Single mum recoils in fear after near-rape experience

MALACCA: A grandmother, who was nearly raped by an intruder, is still recoiling in fear of the man who threatened that he would be back to harm her.

“I am traumatised,” said Halimah Ismail, 59.

Recounting the 4am ordeal on June 6, Halimah said she was fast asleep when she suddenly realised that someone was sitting on top of her.

“I yelled for help,” she said.

“He grabbed a pillow and gagged my mouth while holding both my hands tightly,” said Halimah, a single mother of four.

She has four grandchildren between the ages of two and seven.

The man then pulled at her sarong but she held onto it tightly. Not being able to rape her, the intruder fled.

It was dark, but from the little she could see, Halimah described the man as thin, bald and reeked of body odour.

Yet, Halimah said the man had the gall to say that it was she who had body odour.

In an interview, she said the intruder must have entered her kampung house by climbing over a window to her room.

She said she had a better glimpse of the man when he ran out of the room.

“I then realised that he was bald.”

Halimah said all her children, including her twin sons, were out of town that day.

“I don’t sleep in that room any more. I sleep in the hall now,” she said, adding that she now wears a track bottom to bed, instead of a sarong.

“I have also asked my youngest daughter, who is 28 years old and stays in Jasin, to come home frequently,” Halimah said.

Halimah also requested her neighbours to be vigilant, especially at night.

“The intruder knows that I live alone and can easily target me for a second time,” she said, adding that a police report had been lodged.

Melaka Tengah police contingent’s Senior Investigation Officer Asst Supt R. Kumares said police were hunting for the culprit.

“We believe he is from the same village.”