I used to be searched and thrown in a Dubai jail for making an attempt to kill myself

Standing on the shores of a windswept lough in rural Ireland, Tori Towey closes her eyes and breathes it all in. A gentle drizzle has turned to lashing rain, but nothing can wipe the smile from her face. ‘It’s good to be home,’ she says.

Less than a fortnight ago, Tori feared she might never see Ireland — or her family and friends — again.

Working as a flight attendant for Emirates airlines in Dubai, the 28-year-old had been living what — on the surface at least — looked like every young woman’s dream.

‘I travelled the world and saw so many amazing places: Sri Lanka, South Africa, loads of cities across Europe,’ she says.

‘And Dubai is really fun when you get there: it’s all yacht parties, ladies’ nights and wealthy people enjoying glitzy lives.

‘I used to love getting dressed up, going out to fancy restaurants and posting photographs online.’

But behind the glamour of her social media pictures lay a sinister reality. Tori was living in fear, battling physical and emotional abuse at the hands of her controlling husband, a fellow Emirates employee whom she married after a whirlwind three-month romance.

The torment became so unbearable, resulting in hospitalisation, police reports and her husband ripping up her passport, that at the end of last month, seeing no other way out, Tori tried to take her own life.

Mercifully, she survived. But her hellish journey wasn’t over yet.

For rather than receiving medical help, she found herself thrown in a Dubai jail that was notorious for torture and beatings, and charged with attempted suicide and alcohol consumption, both criminal offences under the United Arab Emirates’ archaic laws.

Worse still, because of the charges, she found herself facing a court hearing and potential prison sentence.

‘One lawyer told me that what I had done was equivalent to murder,’ she says.

All the while, she was forbidden from leaving the country even following her release, rendering her trapped 4,800 miles from home.

Thanks to a viral campaign on social media, however, led by the London-based legal group Detained in Dubai, which escalated her case to the Irish parliament and made headlines around the world, the criminal charges against Tori were dropped, her travel ban lifted — and last Thursday, she landed on home soil.

Sitting in the living room of her mother’s home in Boyle, Roscommon, this week, her skin still pale and her eyes dark-rimmed, Tori says none of it feels real.

‘I’m in shock,’ she admits. ‘I didn’t think I would ever get home. I felt like a criminal, when I’d done nothing wrong except try to survive. I had to abandon everything over there: my car, half my belongings, my little dog — I still don’t know what’s happened to her. The most important thing was to get out.’

Everything Tori has claimed in the past ten days about her horrific experiences in Dubai is, it is important to note, her version of events. She has never identified the man who allegedly abused her, whose callous behaviour drove her to the brink of suicide — and will not name him in this, her first ever newspaper interview.

Since she walked out of their shared house earlier this month, she has had no contact with him, and says she no longer has his contact details, nor those of his family.

Tori’s experience abroad, from the thrill of excitement when she first arrived in April 2023 to the depths of despair in which she left the UAE last week, is a world away from the quiet upbringing she had in the small town of nearby Ballaghaderreen.

Her mother, Caroline, is a social care worker and her father, John, from whom Caroline is separated, works for the electricity board. She and her older brother Andrew had a modest, happy childhood, but as she got older Tori longed for something more.

After college and a four-year stint working for Dublin City Council, she sold her car and travelled round Asia. In January 2023, she got a job as a flight attendant with Emirates in Dubai, a country she knew nothing about.

‘I moved over by myself on April 5,’ she recalls. ‘I had seven weeks of training and then, in June, I started flying. I absolutely loved it.’

Tori threw herself headlong into her new, exciting life. It wasn’t until last December, when she spent Christmas Day on her own, that she recalls feeling lonely for the first time. And that, in a moment of vulnerability, was when she met him. On a night out after a shift on December 27, a co-worker introduced her to a friend.

‘He was South African, a bit younger than me, and he worked for Emirates, too,’ Tori says. ‘We got on well, so well that soon we were spending every day together.

‘In the beginning it was great: he was romantic, he would bring me flowers, he was lovely and sweet. I remember ringing home and saying, ‘Oh my God, I’ve met this guy and he is the best thing ever.’

Things moved quickly — and in February, while out kayaking, he proposed. A besotted Tori didn’t hesitate to say yes.

