A Nigerian man has been charged with raping an Australian woman, in Seoul, South Korea after spiking her drink with a drug in a pub. The Nigerian was taken into custody after his DNA was confirmed to have matched the one taken from the woman.
According to Mail Online, 25-year-old Aidre Mattner, from Adelaide, claimed she was alone on a pub crawl in Seoul, South Korea’s capital, when a stranger spiked her drink, piled her into a taxi and took her back to a seedy hotel where he and two other men forced themselves on her in September last year.
Security footage from the hotel, in an area known to locals as ‘hookers hill’, show two men in white leading a disoriented Ms Mattner inside before they took turns violating her on the bed.
“I was completely naked on my back on the bed and the man was on top of me trying to force himself inside me,” she told 60 Minutes on Sunday, May 22.
“I struggled as much as I could…I tried to push him off and just wasn’t strong enough,” she added.
She said the officers did not seem overly concerned with tracking down the men who preyed on her and seemed to blame the situation on what she was wearing, how much she drank and the fact that she was alone.
The police had DNA evidence and security footage of Ms Mattner’s alleged attackers but closed her case despite the active leads.
Ms Mattner said she was ‘dumbfounded’ by their approach to such a serious crime.
“I just didn’t understand. I felt as if they abandoned me,’ she told 60 Minutes.
Frustrated and humiliated, Ms Mattner and her mother set up a GoFundMe page to raise money so they could pursue legal action against her attackers which shone a spotlight on the investigation and sparked international outcry from women’s rights groups.
Korean authorities re-opened the case and within weeks were able to track down a Nigerian man whose DNA matched that taken from Ms Mattner on the night of her attack.
He was arrested but in another devastating blow to Ms Mattner, he was only charged with sexual harassment as the 25-year-old was not awake during the assault, 60 Minutes reported.
She had been falling in and out of consciousness as her drink was spiked, something she said hit her like a ton of bricks once leaving the club.
“It was not a realisation that something felt strange – it was a black out and being aware that I was in the back of a taxi being taken somewhere,”
She said she begged and pleaded with the taxi driver to take her home, but he ignored her requests and instead chose to listen to the predator who loaded her into the cab.
“I was terrified, I didn’t know what else I could do other than beg the man to take me back to my hostel,’ Ms Mattner said.
The English teacher said handfuls of women from all over the world reached out to her after she made her plight for justice public, many with a similar tale of being drugged and taken advantage of in a foreign city.
“That’s when I really understood how big the problems is – its an epidemic,” she said.
Source: Mail Online
A South Korean-based Nigerianman has been arrested in connection with the rape of an Australian woman
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