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[gentle piano music]
"Go to the edge," he said.
"We're afraid," they said.
[clock ticking]
"Go to the edge," he said.
They went to the edge.
They were pushed.
And they flew.
[chimes]
[birds chirping]
Once upon a time, in 1994 actually,
in the kingdom of South Africa,
there lived in the hamlet of Port Elizabeth -
me.
I was a twenty-seven-year-old.
No aspirations, no great career plans.
I don't remember even as a child
having great dreams and wanting to be anything specific.
I wasn't really good at much at school either.
I studied secretarial for a year after school -
just really to have something to fall back on as my mother said.
I spent four years overseas before returning home.
I remember my mom being relieved that I was back home - safe.
18 December 1994.
It was a perfect summer's day, I remember.
One of those summer days
when you've been at the beach all day.
Your skin's still tight from being in the sun.
Still taste the salt on your skin,
braaivleis, smoke in the air.
Went back to my place, ordered pizza, played games.
At the end of the evening, I offered my friend a lift.
Picked up my laundry from her house, and then came back home.
My parking was now taken,
so I had to park a little bit further down.
[ambient sound]
I can remember it as if it was yesterday.
I felt the knife at my throat,
and I just heard the voice:
"Move over or else I'll kill you."
I hadn't locked my car doors.
I bet you I know what you're thinking, I should have jumped,
but I didn't want to believe the worst,
so I chose to believe the best.
[car noise]
After all, he said he didn't want to hurt me,
just wants to use my car for about an hour.
"My name's Clinton," he said.
"Do you have a boyfriend?" he asked me.
And the problem with that
is that it gave me a false sense of security.
If only I'd known.
And he stopped. Pulled over.
And here the second big, bad wolf gets into the car
and I remember just looking in the rear-view mirror
and catching his eyes
and that's when my relief just turned to sheer fear;
'cause all I saw was dead, cold evil.
And it was in that moment that it finally dawned on me
that I wouldn't be going home.
[music]
They drove past the last street lights,
the last vestige of hope,
and into darkness.
Just the three of us.
[music]
And he stopped in an alcove.
He said, "Are you going to fight?"
Do I fight? How do I fight? I don't know how to fight.
He forced me to have oral sex with him
and then he did the same to me.
Saying things like, "Does your boyfriend do this to you?"
"Do you like it? You've got the nicest-tasting fanny."
He gave me a love bite on my breast and kissed me.
Then he raped me.
My body responded.
And although I now know that that's a protection mechanism,
it was for me the ultimate betrayal.
"Frans!" Theuns came over.
That's when I realised his name was not "Clinton",
it was "Frans".
Frans said to Theuns,
"Do you also want to have sex with the lovely lady?"
Theuns just said, "No, I want to fuck the bitch."
"You can't talk to her like that,"
the man who's just raped me says.
"She's a lady, you must speak properly to her."
[ambient sound]
[shoes crunching into the sand]
Before I even knew it, his hands were at my throat.
And the last thing I remember,
my bowels evacuated.
They stabbed me in the abdomen and pubic area,
I'm told, in excess of 37 times.
[screaming]
Theuns was the first to cut my throat.
Frans pushed him out the way.
[screaming]
The moon behind him ironically gave him a halo.
He slashed my throat 17 times.
[distorted screams]
[exhaling sharply]
Their feet started getting smaller and smaller.
Their voices, fainter.
They drove off, throwing my clothing out the car.
Although I couldn't feel any pain,
the noise of my breathing through my severed windpipe -
was horrifying. And that realisation,
that overwhelming feeling of sadness, when it dawned on me -
that I was injured beyond hope. That I was dying.
That I wasn't going to live anymore.
Then I literally left my body -
[music]
and the noise stopped.
[silence]
I remember looking down and already feeling distanced enough
but not far enough that I couldn't go back.
I knew I had that choice.
And I realised that I wanted to go back.
[music]
I wanted a chance to live my life better.
[music]
And then, I was back in my body and the noise was back.
But first things first.
I had to make sure
that they would never do this again to anyone else.
[ambient sound]
Frans.
[ambient sound]
Theuns.
In the hope that they'd be caught and sent to jail.
And then I wrote:
I
love
[ambient sound]
mom.
I felt something wet at my legs.
I realised that my intestines were actually outside my body.
