‘I was diagnosed with devastating condition after being raped and almost decapitated’

WARNING: DISTRESSING CONTENT Alison Botha was abducted and subjected to a brutal rape

A mum who survived a horrifying ordeal and lived to tell her tale has been diagnosed with a brain aneurysm, admitting: “I can’t even inspire myself at the moment, which is very frightening.”

Alison Botha^[1] was just 27 when she was abducted and subjected to a brutal gang rape. Her attackers left her for dead, disembowelled and clutching her intestines, while her nearly severed head “flopped backwards and almost rested between [her] shoulder blades”.

Despite being recognised for her incredible bravery, Alison has found it difficult to cope following recent surgery.

“As a positive person and an inspirational speaker, I find this hard to admit, I can’t even inspire myself at the moment, which is very frightening,” Alison admitted in a Facebook^[2] post. “And it is only when you are depleted of all your strength and reserves that you recognise your weaknesses. I know from experience that I WILL recover from this too, but I need to accept that it takes time.”

It remains uncertain whether her condition developed as a result of the numerous physical traumas she endured, reports the Express^[3].

Originally hailing from Port Elizabeth, South Africa, Alison was working as an insurance broker when, on 18 December 1994, after a night out with friends, she was making her way home. She recalled: “I had just turned off the engine and flicked off the headlights – it was so routine that I didn’t all in one swift movement”.

As Alison reached for her washing on the passenger seat, she was stunned by a fair-haired man bursting into her car.

Frans DuToit, whose father was a police officer, issued death threats against her, claiming he had no intention of harming her but simply needed the vehicle for an hour.

Alison recalled feeling “strangely immobilised”.

Du Toit menacingly said: “You live in number one don’t you”.

She suggested he simply take the car, but he insisted that he “wanted company”, as reported by Morbid.

Du Toit drove past a group of people before locating Theuns Krugeras.

Du Toit, who had adopted the alias “Clinton”, adjusted the driver’s seat forward as Krugeras got in, introducing Alison as “meet my friend Susan” – another fabricated name.

The journey towards a suburb outside Port Elizabeth was unnervingly silent until Du Toit broke the quiet with, “Theuns doesn’t speak good English.”

Du Toit decelerated and stopped on the sand. Krugeras exited the vehicle, and then Clinton raped Alison.

Krugeras began to assault her too but abruptly stopped, yelling “no I can’t do this” and accidentally calling out “Frans” to his accomplice.

Alison memorised this name. Frans chillingly warned Alison, “if we take you into town now you’ll go to the police”.

Du Toit then posed a terrifying question “what do you think Oom Nick would want us to do with her.”

Oom Nick is an Afrikaans term for Satan. Krugeras responded coldly, “I think he wants us to kill her.”

The pair ordered Alison to remove her jewellery and clothes before Du Toit strangled her until she blacked out, apologising as he towered over her.

When she regained consciousness, she saw a man’s arm slashing in front of her face, cutting her throat. She recounted the horrifying experience, saying she could “could hear the flesh slit.”

It was later discovered her throat had been slashed 16 times by the attackers, leaving Alison nearly decapitated.

Alison managed to roll onto her stomach. She said: “I tried to hold my breath but I realised I had no control over my breathing – I moved my hand up to cover my neck – my whole hand disappeared into it, but it seemed to have worked – the sound was silenced.”

Pretending to be dead, she heard one attacker ask if she was dead, with the other replying “no one can survive that”. Despite her severe injuries, she clung to hope and sought justice, etching her attackers’ names in the sand and touchingly adding “I love mum.”

In a miraculous twist of fate, she noticed some lights and realised she was nearer to the road than she initially thought. Gathering all her strength, she managed to get onto her knees and upon touching her stomach, felt something “tepid, wet and slimy”.

To her utter shock, she looked down to see her intestines spilling out from a wound in her abdomen.

After being stabbed over 50 times in the abdomen, she used a shirt to hold her intestines in place, while debris and shattered glass cut into her hands and knees. Half of her thyroid was sticking out from her neck.

She said: “My head had flopped backwards and almost rested between my shoulder blades. I expected to feel something but was completely taken aback when my hand disappeared inside me almost like I had swallowed myself.”

With one hand holding her head forward and the other keeping her intestines in place, she managed to reach the middle of the road and lay horizontally to force drivers to stop.

Upon spotting the first vehicle, she said she ” frantically waved as fast as I could” – but the car swerved around her. The next thing Alison witnessed was a woman screaming and a young man kneeling over her.

It was 2.45am by the time she was found – meaning her abduction to her discovery had lasted only an hour and a half.

Tiaan Eilerd, a vet, was enjoying a pint with his mates when he stumbled upon Alison. He quickly checked her vital signs and managed to push her thyroid back into her throat – an action that Alison would later refer to as a “lifeline”.

Eilerd was stunned that Alison was still breathing, describing her as looking like a “creature straight out of a Dickens novel” with her neck horrifically slashed open “almost ear to ear”. Without Tiaan’s quick thinking to reposition her thyroid, she likely wouldn’t have survived.

Alison remembered one of her attackers expressing a desire to destroy her reproductive organs.

Yet, against all odds, she astonishingly gave birth to two children afterwards. Following major surgery, Alison was admitted to the ICU.

As news of her attack spread, police discovered her attackers were already out on bail for rape.

Both men, who identified themselves as Satanists, pleaded guilty to charges of kidnapping, rape, and attempted murder. Du Toit admitted to raping another woman but claimed he lost the “urge to kill her” after the assault.

However, in October 2024, Alison’s ghost writer Marianne Thamm, told Daily Maverick, the mum suffered an aneurysm in late September.

She underwent surgery to halt the haemorrhage in Cape Town and was in and out of consciousness before she underwent brain surgery to help with the fluid that had built up.

South Africa rallied behind her, contributing to a trust fund set up to cover the cost of her surgery. In July this year, she shared: “Lovely, special people – may whatever you are going through be short-lived and may you take courage from the fact that it is only a ‘patch’. What is wonderful about a ‘patch’ is that you enter on one side – often unexpectedly – but if you keep going – despite the weight and depression of it – there will come a time when you miraculously exit on the other side. Patches always have an end – so take heart and keep moving. Joy, enthusiasm and happiness are at the other end of the patch – for you, for me, and for everyone like us.”

In 1995, both men responsible for her attack were handed life sentences without the possibility of parole. When there was talk of changing the law in 2012, Alison became a vocal advocate, stating, “can you imagine if just 100 lifers were reintroduced to society without rehabilitation”.

Her tireless campaigning played a crucial role in ensuring such prisoners remained incarcerated. However, on 4 July 2023, Du Toit and Krugeras, having served only 28 years of their life sentence, were released on parole without Alison’s knowledge.

Expressing her shock on her Facebook page, Alison Botha wrote: “The day I hoped and prayed would never come. When I was asked ‘How will you feel if they ever get parole?’ – my immediate answer was always – ‘I’m hoping I’ll never find out.'”.

Alison has chronicled her harrowing experience and remarkable recovery in her book “I Have Life” and the film “Alison”. She has inspired hundreds of people with her story of how mindset, faith, and determination enabled her to survive.

She was honoured with the esteemed Rotarian Paul Harris Award for ‘Courage Beyond the Norm’ and was the inaugural recipient of Femina magazine’s ‘Woman of Courage’ award. Additionally, she was named Port Elizabeth’s Citizen of the Year.