A SOUTH AFRICAN businesswoman has come forward to claim that she was beaten and raped in a luxury hotel room in Mauritius.

The woman alleged that she was attacked while staying in the Intercontinental Balaclava Fort Hotel in June 2009. She came forward with her story to the South African news agency Eyewitness News after hearing of the killing of Michaela McAreavey in her hotel room in another luxury hotel on the island.

A business executive from Johannesburg, the woman claimed that she heard a knock at her room door in the middle of the night. She says she could not identify her attacker. Mauritian daily paper Le Matinal has picked up on the story, quoting the woman as saying:

I was smacked really aggressively right between my eyes. All I could see was a person standing there with no clothes other than a pair of boxer shorts.

The woman claims she was then beaten and raped. She says she alerted authorities immediately after the alleged attack. She claimed to Eyewitness News that the general manager of the hotel was “quite assertive” in how he handled her claim. She said:

I was sitting there with blood all over the room and my face completely smashed up.

In the aftermath, the woman says she felt she was not treated adequately, that she was denied access to anti-retroviral drugs and subjected to an examination that she did not want. She said she wanted to warn female tourists about security on Mauritius.

The Tourism Minister of Mauritius, Nandcoomar Bodha, last week assured Irish tourists that the brutal attack on Michaela McAreavey was the “first time something like this has happened here”. He described Mauritius as a “land of peace”, adding:

Mauritius has always been a safe haven, for something like this to happen in one of the main hotels is a tragedy.

When contacted today, Mauritian police told TheJournal.ie that they could not make comment on any alleged incident as their press office is closed for a public holiday.

The InterContinental Hotel Group, which owns the InterContinental Balaclava Fort Hotel in Mauritius told TheJournal.ie that they were aware of the alleged incident. Jerome Billiard, general manager of the Balaclava Fort, said:

On 5 June 2009, a woman reported an offence of an extremely serious nature that took place at the InterContinental Mauritius Resort Balaclava Fort. We immediately contacted the police and fully co-operated and supported them during their investigation. We did as much as we could to support the woman after she reported the offence.

Unfortunately she left Mauritius before the investigation was complete.