Hazel Behan was 20 years old when a man wearing a balaclava and wielding a blade broke into her apartment in Praia da Luz and violently raped her three times
The woman who claims to have survived a gruelling sex attack at the hands of the main suspect in Madeleine McCann’s disappearance has spoken in detail about the violent attack. Irish national Hazel Behan, then 20, was in Praia da Luz in Portugal for a working holiday back in 2004, but rather than an idyllic vacation, she suffered a brutal and prolonged assault at the hands of the sexual deviant.
Hazel was sleeping alone when Brueckner is said to have broken in to her apartment and raped her. Speaking to 60 Minutes, Hazel explained: “I laid in bed and I fell asleep, [when] I was woken by somebody calling my name.”
Oblivious as to how the stranger knew her name, she awoke to see a balaclava-clad man standing over her, blade in hand.
“I thought I was going to die,” Hazel said. “He stood above me with the knife so I just thought he was going to just chop my head off. That sounds so dramatic but that’s exactly what was going through my head.”
The man, thought to be Brueckner, then dragged the young woman across the room and raped her three times – one on the breakfast bar and twice in her bedroom.
He also beat her with a black leather whip he had apparently brought with him, and even filmed the horror ordeal, Hazel said. The attacker then fled and never returned, but the trauma of that night still haunts Hazel 21 years later.
“Whether he killed me physically or not, spiritually, I was gone. I was done that day. I didn’t exist anymore,” she said.
Hazel reported the assault to local police who she accused of being dismissive of what had happened to her. Her bedsheets were covered in blood and her fingernails, but she said police failed to collect the evidence.
Hazel said they continued to follow her for the next few weeks to analyse her behaviour. She believes they were checking if she was sexually promiscuous or not.
The Irish woman first became entangled in the Madeleine McCann case when UK police shared a picture of prime suspect Christian Brueckner. Hazel – who has waived her right to anonymity – claimed she knew on first sight that Brueckner was the same violent rapist who attacked her in 2004, three years before Madeleine’s disappearance.
She took the allegations to a German court, where she provided painstaking detail about the attack, but the convicted paedophile was acquitted. The reason for his acquittal was a lack of evidence, but Hazel is sure it’s the same man – and believes the reason he was let loose was because of the failures of Portuguese police to collect the DNA evidence that could have him banged to rights.
Hazel is also sure that Brueckner is responsible for Madeleine’s disappearance. She said: “I believe he’s the person who took her. I believe he’s the person who carried out crimes on me. If they had investigated my crime, I believe that Madeleine would still be at home with her parents.”
Madeleine McCann went missing during a family holiday in the resort of Praia da Luz on the Algarve in Portugal on May 3 2007. Fast forward 18 years and there has been no positive sighting and no one has been charged with her abduction, but her parents have never given up hope.
Following the latest search for Madeleine this week which saw German and Portuguese police descended on several properties in an area of southern Portugal close to Praia da Luz several detectives have had their say on the latest developments in the case.
Former British Police detective Mark Williams-Thomas, who has worked on some of the world’s most high profile missing persons cases, has given his take on the new searches for Madeleine McCann. He started the six-minute rant on X by saying: “So no surprise the search in Portugal has come to nothing. I said it would, the information they were working on was very, very sketchy, nothing concrete at all. That area had been searched previously; it was really a pointless exercise.”
He added: “I do find it very interesting when over the last couple of days I’ve read articles in newspapers and you’ve got certain individuals out there saying this is really strong information, this is the best, yeah this is likely to be the breakthrough. I was very clear from the beginning, I said it’s not going to happen, it’s not going to be a breakthrough.”