Paulina Dembska’s brutal murder rekindled the ordeal that FIONA CAUCHI herself went through 30 years ago. She tells Mark Laurence Zammit it is important for victims to speak up to find their peace.

Every morning as a schoolgirl, Fiona Cauchi used to step off the bus a few stops early, and she would walk the last few hundred metres to school to sneak some exercise into her day.

But the morning of June 15, 1992, was destined to change her life.

She recalls walking along the quiet pathway, when she heard someone running behind her in the distance.

“At first I thought it was a jogger. Then I looked behind me and he seemed to be running towards me. I had never seen him in my life,” she says.

“I felt uneasy, and I increased my pace. But before I knew it, he pounced on me and threw me face-first on the rough ground. It was such a heavy thump that my glasses flew off my face.”

Fiona was only 14 years then. Thirty years later, the woman who went on to be a renowned singer, has opened up in the wake of the horrific murder of Paulina Dembska in Sliema on January 2.

Fiona says the aggressor had probably been noticing her for days before he decided to attack her.

At first, she froze, but then started screaming before the attacker covered her mouth.

The warning was clear: “If you don’t shout, I won’t hurt you.”

Fiona recalls lying on her back while he was on her stomach, and she kept pushing and kicking while he pounded her, pinned her face to the ground and tried to remove her underwear under her uniform skirt.

“I realised what he was trying to do, and I crossed my legs and pressed them together really hard, so he wouldn’t be able to get in.

“I used to cycle back then so my legs were strong, and thankfully I was wearing cycling pants that made it really hard for him to do anything. I don’t know from where I mustered the strength that day.”

Realising the fight Fiona was putting in, the man began to strangle her.

“It seemed like he was trying to choke me to unconsciousness so that I stop being restless and he could rape me. He was choking me so hard I felt my eyeballs were going to pop out of my head. My entire life was flashing before my eyes.

“I stared death in the eye. I was already imagining myself dead, but I dug my nails into his flesh and fought on.”

With no people or cars around, she felt helpless.

I thought I’d play dead, just so that he would let go of my neck, because I was losing strength

“I began to wish that one of the birds chirping in the trees above us would go and find someone and tell them to come save me, Cinderella-style. That’s how helpless I felt.

“Then I thought I’d play dead, just so that he would let go of my neck, because I was losing strength.”

Finally, Fiona spotted a gold choker around his neck and ripped it off him. The choker fell inside his T-shirt and for some reason that is when the aggression stopped. He shoved her satchel at her and fled the scene.

Fiona picked herself up and arrived at school trembling with fear, to the dismay of her classmates and teachers.

“I remember arriving at school with soil in my mouth and hair.”

It was even harder at the time because her father struggled with depression and did not know how to break the news to him.

Still afraid to walk alone

Months later, the aggressor was caught through an identification parade, charged and sentenced, but it took Fiona years to get over it, and, 30 years on, she is sometimes still afraid to walk alone in the street.

“That will never go away. Sometimes, it happens to me even when I’m with someone else. I look behind me to check whether there’s anyone following me.

“I found a lot of help from the police. They were fantastic and I will be grateful to them for the rest of my life, but I still had to work hard to recover on my own.

“And I didn’t hide my trauma. I worked on it and sought psychological help, and still, it was tough. I can only imagine how worse it must feel for those women who have had to keep the secret for years.”

Fiona says women were never safe, especially knowing the perpetrators are often handed suspended sentences or a few years in prison, and then they are back wandering the streets.

“Malta wasn’t any safer back then. Not then, not now,” she says.

“I am not saying this for people to sympathise with me. I’m doing this so that anyone who has been through something like this feels emboldened to talk about it and seek help. Keeping it to yourself will only make it worse. There is help available and it works. Take it out, tell someone about it, do not do it alone.”

While such crimes can never be justified, Fiona believes the perpetrator is a victim as well.

“In a rape, there are two victims – the victim and the perpetrator. More often than not, the aggressor has his own problems that aren’t being addressed.”

Fiona says she has forgiven her attacker.

“It took me years, but I’m completely at peace now. If I ever meet him, I’ll simply look into his eyes and say, ‘I sincerely hope that for the good of society and for your own good, you’re a changed person’.”