A woman has described her struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder after she was sedated with drugged strawberries and then held prisoner in a bunker for six days by a doctor likened to a “Swedish Josef Fritzl”.
Appearing under the pseudonym “Isabel Eriksson”, the 39-year-old former escort said in a Swedish documentary series that she felt “panicked” and “powerless” as she was kidnapped from Stockholm and locked away on a farm 350 miles away to the south in 2015.
Her captor, Martin Trenneborg, now 47, admitted to her abduction several months later and was sentenced to ten years in prison.
Martin Trenneborg, pictured in court. He has been sentenced to ten years in prison
Josef Fritzl kept his daughter captive for 24 years, raping her thousands of times
ROBERT JAEGER/AP
The case has drawn comparisons to Fritzl, now 89, a retired industrial salesman in Austria who incarcerated and sexually abused his daughter Elisabeth for 24 years until she escaped in 2008.
Eriksson was working as a £2,000-a-night escort at the time of her kidnapping. Trenneborg, who claimed to be an American stock trader, hired her for what she initially took to be a tolerable first date.
During their second encounter on September 12, 2015, however, he brought her champagne, orange juice and strawberries that had been laced with Rohypnol, a potent benzodiazepine.
The next thing she recalled was waking up in a soundproofed room with a cannula in her arm, she told the first episode of The Bunker Woman (The Bunker Woman), a Swedish true-crime miniseries that was broadcast on the Viaplay streaming service this week.
Martin Trenneborg’s house, where he built a soundproof bunker, in Ostra Goinge, north of Kristianstad, Sweden
JOHAN NILSSON/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
“I was completely panicked. I felt powerless,” she said.
Prosecutors told Trenneborg’s trial in 2016 that he had begun building his “sex bunker” on a remote farm near Kristianstad five years before the crime.
With walls of reinforced concrete more than 30cm thick, the 60 sq m underground complex consisted of a bedroom, a kitchen, a toilet and a small unroofed courtyard.
Trenneborg told his victim she was to be his “girlfriend” and he planned to hold her prisoner for ten years, visiting her for sex two or three times a day.
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When she tried to attack him and escape, he overpowered her and told her he would extend her captivity and feed her only crispbread if she continued to rebel.
Masks were found in Trenneborg’s flat. He disguised himself when going out
IBL/SHUTTERSTOCK
During the daytime he would go out to work and in the evenings he would return, sometimes disguising himself in various masks. He also threatened to kidnap Eriksson’s mother if she failed to follow his commands.
In the end Trenneborg released Eriksson after less than a week when her mother reported her missing and his face began appearing on wanted posters. Eventually he handed himself in to police.
Eriksson, who briefly had an OnlyFans page on which subscribers paid £12 a month for “tasteful” pictures of her erotic modelling, previously told her story in a 2017 book titled You Are Mine.
