Rape victim: My two-month Outback ordeal
A YOUNG woman has spoken for the first time about being kidnapped and raped for two months by a tattooed drifter while travelling in Australia.
Elisha Greer, from Liverpool, was held captive by Marcus Martin after initially befriending him and forced to drive nearly 1,600 kilometres across the Outback with a gun to her head.
Ms Greer, who was 21 at the time, met Martin at an outdoor party on the outskirts of Cairns in northern Queensland in January 2017.
The hairdresser, now 23, said Martin – who has tattoos under his eyes as well as on his chest and arms – ‘didn’t seem like a psycho’ when she met him. In fact, she said he seemed ‘fun’ and ‘nice’.
Their relationship deteriorated over the next few days as he became ‘obsessive and clingy’. He then raped her in a hotel room in Cairns. He also smashed the furniture and flipped the bed over in a drugfuelled rage. Ms Greer had no idea that he had already spent time in prison on drug charges.
Ms Greer told Australia’s Channel 7: ‘He started hitting me. Just hitting me and hitting me. I thought he would kill me.’
Martin, 24, confiscated her passport and she remained under his control for two nightmare months.
From March 1, he made her drive through the Outback in a white Mitsubishi Pajero that she had bought before she met him.
In the interview, which aired last night, Ms Greer said: ‘I was forced to drive the car with a gun to my head.’ She added that she knew he would kill her if she refused. Ms Greer also endured endless beatings. She said: ‘He broke my nose, split my eyebrow, I had bite marks on my face, two black eyes and he had stabbed me in the neck with a key.’
She said she became so desperate that she contemplated shooting him in his sleep, but she dismissed that idea – worried about the consequences if she ‘missed’.
Ms Greer managed to free herself when they stopped at a petrol station. As he lay hidden in the car, she saw a sign that read: ‘If you can’t pay, we will call the police.’ She walked out without paying and the police were summoned.
It later emerged that Martin had held another young woman captive six months earlier.
Martin – who has pleaded guilty to rape and deprivation of liberty – will be sentenced later this month.