A NEWPORT woman raped twice during a terrifying gunpoint ordeal last year was due back in Britain today.

Julie Stevens, 29, moved from Newport to South Africa last year - just weeks before she and a male friend, Titus Opperman, were kidnapped by an armed gang in the Kruger National Park, near the Opperman family home last November.

A 14-hour ordeal followed during which she and her friend thought they would be murdered as they were bound and gagged in the back of their car.

Mrs Stevens and Mr Opperman escaped after their attackers crashed the car and shot dead a motorist who went to their aid.

Now Mrs Stevens, formerly of Sidney Street, who worked in Integra Office Solutions, in Newport, faces an agonising wait until May to find out whether or not she has contracted HIV from her attacker.

Four men have been charged with armed robbery, rape and abduction over the incident. Mrs Stevens, who waived her right to anonymity as a rape victim, was flying home to Britain last night. Her parents live in Gloucestershire.

Just before she left South Africa, she told reporters: "I could try to get some control back in my life and fight this.

""I thought if I just lie down then they win."

Mrs Stevens said she prayed that her attackers would not rape her.

But as the hours went by, and the ordeal got worse, she said: "It got so bad that in a really strange way I thought, 'hurry up and get on with it'. I just knew it was going to happen."

She continued: "I won't know for months if I have the Aids virus. I can't believe life could be that unfair."

Last night she urged other rape victims not to feel ashamed. She said: "They need to talk about it, I think, and not be ashamed about it because it is not their fault. They didn't do anything wrong."

Mrs Stevens is a former leading member of Newport Pantomime Society.

She met Mr Opperman when she took a diving instructor's course in Turkey, and she decided to move abroad and teach scuba diving full time.

The two friends had been on a sight-seeing trip to the South African beauty spot when the ordeal began.