MUIREANN O’Connell has praised a brave Ireland AM guest after she detailed her horrific assault during a tear-jerking interview.
Hazel Behan, who accused Madeleine McCann prime suspect Christian Brueckner of raping her at her home in Portugal in 2004, sat down with Muireann and Tommy Bowe yesterday in the Virgin Media studio.
The Dubliner, then aged just 20, was tied up, whipped and raped repeatedly for up to five hours by a knife-wielding intruder who broke into her apartment while she was working as a holiday rep in Portugal’s Algarve in June 2004.
Brueckner’s expected release from his current conviction comes a month before Hazel will discover the outcome of her High Court appeal in Germany against his acquittal last October for raping her, another woman and girl in Portugal in 2004.
Hazel explained, on air, how she had walked home by herself after arguing with her then-boyfriend and fell asleep in her bed.
She was then woken up to a masked man dressed in all black, who was carrying a knife, standing over her.
The 41-year-old said: “I just instantly froze. I couldn’t quite get myself together.”
Muireann replied: “How could you? I’m really sorry. You were doing a job that so many of us have done. I’ve only walked home from nights when you work in Greece or Portugal or Spain.”
Hazel went on to say: “And I didn’t walk down the main street or miles by myself. Not that it would make any odds, but I literally walked across the road.
“He told me not to scream. I think there’s this innate thing in us that you’ll fight back if you feel that you have a chance to win. But I knew instantly that I didn’t. I knew I just wouldn’t have had a chance against this person.
“So I complied really and he was very methodical. He knew exactly what he was there for. He knew exactly what way he wanted me to be positioned to be in certain shots, because he set up a video camera and recorded everything that happened.”
Hazel said the “only time” she refused to do something he asked was when he wanted her to go into the bathroom.
She explained: “I just had this idea that if he brought me into the bathroom, that that was it.
“So he positioned me in a kneeled position over a small little bench sofa thing in the room and placed my head. I was head down on the bench.
“I know how dramatic it sounds but when you think of somebody standing over you all in black with a mask and a knife and positions it in a certain way – I just honestly thought he was going to just take my head off. I really did. But he didn’t, obviously. And he got a sheet from my bed and covered me with the sheet.
“Essentially, he packed up everything, stepped out backwards into his shoes. And I didn’t know he had gone because the reflection of the light from inside the room on the window of the dark, I couldn’t see outside. But he had, thankfully, and I managed to get out of the room.”
POLICE FAILINGS
Muireann replied: “I mean, incredible. You went down to a reception in the hotel. The police were called. They take you up to the room. There was no English interpreters. Your experience with the Portuguese police sounded horrific, to say the least.”
Hazel has taken a case to the European Court of Human Rights over what her lawyer called the “systematic and inexcusable failings by the Portuguese authorities that has denied her, and others, justice”.
In her case, she alleges that Portuguese police failed to seize the blood-stained bed sheets and broken false nails from the struggle with her attacker, which plainly contained important forensic evidence.
When asked what she hopes to “achieve” by doing this, she replied: “I’d love to be able to wave a magic wand and just see people in mandated positions, police, legislators, justice system to just do better by particularly women and children, but for everybody.
PARENTING NIGHTMARE
“And I think sexual assault, any form of gender based violence affects us all. If you’re lucky enough not to be on the receiving end of it, the likelihood is that you will know somebody who is.
“The last thing that you would want is your daughter… you don’t want to be my dad, my mother, who sent me off at 20, safe in the knowledge that I was gone off to make all these memories and have the summer of my 21st birthday.
“And the gasp that came out my dad’s breath is something.. when I told him on the phone, what had happened to me is something that has laid heavy on my world and his.
“So now, as a parent, I can’t change what happened to me – there’s no going back, there’s no rewriting it. But heaven forbid something would happen to my girls. I would like for them to be treated with the very, very basics, just with some dignity.”
‘BRAVE AND STRONG’
A short segment of the emotional interview was posted on Ireland AM’s Instagram page.
Muireann re-shared the video and said: “To hear Hazel talk about her rape… to be eloquent about something so horrific, terrifying and dehumanising is quite simply astonishing.
“Thank you for talking to us Hazel.”
Ireland AM viewers flooded the comment section with support and praise for Hazel.
Hilda wrote: “You are incredible, brave and strong. I’m so sorry this happened to you and that you were treated so badly in the aftermath.”
Martha said: “This brought tears to my eyes… horrific for this to even happen, and to still have no justice is just so wrong. I hope justice comes soon. Well done on sharing your story and for fighting all the way. Best wishes to you.”
Niamh wrote: “Your strength in telling your story has brought tears to my eyes. Wishing you get justice for the horror that was inflicted upon you.”
