INDIA ABDUCTION SURVIVOR: ‘I LEARNT TO LOVE AGAIN’
AFTER ESCAPING A TERRIFYING ORDEAL, CARMEN GREENTREE HAS NOW FOUND HER SOULMATE
Carmen Greentree was an up-andcoming pro surfer when a career setback sent her on a pilgrimage to India to study under spiritual leader the Dalai Lama.
But her trip took a terrifying turn when she was abducted, held captive, and repeatedly raped and thrashed on a squalid houseboat for two months. The mother of three, who is now celibate after fearing she would ‘die’ if she ever had sex again, says after 17 years of soul-searching, she has finally found true love – inside and out. “I’ve found true love with a partner that I’ve never had with anyone before,” she tells New Idea
exclusively. “But more than that, I feel like something has recently flipped inside me and I realise my own value and worth. I have a vibration inside that feels like love, like joy – it’s an amazing feeling.”
Carmen, 39, was taking a break from competing at the highest level on the women’s world surfing circuit in 2004 when she fell victim to scammers posing as government tourism operators in New Delhi.
It wasn’t until her abductor took her to a remote houseboat with his family and forced her to hand over her passport and bank details that Carmen realised her life was in danger.
“The first night I was there, he tried to force himself on me,” Carmen, from Myola, NSW, says. “I tried to fight him off, but he was so violent and I was so tired, and I knew he wasn’t going to stop. I was numb, broken and convinced I was going to die on that boat one way or another.”
Having spent her life travelling, Carmen’s disappearance didn’t seem out of the ordinary until her friend had a dream she was in trouble and convinced authorities to list her as a missing person. The captor then made the greedy mistake of forcing Carmen, then 22, to call her parents and ask for more money, enabling police to trace her location.
Carmen says she was a physical and emotional wreck the day that armed officers stormed onto the houseboat and whisked her away to safety – and her awaiting family.
“I remember being so scared, because I wasn’t sure what was happening,” she says of the ordeal. “I’d become so used to the constant torture, and being used and abused, that I’d given up. It was like I’d died on the inside.”
Police then returned and arrested her attacker and his brother, but the pair never faced justice as Carmen was too traumatised to testify against them.
After returning to her family home on the south coast of NSW, Carmen began a lengthy journey of selfhealing and went through a period of celibacy, before marrying a decade later and having three children. But the torment and fear surrounding sex that she had been suppressing for years eventually bubbled to the surface, forcing her to leave her husband and return to celibacy.
“For many years I stopped listening to my heart and soul, and focused on living up to society’s expectations of what a woman should do,” she explains. “But there was a voice inside me surrounding sex and one day I thought, ‘I will literally die if I have sex one more time like this.’ Once I’d made my decision, I felt like my soul began finding its way back to me.”
Carmen, a qualified therapist and practicing energy healer, has written a memoir about her ordeal
‘I’D BECOME SO USED TO THE CONSTANT TORTURE, IT WAS LIKE I WAS DEAD ON THE INSIDE’
and has dedicated her life to helping others.
“I’ve had hundreds of people reach out to me since the book launched to thank me for giving them hope for healing and inspiration,” she adds. “It’s taken a long time for me to heal, but to use this strength to inspire others to shine is fantastic.”