so bravely, she surely deserves it all.