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“I was seven years old. He was the father of my school friend. That day he offered to give me a lift. I sat in the car. He gave me a juice. I drank it and… Darkness! I open my eyes. I am in a cold and empty house. I’m lying on a bed. Naked. The door opens – and there he is!”

This is how Dragana Krunić (40) from Belgrade begins her terrifying confession for Kurir, a woman whose childhood was marked by a horror the human mind can barely grasp. As a child, she became the prey of a monster who held her captive for twelve full days, in a house with bricked-up windows and no exit. He beat her, humiliated her and sexually abused her countless times.

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Foto: Privatna Arhiva

What she survived goes beyond the plots of the most horrifying horror films. The only difference is that the monster was real.

“It was December 1992. The end of the first term. I met him on the street. He asked if he could give me a lift. I agreed, it was cold. I had no reason to doubt his intentions or to fear him. At least that’s what I thought… But then I woke up in that room. There was only a bed and an empty bucket that became my toilet,” she says.

The windows – bricked shut. The door – locked. A dungeon for a small child.

“When I saw him, I was in shock, and then I quickly realised I was in danger.”

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Foto: Privatna Arhiva

Her former partner slit open her stomach

As if the hell from her childhood were not enough, fate brought her another horror. In July last year, her former partner slit open her stomach in front of her flat, and the case was covered by all the media.

“He became an alcoholic. He beat me several times, and after I left him, he turned up at the door of my flat and cut open my abdomen. They had to stitch my liver, intestines, pancreas and pleural membrane,” she says.
Her former partner was arrested the same evening in New Belgrade.

BRAVE! “I SURVIVED THE ATTACKER’S STABBINGS, I CAN BARELY BREATHE, BUT I AM ALIVE!” Dragana described the bloody day in a confession for Kurir! I WAS CRAWLING

Dragana says he had rented and prepared that house for bringing her there. He came after work. He silenced her with beatings.

“The more obedient I was, the fewer beatings I got, but the sexual abuse was worse. When I resisted him, he beat me mercilessly. Once, I remember, I was sitting in the corner of the bed. I was covered with some blanket. I told him something he didn’t like, and he swung a screwdriver to stab me. I spread my legs, and he stabbed the screwdriver into the blanket. Then I knew he was ready to kill me, and if he had killed me and buried me somewhere, no one would ever have found out what had happened to me.”

For a seven-year-old child, time stopped. She was afraid to be alone in that darkness. Afraid of silence. Afraid of any sound. But most of all she feared the moment when he would come.

She thought of her mother. She prayed to God to see her again. She thought of her family, her school, her friends, anything that could help her distract her mind.

In the meantime, the police and her family were searching for her, but it was the era of landline telephones. There were no cameras, no internet, no social networks – it was like searching for a shadow in the dark.

“The door of the room I stayed in was always locked. When he took me to the bathroom to bathe, he tied me up and sat next to the tub until I finished, and then tied me and returned me to the room. But one day he came so drunk that he couldn’t unlock the room. He smashed the door open. But the next day, when I saw the door was still smashed, it was as if I had grown wings.”

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Foto: Privatna Arhiva

She helps women victims of violence, wants to look after children and dogs

Today Dragana struggles with the consequences. Because of a brain haematoma she cannot work in full-time employment, but she still does not give up.

“I do occasional part-time jobs so that I can pay for medicines, which cost me around 58,000 dinars per month. I would most love to be able to look after children or dogs from time to time. What gives me strength is helping others. I created a Facebook page called ‘Stop violence against women’. I help, advise, encourage. I would love to start an organisation one day. Perhaps that is my mission – to turn everything that was taken from me into strength for others.”

She found some clothes, dressed herself and managed to squeeze out through the small bathroom window. She ran into the street and stopped a taxi.

“When my mother saw me at the door, she fainted,” Dragana recalls.

For a long time she could not speak to anyone about what had happened to her. Not even her mother. And then, with the help of a school psychologist, she found the strength to report him. He was sentenced to seven years in prison for rape and abduction and one year for illegal possession of weapons. He served only three.

In the meantime, Dragana and her family moved away.

By sharing her painful and traumatic story publicly, Dragana wants to support women who have experienced similar horrors Foto: Privatna Arhiva

“Later I found out that he had earlier been charged with raping his daughter-in-law. He died ten years ago. Justice came too late…”

Now, she says, she is well, even though a part of her has broken.

“I will never be able to become a mother. I even tried IVF, but my uterus, after everything I survived, has shifted completely to the left side and nothing helped. Still, I do not give up. I believe that God saved me for a reason,” says Dragana in a trembling voice, adding that no one knows what the new day brings.

At one moment she was a cheerful, carefree child, and the next her world collapsed. She was thrown into the deepest darkness, but she – survived