The denim shirt was nearby.
[ambient sound]
I was able to hold everything in
with my denim shirt with one hand
and then started crawling with the other
over this ash and cut glass.
I was getting weaker.
Now if I'd died here,
my mom would know that I had survived a bit
and the unanswered questions that she would always have.
I can't do that to Mom.
I realised though that the crawling was too awkward.
I wasn't going to make it.
I had to do better.
So I managed to hoist myself up onto my feet with great effort
and everything went black.
I put my other hand up to my throat
and my entire hand went into the injury.
They'd severed the muscle on the side of my neck
and I realised that my head had actually flopped
right back between my shoulder blades.
I took my other hand and literally pulled my head up
so that I could see.
That's when it happened.
It was as if someone else had taken my feet
and was moving them for me.
And the next thing I knew I was at the road.
I just fell down. I mean, what's the worst that can happen -
that someone's going to drive over me?
A car was coming.
It came closer and I realised
Frans and Theuns could be in that car.
[engine roaring]
There's nothing I can do.
I fought so hard but the fight's out of me now.
And then the car sped off.
[engine roaring]
And then I heard another car coming.
I was a twenty-year-old veterinary technology student
studying at the Technikon in Pretoria,
and we were on holiday down in Port Elizabeth with friends.
So you wouldn't expect anything bad to happen on a holiday.
The first thing we saw when we climbed out of the car
was a person lying in the road with no clothes on.
It's something that you'll never forget in your life.
I took her hand.
She was not able to speak. I looked into her eyes.
It was bloodshot, very, very frightened. I just told her,
"Listen, you've got nice eyes."
He was my knight in shining armour.
He was trying so hard to keep me alive.
I mean typical me, I didn't want to give up for his sake.
Luckily one of our friends had a cell phone
which was a new technology for that time.
Phoned the emergency services
and they told us they'll send an ambulance out.
From where we found her up to the hospital
was about fifteen minutes' drive.
We waited.
Twenty minutes.
Thirty minutes.
Fourty minutes.
Eventually the paramedics arrived.
We drove to the hospital.
I asked them if they can drive faster.
They didn't see the urgency to that.
It's like they've almost decided she's not going to make it,
so why rush.
After arriving in casualties,
that was the first time I had to let go of her hand.
My whole ordeal from abduction to that point
had taken only 90 minutes
and the journey that I travelled had been 30 km,
but the real journey was only beginning.
The incident that happened that night in December definitely
had a big, big impact on my life.
That was basically what I needed to make a decision
what I'm going to do with the rest of my life.
And that was, that was to become a doctor.
My appreciation of life has been determined largely
by my background as a scientist, as a doctor and as a specialist
in intensive care medicine and anaesthetics.
And I've been exposed to severe trauma,
life-threatening illness.
But I don't think I've ever experience the horror
of the injuries suffered by Alison.
And the sheer brutality, the ferociousness and the
mindless destruction of a human really got to me.
I saw a young lady with the most horrific wound to her neck.
And I saw that the laceration was from ear to ear and that
her trachea, windpipe, had been cleanly cut through and
she was breathing through a gaping hole
just above her collarbones.
When I finished my examination,
the young junior doctor who'd admitted her
said to me: "Dr Comyn, that's not all."
And he very gently pulled back the sheet to show me her abdomen
and I could see that this lady
had been completely disemboweled,
with large loops of her small bowel lying on top of her tummy.
Close inspection of that showed that it was
grossly contaminated with beach sand,
with lumps of charcoal
and even lumps of what looked like lamb chop fat.
And then we looked very carefully inside her abdomen,
saw the extent of her injuries
and it became evident to us that it would be unlikely
for this lady to ever have the privilege of bearing children.
I arranged for
the general surgeon on call,
whose name was Dr Dimitri Angelov.
I took him aside and said,
"Dr Angelov, I believe that we should call an ENT surgeon
to help us with the severed trachea and the neck muscles
and then I think that we'll move onto the abdomen
which you can do."
He pulled himself up to his -
the tallest he could and he,
in a very, almost Germanic way clicked his heels,
and looking me straight in the eyes, he said,
"Dr Comyn, in my country I am trained both as an ENT surgeon
and a general surgeon. I can do this."
Doctors see a lot of things. Blood. Injuries.
