Woman starts crowd-funding page to pay for legal action after she says she was drugged, abducted and raped in South Korea

AN ADELAIDE woman who says she was drugged and raped while on an overseas holiday is trying to bring her attacker to justice.

Airdre Mattner is crowdfunding for her legal case after she claims she was raped in Korea Airdre Mattner is crowdfunding for her legal case after she claims she was raped in Korea. Picture: Supplied

AN ADELAIDE woman who says she was drugged and raped while on an overseas holiday has started a crowd-funding campaign to try and bring her assailant to justice.

Airdre Mattner, 25, says South Korean authorities were “negligent” in dealing with her claims that she was drugged, abducted and raped while on holiday there in September.

She set up a GoFundMe page to raise funds so she can pursue her alleged attacker in London, where he lives.

Ms Mattner has been “absolutely overcome” by support for her case and has raised $11,000 in two weeks. The money will fund her travel to Korea to hopefully collect her case file and for at least two trips to London.

Since her story went public, many others have also contacted her to reveal their own stories.

“More than 17 of these stories took place in Seoul and all but one were treated very similarly by Korean authorities,” she wrote in a post on her fundraising page.

“This is both incredibly heartbreaking but also gives me courage that I am doing the right thing in pursuing this.”

Ms Mattner, who is currently teaching English in Japan, said she was travelling alone in Seoul when she joined an organised pub crawl group on September 25 in the student area of Hongdae.

In her post she recalls being taken in a taxi to a hotel by the man who she says later raped her.

“I recall pleading with the taxi driver to take me to my hostel. He ignored me and continued driving under the instruction of the man next to me,” she writes.

“The next thing I recall is being on a bed in a hotel room. The man was on top of me. I struggled and tried to push him away but was again too heavily drugged to manage anything.

“I woke up the next morning completely naked. All my money was gone. My clothes and belongings were torn and strewn across the room.”

She said she reported the assault to police straight away and was even subjected to numerous invasive treatments and tests. But she was horrified to find out later that staff did not follow proper rape procedures and no DNA evidence was collected.

They also did not test for rape drugs even though she had told authorities she had been drugged.

“I was questioned in an often very insulting manner,” she said. “I insisted that I had not simply passed out from being drunk, that I had been drugged.”

The next day she got a Facebook friend request from her alleged attacker and passed his details to police but authorities cleared him as a suspect because records showed he was not in the country at the time.

Ms Mattner is now seeking to pursue her own case after police decided to close the unsolved case, even after securing CCTV footage from the hotel.

“After losing all faith in the police and justice system in Korea, my family and I have decided to pursue justice in London,” she said.

“The prevalence of incidents like this, especially involving foreign tourists in Seoul, is sickening. It is horrifying how easy it is to fall victim to men like this who specialise in preying on women in such a calculated and targeted manner.”