Unbroken: The Remarkable Survival Story of Alison Botha
Encounter With Evil
On December 18, 1994, twenty-seven-year-old Alison Botha had spent most of the day soaking up the sun with friends at a beach in her hometown of Port Arthur, South Africa. When it started getting late, she invited everyone back to her flat to hang out and have a bite to eat.
At the end of the evening, her guests had bid her farewell and headed home. Since it wasn’t safe to walk the streets after dark, Alison had given rides to those who didn’t have transportation at the ready. It would be a gracious act that would cost her dearly before the night was through.
When she returned to her apartment alone just after 3:00 a.m., Alison was a bit put out to find that someone had taken her usual parking space in front of the building. Her choices extremely limited, she had been forced to settle on a spot that was further away than she would have liked.
As she was about to get out of the car and go inside, someone opened the driver’s side door. Before she had time to react, a man put the blade of a knife to her throat and told her to slide into the passenger seat and keep quiet or he would kill her then and there.
Alison did as she was told in the hopes that the menacing stranger would release her unharmed if she cooperated with his…
