Model tells of relief as rapist gets 23 years

A model who was raped and left for dead on the Spanish holiday island of Majorca has revealed how speaking out has helped other victims of horrific crimes.

Thu, 07 Feb, 2013 - 00:00

Tom Wilkinson

Cheryl Maddison, aged 25, from Tyne and Wear in Britain, was speaking after Moroccan waiter Mohamed Fadel El Anssari was jailed for 23 years for sexual assault and attempted murder.

She was “really happy” with the sentence, which had given her “justice”.

Maddison, who waived her right to anonymity, told ITV show Daybreak she had received an “amazing” reaction from the public since she faced her attacker in court.

“I’ve had little messages on Facebook off girls who have been through similar things, saying I am helping them, giving them a bit of courage to come forward. If I am helping one or two girls, it means so much.”

She was attacked in May 2008 days after arriving on the island to work in a bar, and suffered multiple stab wounds and a collapsed lung.

The waiter told her he would kill her if she was not quiet, raped her, then tried to kill her. She survived the onslaught by pretending to be dead. She needed an emergency operation and spent 10 days in hospital.

She gave evidence last month at the trial which, though tough, was “worth it”.

She told Daybreak she believed her assailant would never be caught, until Spanish authorities contacted her to say an arrest had been made.

“I got an email and I stopped breathing for a second,” she recalled. “I got used to the fact he was not going to get caught. It was such a shock and I didn’t expect it. It was amazing.”

Maddison said that, for two years after the attack, she was a different person. “One day I thought: ‘This is not me, I need to get back to my old self,’ ” she said.

She has been in a relationship for around a year and described how she decided to tell her boyfriend, Kaine McDonald, about the ordeal before they went to Majorca for the trial.

“We kind of really didn’t speak about it until the trial was coming up. I thought: ’We will have to sit down and speak about it. I don’t want you to hear stuff over there for the first time,’ ”

McDonald said he was “unbelievably proud” of his girlfriend and said of the sentence: “I don’t think there’s any amount of time you can put on for justice.

“I am satisfied that Cheryl’s satisfied.”