Rape victim Alicia Gali still traumatised three years after she was raped and jailed for adultery in United Arab Emirates

THREE years after returning home from the United Arab Emirates, where she was jailed for adultery after telling police she had been raped, Alicia Gali is still coming to terms with it.

Alicia Gali

THREE years after returning home from the United Arab Emirates, where she was jailed for adultery after telling police she had been raped, Alicia Gali is still severely traumatised.

The Brisbane woman, 30, who spent eight months in jail, has been hospitalised three times in the past year, she still has flashbacks and nightmares and she will need more treatment.

She says that noises and smells that remind her of the "horrendous" conditions inside the squalid prison continue to trigger anxiety, panic attacks and flashbacks to her ordeal.

"It can be as simple as smells of bad body odour, certain foods, people talking in different languages, if I see something about an assault or about a prison," she told The Sunday Mail last week.

"If I feel I'm in a space where I can't get out, I'm trapped or confined in some way, I have panic attacks, very bad claustrophobia."

Ms Gali, who worked as a beauty salon manager at a UAE resort in 2008, was jailed for adultery, after complaining to police that she had been drugged and raped by co-workers in resort staff quarters.

The last thing she remembered, before waking the next morning with painful injuries, was a staff member putting ice in her drink.

Ms Gali last year spoke exclusively to The Sunday Mail, after launching a legal claim against her ex-employer Le Meridien Al Aqah Beach Resort, Fujairah, part of the international Starwood Hotels and Resorts group.

Now she has spoken again to express her sadness and disappointment that the resort has failed to respond to requests by her law firm Maurice Blackburn to contribute $27,000 towards her medical expenses.

Ms Gali, who has been diagnosed with severe complex post traumatic stress disorder, is unable to work and has had to borrow from family and friends to pay for some of her hospital treatment and counselling.

"Alicia has been through an incredibly traumatic ordeal and she deserves much better than this from her former employers, who failed to provide her with a safe working environment," Maurice Blackburn lawyer Michelle James said.

She said that the resort could help pay for Ms Gali's treatment without making any admissions of liability.

"Before I was happy, I wanted to travel the world and experience new things and that's what I was doing when I was over there. l loved my job," Ms Gali said.

"My life will never be the same."