Source : Perth Now news
A solo birthday trip to Paris turned into a terrifying escape for an Australian traveller who believes she was targeted near the Eiffel Tower and followed across the city.
Djanaya had travelled alone before and loved marking each birthday with a new destination. For her 29th, she had chosen Paris, hoping to celebrate in the “city of love”.
Instead, she returned home convinced she had narrowly avoided something far more sinister.
“I genuinely can’t believe that I’m actually still living. It can happen anywhere, it can happen to anybody,” Djanaya told A Current Affair on Tuesday.
As the sun set beneath the Eiffel Tower, Djanaya noticed a man smiling at her.
He soon struck up a conversation, asking if she was alone, how long she was staying and where she was based, before inviting her to a party.
Djanaya turned that down, but handed over her Instagram when he asked.
The pair also took a photo together.
Moments later, she noticed the man hand money to a street seller without buying anything, then point in her direction.
“My heart just sank,” she said.
Wanting to get back to her accommodation, Djanaya started moving through nearby restaurants to make sure no one was behind her.
But when she jumped on a train, the man reappeared with his friend, five other men and two women.
“His friend came up and pointed to me and goes, yep, that’s her she’s here,” Djanaya said.
Panicking, she FaceTimed her friend Shon back in Australia.
Shon told A Current Affair she could see the “sheer panic” in Djanaya’s face.
“I just didn’t know what I was meant to do,” Shon said.
Shon urged her to get off at a busy station. Djanaya did, but the group got off too.
It became a frantic effort to lose them, with Djanaya jumping on and off trains while Shon stayed on the phone.
She spotted one of the men on the train locking eyes with her and repeatedly gesturing at each stop as if asking whether she was getting off.
Then help arrived from an unexpected stranger. A man on the train spoke to her in Spanish, and with Shon helping to translate, they realised he was trying to help.
“He said he was a security guard. He said it’s all safe,” Shon recalled.
Djanaya then described the moment he stepped in to protect her.
“He then took his massive big security puffer jacket, he took it off, wrapped it around me and pulled me under his arm and he’s like, stay close because they will grab you,” Djanaya said.
The off-duty guard stayed with her until she got into an Uber and made it back safely.
The next day, Djanaya went to the Australian embassy for help before later returning home.
Former UK detective Anthony Dunkerley told A Current Affair the approach Djanaya described matched a known grooming tactic used by traffickers.
“The lover boy sort of method there so generally what we will see in a human trafficking scenario is that someone often nice on the eye, very nice to the person, and it’s sort of a grooming technique,” Mr Dunkerley said.
Djanaya shared her story a year later to warn other solo travellers. She still travels alone, but with a sharper sense of risk.
“You hear of these stories happening but you never think it’s going to happen to you,” Shon said.
For Djanaya, the reason for speaking out is simple.
“If I save one person, I’m happy.”
