In the wake of the brutal Paulina Dembska murder, one Maltese singer and songwriter has opened up about her own harrowing experience 30 years ago.

The experience left her unable to “trust” any male bystanders she’d come across in public, even influencing her career later on in her life, Fiona Cauchi told Lovin Malta.

“Every time there is a rape case, the picture comes up again. It’s just a memory now; but I have been watching my back for 30 years,” she said, recounting an incident that happened to her in Malta when she was 14 years old.

“I looked vulnerable at 14 but thankfully I had the balls to fight back. Malta wasn’t any safer back then. He could’ve killed me and nobody would’ve noticed,” she said.

The incident goes back to 1992, when Fiona was a schoolgirl, getting off the bus a few stops earlier, a few hundred metres away from her school, the Times of Malta reported.

As she was walking alone, she heard someone running behind her. She turned to look and saw a man she had never seen before running towards her.

“I felt uneasy, and I increased my pace. But before I knew it, he pounced on me and threw me face-first on the rough ground. It was such a heavy thump that my glasses flew off my face.”

Her covered her mouth before she could scream, and she fought and struggled as he pushed her into the ground, reaching to remove her underwear under her skirt.

“I realised what he was trying to do, and I crossed my legs and pressed them together really hard, so he wouldn’t be able to get in.”

“I used to cycle back then so my legs were strong, and thankfully I was wearing cycling pants that made it really hard for him to do anything. I don’t know from where I mustered the strength that day.”

Then, he began strangling her.

Realising the fight Fiona was putting in, the man began to strangle her.

“It seemed like he was trying to choke me to unconsciousness so that I stop being restless and he could rape me. He was choking me so hard I felt my eyeballs were going to pop out of my head. My entire life was flashing before my eyes.”

“I stared death in the eye. I was already imagining myself dead, but I dug my nails into his flesh and fought on.”

Totally alone, Fiona desperately grabbed at the man’s gold necklace and ripped it off, leading him to stop the attack. She ran to school as fast as she could, “with soil in my mouth and hair”, where her fellow students where shocked to see the state she was in.