But somehow that injury
made a striking impression of severe cruelty
which one doesn't see very often.
You know, having an injury from a motor vehicle accident,
or a fight in a pub or a club, you name it,
doesn't look as severe as what we saw that morning.
Here the cruelty was which struck everybody in fact
in theatre, not only me.
The first impression which she made
is when I saw her through the window
signing the consent form with a steady hand.
When you look at her signature, you wouldn't think that such a
severely injured person can write in such a...
a comprehensible way, you know, and underneath
she had written the telephone number of her mother.
I was amazed.
People with such strength are difficult to find nowadays.
I was most impressed with the meticulous surgical technique
that Dr Angelov exhibited that night.
I remember him passing the loops of bowel through his fingers.
Every nook and cranny
he meticulously cleaned and in some instances
he even took a scrubbing brush
to remove debris that was firmly stuck.
I really don't have a scientific answer.
Yes, we can debate and talk all the academic stuff.
We must accept that it is a miracle.
I've always thought it a bit of a cop-out
to ascribe things that you don't understand to miracles.
But these events most certainly has led me
out of my strict scientific appreciation
to believe that things happen for a purpose
and that's probably a good definition of a miracle.
I'm going to start with her neck.
Of particular importance are the blood vessels,
which supply blood to the head and brain.
And with those vessels severed, Alison would have haemorrhaged;
she would have died within three or four minutes.
There are also some very important nerves
that come down from the neck to supply
some of the important organs - none of those were damaged.
And the oesophagus was undamaged,
but of course the trachea was severed,
and this miracle is that it has healed so perfectly.
You can see the multiple stab wounds in her chest.
The miracle is that none of these
penetrated to the lung or the heart.
Then I'll go to the abdomen.
This is the major incision when she was disemboweled.
And it is a miracle that that didn't result
in peritonitis and severe infection.
There are multiple stab wounds all around her abdomen,
none of which penetrated through to damage the internal organs.
I didn't go home that first night -
I stayed in the intensive care
and during the early part of the morning
the nursing staff told me that there were two police officers
in the waiting room who wished to speak with me.
I was informed that it was a brutal rape - terrible case -
and they needed my assistance to help with the rape case.
I knew Frans du Toit from a previous
arrest where he was arrested also for rape.
And I met him that Monday morning in the cells
at the Murder and Robbery unit,
him and Theuns Kruger; they were both there.
That's how I met them.
After the normal procedures were completed
at the Murder and Robbery offices,
the next step was to go and introduce myself to the victim,
who was Alison at the hospital
and to inform her that I would be
the investigating officer in her case.
They gave her a folder
and turn the pages over one by one
and when she came to the picture of
Frans she pointed to it
and wrote the name "Frans" on the piece of paper.
They turned over a few more photographs
and then she pointed to the picture of Theuns
and wrote his name on the piece of paper
and that satisfied the police.
During the course of that day and the early afternoon,
the two police constables came back again
and they explained to me
that they have been in contact with the
chief prosecutor who had indicated to them
that the prosecution case would be far stronger
if Alison would verbalise
the names of the two suspects.
And I was horrified at that.
Because what that meant was that I would have to
remove the tube from her lungs,
because with the tube through the vocal chords or voice box,
patients being ventilated with the tube are unable to speak.
I was very, very apprehensive that by removing the tube
I would disrupt the trachea suture line
and jeopardise the good work
that we had done the night before.
I went to Alison and I described the
interview with, the second interview with the police,
asked her, her opinion and she said, she wrote,
"Take it out."
I removed the tube
and Alison said: "That's wonderful,"
were her first words. And she said:
"My attackers were Frans and Theuns."
Alison was discharged from the intensive care
to the general surgery ward
and that's the last time I saw Alison.
The office where we worked, we were all like a little family.
Everybody had fun together.
Every day was a day to look forward to at work
because there was always something to laugh about.
I had come to the office in the morning
and one of my colleagues
who is also a very good friend of Alison's - Kim -
had come into the office and she just looked very upset,
but she was upset in a way
that we've never seen her that upset before.
And she sat at her desk
and it's not like Kim to sit at her desk and cry.
And I turned around and I asked her like,
"Are you okay? What's wrong?"
All she said was, "It's Alison."
We were not allowed to go see her immediately
because of her having to undergo so many surgeries and so forth.
