Kidnap victim still lives in fear

Ruth Pollard

November 25, 2008

IT WAS 6.30am when her husband and his brother came to her unit and smashed through her two security doors with an axe.

Screaming for help, Klaudine Fajloun was dragged down the stairs of her apartment block by her hair, a hand over her mouth to try to keep her quiet.

She tried to get away but the men were too strong for her - they shoved her in the back seat of a car and her husband held her head in his hands and banged it repeatedly against the car door.

He said: "I want to kill you and take you somewhere where nobody will know."

His brother said: "I can do anything to you and nobody will stop me and nobody will know."

Klaudine thought she was going to die.

They took her to an empty house, where her husband slapped her, bashed her with a metal rod and kicked her repeatedly. Nearly nine hours later her husband fell asleep. Klaudine crept outside and alerted a neighbour, who called the police.

Suffering broken ribs and other injuries, she was treated at Westmead Hospital, then moved to a hotel for her safety.

"After that I go to a refuge, I go to many refuges, and my kids tell my husband where I am and straight away he comes and I have to leave the refuge again."

Tired of running, she appealed to the police for help, and in late February 2006, three months after the attack, she went to Lebanon to escape, returning two months later to attend court.

Soon after, police helped her move to the United States, where they thought she would be safer. She returned to Australia last year for further court proceedings against her husband.

Raad Fajloun was found guilty of aggravated kidnapping, aggravated assault occasioning actual bodily harm and break and enter. He is in jail awaiting sentencing. His brother Michael was convicted of aggravated kidnapping and break and enter - he is on bail awaiting sentencing.

Even with the convictions, Klaudine is terrified of her former husband and his family and lives as a virtual prisoner in her home, cut off from three of her four children and suffering severe post-traumatic stress disorder.

"I cannot sleep and I dream about the kidnapping and the assault," she said.

"I am always looking over my shoulder fearing Raad and his family might be following me. I have lost contact with my three boys due to the violence I have experienced, and as a mother, that is heartbreaking to me."

Before her kidnapping ordeal, Klaudine had sent her daughter to live in the US, after her husband indicated he wanted the girl to marry his cousin in Lebanon. "My daughter, she does not want this marriage. That is why I send her to America to stay with my brother - my husband was very upset."

Both Klaudine's brother in the US and father in Lebanon had witnessed her husband's aggressive behaviour and urged her to leave him. "How can you live with this man?" her father asked.

It was just days after she told her husband she wanted a divorce and that she would take out an apprehended violence order that he kidnapped her.

In an act of great bravery, Klaudine wants people to know of her experience and has chosen to be identified for this story.

"I want to tell everybody, especially the Lebanese, what happened to me," she says. "My daughter said to me, 'Don't be scared … Say what happened to you, because you know you did not do anything wrong.' "

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