French rape victim feared she would die

THE FRENCH student who was raped by convicted murderer Gerald Barry recalled how she thought she was going to die when he attacked her.

The woman, who was 21 when assaulted, said she often asks herself how she is still alive after Barry’s vicious assault. Barry strangled Manuela Riedo, a teenage Swiss student, seven weeks after assaulting the French woman.

In a victim impact statement read out in court, the woman said she is surprised to be alive.

“Why was I let go? Why I am still breathing?” the statement said.

She described Barry as a “human predator” who has no remorse for the impact he has had on other people.

“What can I say, I’m just another person on his list. He doesn’t feel sorry or concerned about what he did to me,” she said.

“He is a liar, a rapist and a murderer. He has to be punished for what he did.

“I wonder how he can sleep at night, eating, breathing, walking, listening to music, thinking and so on without being conscious of what he did to me and to others, and how he has destroyed so many lives. He is not human or a man.”

The woman pleaded that he never be released from jail. “I beg you not to let him out on the street, as many innocent lives could be broken again,” she said.

The woman hoped someday to be able to talk to her family about what had happened and “eventually to forget what I am – a raped woman”.