Durban - The woman whose horror story shocked the nation and helped break the silence about rape, believes self-defence should be taught at school.
Girls should also be taught about self-empowerment and how to read situations, while boys should be taught the impact that rape has on girls.
“No means ‘no’, and girls should be able to say that,” said Alison Botha, who was giving a Women’s Day breakfast presentation to Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC) guests at the Oyster Box Hotel, uMhlanga Rocks, on Friday.
Botha, who was raped, stabbed 35 times in the stomach and 16 times in the neck and who was left for dead by her two attackers, feels that the police should have a dedicated victim liaison officer who will prepare rape victims for their subsequent court appearances by taking them to the court and showing them the room’s layout, including the witness box.
And while the government should do more to curb crime, people should also take responsibility for their own safety.
She told how she was a victim waiting for something to happen. She was completely unaware of what could happen and never looked around. She had parked her car outside her house with the door unlocked.
Suddenly, the door opened and a man with a knife got in and told her to move over or he would kill her.
Although it was 19 years ago that Botha was attacked by Theuns Kruger and Frans du Toit - they got life sentences - the horror of what she endured still brings people to tears.
Botha has written two books, received countless awards for courage and has travelled the world giving presentations, even giving motivational speeches to some survi-vors of the September 2001 terrorist attacks in New York.
Her talk is about handling situations thrown at people: how they are not always going to be in control of what happens - but are always in control of how they respond.
Sharing her story has been her own therapy, she says. Botha survived because she played dead and because she was worth it, she said.
She reacted by staying calm.
She was taken to a bush area outside Port Elizabeth and she told the audience how she tried to remove herself from her body while they were raping her. “They never had power over my mind and who I was.”
Her attackers first strangled her, cut open her stomach and slit her throat from ear to ear.
But having first crushed her windpipe when they strangled her, their stab wounds cut through the windpipe, opening up her airways.
She crawled through the bush into the road, where passing student Tiaan Eilerd tucked her cut thyroid inside her body and called for help.
Inspired by the incident, Eilerd became a medical doctor 10 years later - and was the assisting doctor when Botha gave birth to her second son.
Daily News