A YOUNG Scottish woman fought her way free of a Paris taxi driver she accuses of ‘raping her repeatedly’, it emerged today.
Further details of the terrifying attack on the tourist – who cannot be named for legal reasons – emerged on Tuesday.
A Scottish tourist was raped by a Paris taxi driver[/caption]
He attacked her in the Bois de Boulogne, a 2000-acre wood in the city’s western suburb[/caption]
The woman, who lives near Edinburgh, was in the French capital at the weekend with four friends[/caption]
French police have launched a manhunt[/caption]
She “scratched the neck” of the unidentified driver and then escaped after he attacked her in the Bois de Boulogne, the 2000-acre wood in the city’s western suburbs.
The woman, who lives near Edinburgh, was in the French capital at the weekend with four friends, and the party was due to return home on Monday morning.
But after a night out at the Mermaids & Divers, a cocktail bar near Bastille square, in the east of the city, on Saturday, she attempted to return to their AirBnB accommodation alone.
According to her testimony to detectives, she “partied and drunk alcohol until around 2am,” an investigating source said.
They added: “Feeling unwell, she decided to return to the rental alone between 2am and 3am,” but could not remember any details of the taxi that she managed to hail.
She thinks her driver was ‘white skinned, in his forties, and with a stubbled chin,’ said the source.
Rather than take her to her accommodation, they ended up on the Rue de la Muette, a road in the centre of the Bois de Boulogne, where sex workers congregate in cars and vans until the early hours.
There, the driver is said to have sexually assaulted her, and then ‘raped her repeatedly’ inside the car, said the source.
She then “struggled and scratched her attacker on the neck”, before running for about 10 minutes to the Pavillon Royal, a restaurant in the wood.
While running, she fell and injured her knee, while also losing her mobile phone.
A local resident from Neuilly-sur-Seine then rescued her and called the police.
When the police arrived at the scene, they found the young woman scared and crying.
Her black tights were torn, and she was wearing a black coat, boots, and a plaid skirt.
She gave officers the numbers of her friends in France, her mother, and her boyfriend, who works at a hospital in Scotland.
The victim was treated for injuries by Paris emergency workers, and then taken to the Raymond Poincaré University Hospital nearby for further tests, and for police interviews.
Paris prosecutors supported by detectives from the city’s 1st Judicial Police opened a rape investigation on Sunday.
On Tuesday, police patrols were still searching for the driver, while also checking CCTV and interviewing potential witnesses.
France, Paris, close up of taxi sign on top of taxi in a street[/caption]
