"I was gang raped in front of hundreds of clubbers": Brave teenager's tells her story

A TEENAGER has told how she was gang-raped on stage at a holiday hot spot nightclub in front of hundreds of boozed-up ­revellers.

Barmaid Lauren Walsh was 17 and on her first holiday without her parents when she says a group of British men attacked her during a raucous foam party at a club in Magaluf, Majorca.

Separated from her friends, she was stripped naked, raped and sexually assaulted in the packed nightclub, where the music was too loud for her screams to be heard. None of the hundreds of clubbers there noticed her distress until it was too late.

Lauren, now 19, was not drunk and had only had a couple of cocktails before switching to water.

She has bravely waived her right to anonymity in the hope that her ordeal acts as a ­warning to other young women travelling to resorts known for their drink, drugs and debauched sex culture.

She says: “For a while, if I saw a rape storyline on TV I’d crumble and get flashbacks. But that doesn’t happen any more. I’m on top of it and I actually think I’m stronger for having to face up to it.

“If I let this affect my whole life and hid away from the world those men would be controlling my life. I couldn’t have that.”

But Lauren hopes reading about the horror of her attack will put young women on their guard before they go abroad.

She recalls: “I heard the DJ make some joke about girls being ­welcome up on stage but only if they took their clothes off.

"As I was standing near the stage steps looking for my friends, five or six guys dragged me up and towards the back.

“They started ­pawing at me and pulling at my clothes. I heard them talking and laughing, egging each other on in ­English accents.

“I was screaming and trying to get away, grabbing on to a rail at the front of the stage, hoping someone would see me, but they kept pulling me back.”

Such was the level of debauchery at the club that Lauren was only rescued when a photographer who worked there realised she was “not enjoying” the ordeal.

A lot of women has fallen victim of rape

Lauren says those victims will be feeling like her – “utterly devastated” by the attacks and might even blame themselves.

She says: “They will be feeling very emotional and just wrecked.

"They will be wondering just how it happened and asking, ‘why them?’

"I started to question myself.

"Should I have behaved in a different manner, should I have stood near the stage, should I have been wearing more than shorts and a T-shirt?

“I want to tell these other women it’s not their fault and to seek help through talking.

“I went to counselling sessions and talked about how I kept thinking, ‘what if?’ The counsellor helped me realise I should be able to walk down the street naked if I want and that wouldn’t give anyone a licence to rape me.

“Talking about what happened helped me so much and I’d advise these women to do the same.

"I’ve survived it and come out stronger in some ways. I hope they can too.

"The problem is that these places are embedded with a culture of sex, drink and drugs.

"We’d been to the club a few nights before the rape. It was always really busy.

“I know the crowd at the front would have been able to see what was happening to me but ­everyone is so drunk and the emphasis is so much on sex, with some people doing outrageous things openly, that nobody did anything.”

When Lauren was eventually rescued by the photographer he said he had not ­intervened before because he had thought she was enjoying what was happening.

She says: “He went to get my clothes and told me he was sorry for not stopping them sooner, but thought I had been enjoying it.”

Senior staff were called and Lauren was ushered out of a back door of the club.

No one offered to walk her back to where she was staying, call a cab or phone the police.

She told two of her reps from Thomas Cook what had happened and they took her to a clinic for the morning-after pill.

She says: “They were ­sympathetic and talked about all the options – reporting the rape to the police, flying me home early, whatever I wanted. Reporting it seemed pointless.

"I couldn’t identify any of the guys as they grabbed me from behind and kept me on the ground ­because I was fighting for all I was worth.

“The reps went to the club to look at CCTV but it only had ­cameras outside.”

When Lauren got home she kept the rape from her family at first because she was afraid of ­upsetting them but she ­eventually broke down and told her mum, then her dad.

She says: “One of the hardest things was telling my dad. I expected him to explode but he was ­devastated. He sat there cuddling me and I was crying.” Lauren, from Preston, has now rebuilt her life and in September she will start a ­business degree at Liverpool John Moores ­University.

She says: “I refuse to let this define who I am. I don’t want people ­looking at me, saying, ‘she’s ­different because she’s been raped’.”

Lauren wants other women to learn from her mistake and be on their guard not just on holidays, but everyday.