An Australian woman spent eight months in a United Arab Emirates jail for adultery after complaining to police about being drugged and raped by co-workers

Alicia Gali, 29, has detailed her harrowing ordeal after filing a lawsuit against the five-star international resort where the attack took place in 2008. Warning other women against going to the UAE, Gali said she endured eight months in a crowded prison room with up to 30 other women after she complained to authorities of being raped. Apart from her family, no one in Australia knew Gali had been jailed for adultery and illegal drinking, because Australian embassy staff advised her and her family not to go to the media. Gali, a salon manager at the resort, said she had been in the staff bar, where she was told she could legally drink, when another employee put ice in her drink. She said it was the last thing she remembered before waking the next day in her room with painful injuries. She said it was only when she took herself to hospital did she realize that she had been sexually assaulted. Later she learned she had been heard screaming and security guards had found men hiding in her room, where she was naked and unconscious. When she was discharged from hospital she was asked to go to a police station to make a statement and then speak in front of a judge. Gali said she was never warned by her UAE employers that she could be charged with adultery and face prison if she complained of being raped, without having four adult male Muslim witnesses. Three of the men who sexually abused her have been jailed, but for adultery and not rape. After serving eight months of a 12-month sentence, Gali was pardoned and released and flew home in March 2009. Since then she has been treated for post traumatic stress disorder, suffered claustrophobia and flashbacks.