Australian woman ‘raped, bound, gagged’ in front of boyfriend in Samoan hotel room

COUPLE woke to find an escaped prisoner in their Samoan hotel room. What happened next is the stuff of nightmares.

The couple has a GoFundMe account to enable them to travel back for the court hearing.

AN AUSTRALIAN woman was allegedly raped by a man armed with scissors while her partner was forced to watch on helplessly inside their Samoan hotel room.

Angie Jackson said she was with her partner of four years, Tommy Williams, at the Lupe Sina Tree Resort when they were startled by the intruder about 2am on September 23 last year.

According to a GoFundMe page set up by Ms Jackson’s younger sister Jessica Jackson, the pair was tied up and Ms Jackson was allegedly raped. Ms Jackson said they were forced to beg for their lives before the man fled with their belongings.

“I saw a Samoan man, crouched in the corner. I screamed as loud as I could, and I froze. The man came towards me with a pair of large dress scissors raised high and straight at me. My screams got Tom out of bed and he quickly came to my aid, only to be faced with a very aggressive figure as the scissors were directed towards him,” Ms Jackson wrote.

“Realising the immediate danger, we put our hands out, half trying to calm the man and half to protect ourselves. In fractured English, he told us to be quiet or he would kill us.”

The couple, from Hobart, had just woken up to catch a 3am taxi to the airport to fly to Sydney when the alleged attack happened, and it’s believed one of the hotel staff disturbed the man when he came to check if they still required the taxi.

Angie Jackson was raped in front of her partner Tommy Williams during a trip to Samoa last year.

After missing their flight home, Ms Jackson said they had to wait 48 hours of hospital procedures and giving police statements, then organising their journey home. The couple said the traumatic incident has left them both with post-traumatic stress disorder.

The pair — who had seen their alleged attacker’s face as he forced them to delete their iPad photos, identified him from a series of photos shown to them by local police.

A man was later arrested and now awaiting trial.

The couple are now trying to gather the funds to travel back to Samoa to testify at the man’s trial, set to start on June 27, as well as to repay the costs of a lawyer hired for them by Ms Jackson’s mum and to pay for their family to accompany them for support.

“Money certainly won’t erase what happened to us, nor will it speed up our healing. But it will take away any financial pressure we feel over what is going to be very traumatic and stressful time for both Tom and I, as we try to find some justice for the evil that we were dealt. And most importantly, it will put this man behind bars, where he belongs, for a very long time,” she said.