Alison — A Gift of Life

Ali­son thought she might never expe­ri­ence joy again – muti­lated, raped and left for dead, the hor­rific injuries incurred after her attack 15 years ago could well have ruined her life. Her story is well doc­u­mented and reads like grue­some fic­tion, so shock­ing are the details.

As a young woman of 27, she was held up at knife­point in her car as she returned home. She was then dri­ven to a deserted beach near the South African sea­side town of Port Eliz­a­beth. Here, Ali­son (she prefers not to use her sur­name) was not only sub­jected to rape by her two attack­ers, she was stabbed up to 35 times in the stom­ach, her throat viciously slit in a fren­zied and grue­some assault. She wasn’t meant to live.
Her assailants cer­tainly didn’t think she would. After their sense­less attack, they drove off in her car, cal­lously leav­ing her for dead.
But she chose life. Naked and unspeak­ably injured, she dragged her­self through a bush track, hold­ing in her intestines with the shirt her attack­ers threw on her as they left. Deter­mined not to die in this ter­ri­ble way, she found crawl­ing too ardu­ous and unbe­liev­ably, man­aged to stag­ger to her feet, prop­ping up her sev­ered head with her other hand.
An ago­nis­ing 80 or so metres later she reached the main road where she knew she stood the most chance of being res­cued. Even then the night­mare didn’t end. She heard a car stop and instead of help­ing, the dri­ver drove off again.
The sec­ond car did help – for­tu­itously, its occu­pants included a young vet­eri­nary stu­dent who was able to keep her con­scious until the ambu­lance arrived an ago­nis­ing two hours later.
Three hours of surgery ensued and a mere two weeks later, against all odds, Ali­son left hos­pi­tal – her recov­ery hailed as a mir­a­cle.
She had a nation will­ing her to sur­vive – there was pub­lic out­rage, espe­cially when it emerged her attack­ers had raped two other women just weeks before and had been let out on bail to re-offend.
Alison’s story also cap­tured world-wide atten­tion with the sheer evil nature of the attack. There was no polit­i­cal moti­va­tion – the assailants weren’t even par­tic­u­larly dis­ad­van­taged.
All this seems far removed from the Ali­son I meet. Snugly ensconced in a cor­ner of a cosy Bris­bane cof­fee shop, black brew on hand, Ali­son has already had an hour-long radio inter­view on this gusty winter’s morn­ing. Prior to that she has flown from New Zealand where she had another speak­ing engage­ment.
In spite of jet­lag and the even­tu­a­tion of repeat­ing her story to yet another jour­nal­ist, she is gen­uinely gra­cious and engag­ing with a ready smile and girl-next-door per­sona.
The only out­ward sign of her ordeal is a faint scar that runs across her throat – oth­er­wise, she could be any other attrac­tive woman enjoy­ing cof­fee with a friend.
She acknowl­edges the mere fact she is alive is a mir­a­cle in itself. The fact that she is not wracked by pain is even more so.
“I remem­ber the pain being so intense I thought I would never be with­out it,” she admits.
Apart from a weak­ened neck and the odd twinge of pain, she has been left rel­a­tively unscathed.
“Every­thing is func­tion­ing – they had to rebuild my stom­ach wall with mus­cle from my leg – that’s the only other surgery I’ve needed.”
In fact, so incred­i­ble was her phys­i­cal recov­ery that it was easy for out­siders to assume life would sim­ply con­tinue as it had before the attack.
“A friend said to me after­wards, ‘now you can live life as though it never hap­pened’.”
But the hor­ror of the inci­dent could not sim­ply be dis­missed and she sunk into depres­sion. She had returned to work a mere two months after the attack and strug­gled with total apa­thy.
“I didn’t care if I went to work or not – if I got up or not or even if I answered the phone. I was numb.”
Months went by – and the tale might have been a very dif­fer­ent one had she not dug deep and ques­tioned why she had fought so hard to sur­vive the attack, yet was now unable to embrace the gift of life.
“I felt guilty that I had lived and so many oth­ers hadn’t – I’d ask why me? I told myself that some­thing inside you knew you were worth putting up a fight for. My mom had always told me I was spe­cial and had value and unique­ness. It was tested that night.
“Slowly I realised I could choose how I reacted. We are all faced with prob­lems that we wouldn’t choose but what gives us the power is how we choose to respond. It doesn’t mean what hap­pened wasn’t ter­ri­ble and hor­rific but I had to ask what I wanted for the rest of my life.”
That atti­tude was a turn­ing point. And lit­tle did she know that the story would not end there. Hounded by jour­nal­ists soon after her attack, she finally relented and told her story to a reporter from the local news­pa­per.
“The arti­cle appeared and I thought that would be it,” she laughs.
What fol­lowed was noth­ing short of a media frenzy. Then came the speak­ing invi­ta­tions.
“It hap­pened by default. I was not a nat­ural speaker – in fact it was one of my two main fears – the other was a fear of heights.