I think we went a couple of days later
and it was Davida and I who had decided to go together
because neither one of us wanted to go alone.
We needed to muster up the courage to see Alison
because by this time we had all read about
and heard exactly what had happened to her.
The two of us stood quietly at the side of her bed
looking at her,
but by this time we couldn't contain ourselves.
Tears were rolling down our faces looking at her
and she kind of had a feeling that somebody was watching her,
so she opened her eyes
and the minute she opened her eyes we had,
we were stunned to see what we saw
because her eyes were completely bloodshot.
Blood vessels had burst in her eyes,
so all we could see was just blood in her eyes.
So that was also quite a distressing sight to see.
And she smiled when she saw us
and she didn't want us to cry because she felt she was okay.
She didn't want anybody to be sad for her.
I remember that the sheet was just on,
just below her shoulders,
and she pulled out her hand from under the sheet
and she said to us:
"Look, don't cry guys, look I didn't even crack a nail."
We saw the state of her nails and there were dirt
and blood under her nails.
They were all, they were in a terrible state
and they were cracked.
She had hurt her hands. She had hurt every part of her body.
I remember I was so worried
that I wasn't going to get to thank
all these people who had reached out to me
and sent all these letters, cards and flowers
and I decided to try and thank them collectively
in a letter in the newspaper.
For fear of omitting anyone of you from my heartfelt thanks,
I have decided to attempt to thank you all collectively.
[music]
Each one who sent flowers, gifts, cards,
wishes, thoughts, prayers and love,
should know how they brought a smile to my face
and added warmth to my heart.
I have life, beautiful people, and you have my heart.
[music]
I might have survived my attack,
but I still had to survive the court case.
When I first came out of hospital,
I had to go back every single day
for Dr Angelov to treat my injuries,
particularly the one in my abdomen.
He had to scrape it until it bled
every day until some new cells grew.
I still had to have plastic surgery later.
[music]
When I think of recovery, the word that I think of is pain -
all consuming, all day, through the night.
I didn't sleep.
I just remember feeling that the pain was so big
it would never entirely go away.
I would have some of it
remaining for the rest of my life.
And in fact, to be honest with you,
I still have ongoing medical issues
because of the injuries.
But there was always Melvin, my cop.
Two other ladies were raped before Alison was raped,
and it happened in a sequence.
The first lady who was raped took a week
before she reported the case to the police,
after she was threatened
that they would kill her if she went to the police.
The second lady who was pregnant at the time
ran downstairs and straight into a police van
and reported the case.
Then the two of them decided that the next victim
that they were going to rape and abduct,
they'll have to kill her
because the other two didn't listen
when they threatened them.
I brought Frans out into my office.
After I'd given him the rights that he had,
he was very surprised when part of of the warning
was that he's been charged for attempted murder.
He was so, so surprised because
he asked me "Why attempted murder?"
I said because Alison is alive.
And it's the first time in my career
that I'd ever seen a hardened criminal
or a hardened person like Frans -
he was so surprised
that you could knock him over with a feather.
And he said: "Well then
there's nothing I can hide from you because she will
obviously tell you everything that happened."
And he picked up his hand
and he pulled a ring off his finger
and he handed that over to me and he said to me
"That belongs to Alison."
And when I saw the ring, I noticed blood on the ring,
which we later established belongs to Alison.
One of the questions that I asked Frans was,
I cannot understand how they go out, how he could go out,
leave his wife and child in the flat
and go and rape an innocent woman.
Although Frans du Toit and Theuns Kruger
indicated that they were going to plead guilty,
my work did not stop there,
as they could change their mind at any time,
so I had to see that all the exhibits
and all the samples were taken
and sent to forensic labs for analysis -
documented in a case docket
where I can hand it over to the prosecutor,
because the prosecutor can only prosecute what you give him
as an investigating officer.
Recovery was one thing, the physical recovery,
but then it was the preparation for the trial.
One of the things I had to do
was see a clinical psychologist.
She had to assess me before the trial
and it just wasn't the right time.
I mean it was only five, six months after the attack
and I just wasn't ready.
She explained to me at the time the pendulum of trauma,
that I was supposed to go through all the emotions,
grief, and sorrow, hatred and anger.
I just wasn't angry.
But I remember I punched the pillow
that she wanted me to in the end
just because I was so angry with her for not getting me.
