A YOUNG Canadian woman has revealed that she was drugged and raped in Dublin while on her way to her father's funeral.
Speaking to Cork's Red FM, Naomi Woodyatt spoke of how she travelled to Dublin from her Cork home to catch a flight back to her native Canada late last year.
Her father had passed away and she was looking to make it back home for the funeral.
Due to a passport mixup, she was forced to stay overnight in a hotel in the capital.
"I was so sad about by Dad. I had been crying for three days straight since I heard the news," she recalled.
Ms Woodyatt decided to head down to the hotel bar for a drink, and as she sat there, a man came and sat down beside her.
She said he seemed like a "gentleman" who wasn't being flirty with her but offered to buy her a drink.
Little did she realise that the man was planning to spike her.
"He offered to buy me a drink, so I accepted and I don't remember anything else from that moment on until I woke up the next morning," she said.
"I woke up in my hotel room, and I was on the single bed. The horror of the moment still haunts me from when I opened my eyes because he was on the double bed in my hotel room and he was just watching me.
"He rapes me again and then he left. I was still sort of hazy from the drugs, I think."
It wasn't until after the man left that Naomi realised how much pain her body was in.
"I went and I had a shower and I saw I had bruises all over my legs and then later discovered I had two burn marks, they looked like cigarette burns, just small burns on my arm."
Once the effects of the drugs wore off, Naomi said she began putting the pieces of what happened together. Nevertheless, she continued on her journey home to say goodbye to her father.
But when she returned to Cork, the aftershock of the horrific ordeal began to affect her.
"For the past six months, I've had really horrible nightmares," she added.
"I can't sleep without a sleeping pill. Sometimes I wake up crying or screaming out loud.
"My whole personality changed in the last six months, and I feel it's only now I'm starting to get back to myself."
Naomi said that within two weeks of getting home she reported the incident to gardai, though little could be done.
"It makes me angry that it's so easy to get a parking ticket or a speeding ticket, or people can go to jail if they don't have their TV license paid, but then there are actual criminals and it's so difficult to get them convicted," she said, adding that she feared her attacker was likely a serial rapist and would strike again.
She ended by urging others to tell their story and to not be silence by sexual assault.
"Break the stigma," she said. "Rape has nothing to do with what a person looks like, what they wear, there's no age or type or demographic. It's not your fault."
