Olympic speed skater Elise Christie has revealed she was raped on a night out when she was 19.
The Scot, now 31, describes the ordeal in her autobiography, Resilience, and believes her drink was spiked prior to the attack in 2010, reports The Mirror.
She says: “I just went out, got drugged and then got raped by some random bloke.
"That was the long and short of it.
“It was a year before I told anyone at all about that night I was raped.”
Livingston-born Elise adds: “I was strangely impaired and my body wasn’t functioning properly.
"I tried to run away from him but I simply couldn’t run.
"I was falling on the ground after every other step.”
She recalls: “Even in situations when I’ve been wasted since, I’ve never felt like I did that night.
“Whenever I fell on the floor, he kept running after me, picking me up and dragging me, eventually into the taxi.
“I remember saying to the taxi driver, ‘Please don’t take me to this guy’s house. You’ve got to take me home’.”
But the rapist was telling the taxi driver: “She’s my girlfriend. She’s drunk.” and Elise adds: “At the end of this taxi journey this guy took me into his house.
"It was clear that he was going to sexually assault me and the whole time I was repeatedly telling him, ‘No. No’.”
Elise, who has suffered mental health issues, online abuse and death threats, initially thought she couldn’t say she’d been raped as she “hadn’t been beaten up, battered... left for dead”.
Her attacker later contacted her to apologise.
She never went to the police but still believes he should have gone to jail.
“It’s too late, I guess,” she says. “I should have been braver at the time.”
- Elise Christie: Resilience, published by Reach Sport, is out today. Save 25% from reachsportshop.com.