The indignation of having to have your pubic hairs pulled
by different policemen at different times.
Just in someone's office, drop my pants
to have photographs taken of the injuries
and of my pubic area to show the rate of recovery.
Different policemen, different places.
And Alison, every time I requested her to come,
she came without any argument or any question.
She was just prepared to do whatever we asked her to do
because she knew at that stage
it was for her that we were doing this and for no one else.
And her tummy where they stabbed her with a knife
had not healed yet,
and it was an open hole wound
that had to heal from the inside,
it was still there,
and although that was there she still came for...
for all those examinations and tests to be taken.
As prosecutors, we deal with victims
that have suffered severe trauma
and it's our duty to prevent further traumatisation
through the legal processes to that specific victim.
But it's also a team effort
because we have to work together with the police
and your investigating officer is very important.
In Alison's case it was easy for us because Melvin Humpel was
the investigating officer
and he supported Alison and us to a huge extent.
Like for instance, to attend an identification parade.
The laws were that the victim had to go to the perpetrator
and actually place a hand on the perpetrator's shoulder,
the suspect's shoulder,
to prove that the suspect was pointed out by the victim.
I decided that it would be better
to try a new thing and it's never happened
in South Africa before, so with the prosecution,
we decided to do a one-way glass identification parade.
And that's the norm today.
[police interview in Afrikaans]
Even though it was behind one-way glass,
I was still petrified
to think of being in the same room with them.
I had to leave work and go down to the police station.
And then my name was called.
I was taken out and without much warning
was put in the room to do the ID parade.
The room just was too small.
I remember even though the one-way glass was there
and even though I tried to concentrate on getting it right,
but at the same time wanting to get it over with because
every second in that room with them felt too long.
Ok, this is a one-way glass.
The people on the other side are wearing numbers.
I want you, if possible,
to inform me of the number of the person or persons,
if they are here,
who on the 18th of December last year
at about 3 o'clock in the morning
[inaudible]
attempted to murder you
and who raped you.
If you see the people or the person
you must please inform me of the numbers they are wearing.
Do you understand?
OK, you can have a look.
This is a one-way glass.
[silence]
They look different, but it's number 6
and number 13.
Is that all?
OK, thank you very much.
In every case that involves victims of crime,
you as a professional are also touched as a human being.
Now in Alison's case what made it so difficult for me
was the fact that
usually victims that had suffered such injuries
would be deceased,
and in a sense it's easier to deal with the -
those circumstances where you have a post mortem.
I remember I went home that night
and I actually sat crying in the bath
as I was telling my husband that
I can't believe that she's alive.
On a daily basis I drive past the flats
where they had breakfast with
the bloodied knife afterwards and that kind of callousness,
every time I drive past that block of flats,
it's real to me again.
During my career I always tried to forget about the case
the moment they leave court
because the next one was coming up.
but in Alison's case it was completely different.
I immediately noticed the scar on her neck.
And when Alison gave evidence, at a certain stage she remarked,
"I always thought that my neck
was a strong feature of my appearance
and look at my neck now."
I'll never forget the faces of those two guys.
Frans was staring at me all the time.
When Frans gave evidence in the witness box he was
looking me in the eyes as if he was trying to intimidate me.
Frans du Toit gave evidence
and testified to the effect that he was a satanist.
That he believed in Satan. It was, however, very doubtful.
During the investigation and the incarceration
of Frans du Toit, he requested to see a pastor
because he wanted the demons cast out of his body.
So I had to adhere to his request
and I got hold of a pastor that I knew
that does this
and took him to the holding cells where
this exorcism was conducted.
I asked the person if he was prepared to testify in court,
which he did.
And he mentioned the two demons, Incubus and Succubus.
Mr Du Toit actually confused the two demons.
It was proved that it was just another ploy of him to
get people to believe that it was satanism that did it.
Before we went to court I said to Frans and to Theuns, I said:
"You will see that I'm not going to handcuff you."
I said: "I'm doing that for a reason.
I want you to run. Make my day and run."
I would have, without batting an eyelid, I would have shot them.
I don't even hunt. I don't like hunting so I don't like killing
but those two guys I would have shot.
They went to court, never handcuffed ever.
And they didn't run.
Frans's father could not deal with what his son had done
and two years later he committed suicide.
