A model jailed after breaking her spine jumping from a sixth floor window “to avoid being raped or knifed to death” has spoken about the ordeal for the first time. Ekaterina Stetsyuk claims she faced being sexually assaulted by her boss in Dubai.
When the 23-year-old refused, she alleges he grabbed a knife and held her by the neck against a wall. She says she wrestled herself free and jumped semi-naked from the window.
Ekaterina miraculously survived by landing on an awning which broke her fall but needed two operations and a titanium plate in her spine.
The businessman then accused her of attempted murder after she momentarily seized the knife from him, leading to her arrest.
Police came to her hospital and dragged her to jail following two surgeries even though she could barely move, she said.
“They just grabbed me from my hospital bed,” she said in her first interview after returning to her homeland. “At that time I could move only my fingers and my neck. “They put me onto wheelchair, took away my mobile phone and brought me to the jail.”
She said: “I was blamed that I attacked him with a knife, that I injured him, so I must be put i jail. “It was made out it was only me who was to blame. “This is Muslim country and the law is on the side of the man.”
She said she came to Dubai after a modelling agency had made her an offer to fly to Dubai which “no-one could resist”.
She had resisted his advances when she arrived in the country but he invited her to his home during business hours in a hotel-apartment complex, she said.
She refused to touch alcohol.
“He began to harass me sexually, touch my knees,” she claims. I did not want this so I removed his hand. “He became angry, and even crazy. I realised that I had to get away quickly. “I ran into the corridor, but he grabbed me by my hair and dragged back into the room. “He grabbed a knife and pushed me against the wall, clutching me by the neck, and starting to suffocate me.”
He demanded that she undress and she was “scared and obeyed”, it was reported.
“I was so scared, I feared not so much that he could rape me, the scariest at that moment was that he would kill me,” said Stetsyuk in first first TV interview on her ordeal.
She fought him for the knife broke free from him then “high on emotions….. I just jumped out of the window”, she said.
Ivan Gubanov, Russian vice-consul, who helped negotiate her freedom, said at the time: “It is better to show compassion.
“This is about a young girl, our compatriot, who really fell from the sixth floor, miraculously survived, having injured her spine and internal organs.”
Her friend Irina Grossman said of her fall: “To save her life and dignity, she jumped from the sixth floor. “She survived by a miracle.”