“I was asked by the Rotary Club in PE to speak and was still depressed at that stage but recount­ing the attack was ben­e­fi­cial in a way and made me well.”
The offers to speak grew – she left her job and about that time had a call from a Johan­nes­burg agent who said ‘what you are talk­ing about could become a busi­ness’. “She said I needed to do some­thing about it now as in a year it would all be over. That was 14 years ago,” she smiles.
She remains in demand as a moti­va­tional speaker at home and around the world, speak­ing to a broad range of audi­ences – from cor­po­rate to char­ity events. She has even spo­ken to sur­vivors of Ground Zero in New York. Wher­ever she goes, her story of hope and tri­umph against all odds touches peo­ple to the core.
Her largest audi­ence has been a crowd of 8000 in Wash­ing­ton DC where she received a stand­ing ova­tion.
“In South Africa, I get one before I even go on stage because peo­ple know me so well,” she says.
The nat­ural demeanour is not just one pro­jected to the media or large audi­ences – she is sim­ply being her­self – some­one who ‘loves walk­ing on the beach, doing dif­fer­ent crafts, read­ing, spend­ing time with my boys and meet­ing new peo­ple’.
“I hold onto the fact that I am sim­ply Ali­son … I’m happy admit­ting I’m an ordi­nary per­son that had some­thing extra­or­di­nary hap­pen to them.”
While telling her story has become sec­ond nature, Ali­son still some­times for­gets, how grue­some the details of her account are and some peo­ple in her audi­ence have actu­ally fainted when she relays the hor­rors of the attack.
“I have to step down some­times and have a drink of water and let them com­pose them­selves,” she says.
Yet in spite of retelling her story count­less times, she remains pas­sion­ate, never for­get­ting the enor­mity of what she’s come through.
“I met some­one who asked me more detailed ques­tions than those nor­mally asked – and I found myself cry­ing – I was sur­prised I still had the emo­tions about it and hadn’t dis­tanced myself so much – I’m glad I can still feel that.”
By shar­ing her story, she shares how one can live “as a vic­tim or can take con­trol” of one’s life, what­ever the obsta­cles.
She is inun­dated with cor­re­spon­dence and has inspired many with her coura­geous tale of sur­vival.
“One of the let­ters was from a Swedish girl who was being abused by her dad and was forced to live with him as his wife. After read­ing my story, she had the courage to leave and even took him to court.
“I believe the thing they leave with is: if she can do it, so can I. If some good can come out of it, the good far out­weighs the evil of that night.”
But Ali­son acknowl­edges there are still bat­tles. Another big one was her recent divorce.
The nation fol­lowed each painful step of her recov­ery and it was a joy­ful occa­sion when she met her hus­band and mar­ried in 1997 – the wed­ding was even cov­ered by a national mag­a­zine.
More mir­a­cles were to come. There was always a con­cern that because her uterus had been nicked by the vio­lent stab­bing (one of the assailants later admit­ted he’d con­cen­trated his fren­zied attack on her repro­duc­tive organs), she would never have chil­dren, but that dream too was realised and she has two young sons.
Unfor­tu­nately, the fairy­tale end­ing was not quite as it seemed and sev­eral years into the mar­riage, Ali­son had to make the coura­geous deci­sion to leave.
“Sadly, I divorced a year ago – there was a feel­ing of respon­si­bil­ity to every­one who so wanted it to work. For a long time I could pre­tend that it wasn’t that bad but I realised I did have another choice. What struck me was that I wasn’t valu­ing myself any­more.
“I would love to fall in love again!” she enthuses.
It’s this per­sis­tence and opti­mism that has brought her thus far. And while she acknowl­edges no-one can know how they’ll react in a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion, she does believe she is inher­ently resilient “and stub­born!”
“You always hope as a par­ent that what you instil in your chil­dren will ben­e­fit in their lives and my mom was always say­ing things like: ‘When you need to make a choice I’m not always going to be there to help’. She is so proud of me and every anniver­sary of the attack sends me a card say­ing ‘thank you for fight­ing’.”
She also attrib­utes her mother’s strength to her recov­ery.
“She was a sin­gle par­ent and always had a stiff upper lip – I don’t remem­ber her ever not han­dling things. After the attack a friend said she was stoic and didn’t show her emo­tions but I know if she had, I would have fallen apart. I’m so grate­ful for her being so self­less.”
It would have been easy to har­bour hatred towards the per­pe­tra­tors – both ulti­mately found guilty and sen­tenced to life impris­on­ment.
“I have for­given them but do think that they deserve to be in jail for life – I think they would do it again if they were released.
“I still believe in the good in peo­ple. And I still feel sorry for them – that two peo­ple could be so lost and have such hatred rather than good within them. But good over-powered evil.”

Alison’s book, I Have Life, is pub­lished by Pen­guin Books South Africa.