When I decided on a proper sentence, I took into account
as far as Alison's case is concerned,
that one of these two guys
had two previous incidents where they...
where he committed rape and the other one, one.
I made the remark that my sentence should be typed
and that it should be placed on the record of these two guys
in prison,
so that the authorities can see and can understand
that I regarded them as a threat to society
and that I never wanted them to be released from prison.
That is something that I have never done before
and I did not do it thereafter.
The Constitutional Court at that stage
had already found that the death penalty
in South Africa in terms of the constitution
would be unconstitutional.
But thinking back now as I sit here,
I think I would have seriously
considered the death sentence
and probably would have imposed it,
had it still been a competent sentence.
[music]
As we stood there,
you could look down the steps towards the cells.
Theuns was the last one to go down the stairs.
The next minute he just hit his hand against the wood panelling
next to the stairs and shouted,
"So here I go, so fuck you all."
My baby was six weeks old
and that was the very first night that he slept through.
I think the baby was also glad
that this case was finally over.
The toughest part of the trial
was for me not really reliving it.
I know some people say it is,
but I was almost emotionally removed from it.
It was like watching a court room TV drama,
which I really love.
I almost got a surprise sometimes
when I would hear my name mentioned
in the middle of the proceedings
and remind myself that it was actually about me.
My mom, also, we would sit there
and we'd actually had a notebook.
Here we go.
Sometimes we'de make notes, just arbitrary notes
like, "Where are we going for lunch?"
"Does he know what he's talking about?"
The tough part really, for me, was the media attention.
[distant camera shutter sound and people shouting]
But at least I had a trial.
I can't imagine the injustice of not having that.
Justice doesn't minimise what happened
but it certainly does help.
Their sentence though was not a celebration.
They still took something from me that I can never get back.
And there is never a healing point, a finality,
"I am healed."
It's what others want for me.
It's what I want for me.
And I guess as time passes it does get a bit easier.
They seem to have less hold of me.
What happened seems to have less power.
It's like exercise, I guess, you get used to it,
you get better at it.
But then out of the blue, for no reason, can be right back there.
This
is the last bit
of the Alison that died that night.
[silence]
After the court case
my soul never really got a chance to mourn.
I had to continually steel myself.
The PHYSICAL ATTACK. The PHYSICAL RECOVERY.
THE COURT CASE.
To be strong for MOM. For DAD.
For SOUTH AFRICA.
For others of violent crime.
The BAD GUYS went to prison.
I survived and everyone got on with their lives.
But I couldn't go back to life as it had been before.
I couldn't even stay in the same place anymore.
I moved back in with my mom.
Fortunately she was a single woman.
I think for her she really needed
and wanted to look after me at that time.
I still had to have my wounds dressed and cleaned.
I had to have bed baths at first.
And she helped me with all of that.
My friends had lives to get on with
and my mom was able to set aside hers to help me.
In time my wounds healed
and I decided to have my first proper bath.
[relaxing music]
And that was the night
I really looked at myself in the mirror
for the first time.
[music]
I've never suffered from depression.
Not really known what it's like, but I very quickly found out.
I think depression would be different for most people.
For me, I just remember not caring.
And that was a big deal for me
'cause I was someone who was so responsible.
And for me to not go to work, to not care about going to work,
to sometimes not even phone them
and tell them I wasn't coming to work.
I didn't care about how I looked after myself.
I didn't care if I answered phone calls.
I didn't care if I ate all day or ate too much.
I remember just blaming Frans and Theuns
entirely for how I was feeling at the time.
I did have a moment though.
I was all on my own sitting at home when I remember thinking
that Alison, at the time when you had to choose
between life and death,
you chose life.
And it was a challenge in a way to myself
that I had to do it again
because by doing what I was doing
at the time and blaming Frans and Theuns,
I was giving them power over my present life.
I had to once again choose life.
And you won't believe it, with the depths of depression
came the Rotary Club invitation; for me to please come
and share my experience with them,
seeing as I've been so brave in the public eye.
Never mind that doing orals was my biggest fear at school,
let alone stand in front of people
and live up to their expectations
of me being the heroine.
But of course, me being me, I didn't want to disappoint
the people who had been so supportive.
So flipping hell,
I pulled myself up by my bootstraps and I went.
And to my surprise,
I felt better.
I wanted to do it again. So I did.
And I haven't stopped yet.
The talks gave me direction, a cause, a purpose,
a new business and healing.
I travelled all over the world, met incredible people
and I loved every minute of it.
[music]
In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.
Well, I am going to share with you about what happened to me
but more importantly for me, I'm also here to share with you
how I overcame this difficulty.
And I'm going to share with you then about my ABC.
And I read a little saying that I've always remembered
so that I can repeat it to these people if anyone ever comes
up to me and says, "You're extraordinary,"
and you might want to remember it as well.
The little saying says:
"There aren't any extraordinary people in this world.
Just ordinary people.
But some of those ordinary people do extraordinary things with their lives."
Every step I took I thought it would be my last.
And it's impossible to put percentages to it,
but what felt like more than 99%,
so 99.9% did not believe I would make it.
I want to share with you today my ABC in overcoming obstacles,
and as I share with you, I don't want you to think that
it can only apply to a huge trauma.
I put them into practice with a huge trauma
and I found them come out with flying colours.
And I've used them time and time again
in dealing with my everyday problems.
There was 0.1% that said, "Just try."
0.1% that every time I fell said, "Get up."
0.1% that said, "Take one more step."
And it was enough.
My ABC stands for Attitude. A is for Attitude.
B is for Belief,
and C is for Choice.
And the philosophy that I live my life by is,
that these all fall under is this,
that you cannot always control what happens in your life -
we all agree on that.
But we can always control what we do
with what happens in our lives.
You don't live this life
and at the end get a chance to do it again
or go back and fix some stuff that you didn't do so well.
It is life. It is happening.
Every day while you're doing it it's not coming back again.
This is your chance.
[applause]
[thunder]
[ambient sound]
The only other time
that I fell into a depression
was when I had to read in the newspapers
that my two perpetrators might come up for parole,
despite the fact that the judge put a special note
on their files that they would never again
see the light of day.
I fought so hard that night to
make sure that they would go to prison
and never have the chance to do this again.
It's hard.
News of parole
brings up a whole lot of memories that is best forgotten.
It's hard not just for me but for my family, my mom, my dad -
who's struggled so much in the first place with the trauma
and now in his old age has to do it again.
My friends.
Maria, who cares so much for me.
I'm petrified that they might get out.
[music]
I mean, I received an email from a woman in America
whose daughter is apparently Frans's fiancée
and is having a relationship with him while he is in prison,
and she asked me to help her.
This is a known sex offender,
who raped several women,
tried to kill me
and yet he has free access to Facebook.
Has a full social life there on warped sex rooms.
And then when I tried to do the right thing
and wrote to the authorities,
telling them about it, but asking them please not to
ever let it come out that it came from me,
I found out that my email was printed
and given to Frans himself.
I mean, where are the authorities for me?
My tale is one that is full of miracles
and I still choose to believe in them every day.
My favourite one of all is the birth of my two miracle boys.
I wasn't meant to have children.
My marriage might not have lasted,
but the best thing to come out of it will always be my boys.
And Tiaan didn't disappoint either.
Because of what happened to me,
he was so determined to become a doctor.
It took him 10 years, but he did qualify.
He was the assisting doctor at the birth of my second child.
I was amazed that I fell pregnant so easily.
I wasn't supposed to be able to have children.
I'd always just accepted that fact.
And the fact that I was able to fall pregnant
without any intervention
and then carry the babies to full term,
that was always my big worry with all the scarring,
with the injuries that had happened to my abdomen,
that things were going to rip and tear apart
when I was pregnant,
but it didn't.
I had very healthy pregnancies.
I loved being pregnant.
I loved feeling the moving baby inside me
and I remember missing it really, after they had come out.
I also remember that feeling of early in the morning
when they were newborn babies,
two o'clock, three o'clock in the morning, all alone.
I loved it.
I loved knowing that the world was asleep and I was there
looking after my baby and that they needed me.
It completed me.
[ambient sound]
I'm just me, on the beach with my boys,
reminding myself that I have life.
That I'm just Alison, and that is okay.
Coping with this thing that happened to me
in a way has given a dream to that little girl
who didn't have one.
Coping with the trauma -
some days better than others - and being a mom.
That is my wealth.
Even though it's not the traditional
fairytale happy ending,
because this is my tale, my way.
And this is not the end.