‘Our plan was to have the wedding a year later in Cape Town, where he’s from,’ she says. ‘But we were both living in cabin crew accommodation, and for us to move in together, Emirates policy said we had to be married. So we brought the date forward and decided to do it in Abu Dhabi.’

Her dreams of a big white wedding dashed, there was no dress, no loved ones in attendance and no romantic vows. Instead, they went to a register office in the UAE capital, signed a certificate — ‘and that was it’.

The newlyweds found a house on the outskirts of Dubai and got a dog, a five-month-old pup called Rosie. It was then, however, that things took a turn for the worse.

‘All of a sudden, he became very jealous and controlling,’ Tori claims. ‘Once I had a female friend over while he was out, and he made me walk around the house with a camera to show that there were no men. He’d accuse me of being a whore and a drug addict — and make up lies. Once, I didn’t make enough pasta and he threw our dinner in the bin. When he wanted me to come home, he threatened to skin the dog.

‘He used to take my phone away to stop me contacting anyone. Sometimes he’d smash it — I went through three phones in a few months.’

Tori insists she’d never seen signs of this behaviour before they started living together. ‘He was good at hiding it. One minute he’d be normal, and the next something would come over him. You could see it in his eyes. I’ve never seen anger or violence like that.’

As his anger spiralled, he racked up huge bills on her credit cards, leaving her £8,500 in the red — a debt she is struggling to pay off.

In a desperate attempt to keep him calm, Tori began cutting loved ones off. Daily phone calls and FaceTime chats with her mum ceased, and friends’ anxious texts went unanswered.

‘I put my phone on airplane mode for three months,’ she admits. ‘I was so drained that I couldn’t keep arguing — all I wanted was to keep the peace.’

Then came the awful night in the spring when, after a violent outburst at a local bar, her husband came home to find her packing her belongings. What followed, she says, was a four-hour ordeal in which he choked her, held a knife to her throat and tried to break her arm by slamming it in a door.

Tori wipes tears from her eyes as she recalls screaming and pleading with him to stop, before making a dash for the front door, where her neighbours called the police.

‘I believed that if I stayed, I would die,’ she says. Photographs taken that night show Tori covered in blood and bruises, with ripped clothes and a tear-stained face. Emirates put her on sick leave for her mental health, offering her peer support, medical help and therapy — for which she is, today, very grateful. But she was too embarrassed to tell anyone what had happened, not even her family.

‘I kept thinking, how did I get this so wrong? Why did I marry him? Everyone’s going to think I’m crazy.’

She felt she had no escape: her debt meant she couldn’t afford to stay in a hotel, and he had ripped up her passport so she couldn’t fly home. Tori became a shadow of her former self.

‘My hair was falling out and my mouth was full of ulcers,’ she says. ‘I stopped caring about my appearance. I struggled to get out of bed.’

Though her husband would apologise, and sometimes cry about his violent outbursts, they didn’t cease.

‘I was walking on eggshells,’ she says. ‘He would ask me 20 times a day if I loved him. He would demand I hug him. My skin would crawl, but I had no choice.’

Then, on June 27, the pair had some drinks together at home. Tori had two or three glasses of wine; her husband was drinking brandy. A minor argument escalated and, out of nowhere, she says he started smashing glasses. Terrified he would kill her this time, Tori locked herself in the bathroom.

‘I’ve never been a depressed person,’ she says. ‘I’ve never had dark thoughts. But I remember thinking, ‘I know where this is going. If it goes on like last time, I’d rather take my own life’. So that’s what I tried to do.’

Tori blacked out. The next thing she remembers is paramedics and police — she presumes called by her husband — at the door, giving her oxygen.

At Al Barsha police station, an over-crowded and controversial institution which has been dubbed ‘hell on earth’, Tori was put in a women’s detention centre on the site.

Her crimes? Alcohol consumption and attempted suicide (which was supposedly decriminalised in 2020). Hysterical and confused, she was strip-searched and directed to the cells at 4am.

‘There were mattresses on the floor and 50 or so girls lying on them,’ Tori says. ‘They were from eastern Europe, the Philippines, all over. They had nothing: no clean clothes, no toothbrushes. There’s a bright light, like a surgical light, that stays on all night.

‘They were all in there for minor things, and some of them had been there seven, eight months. At that point, I thought, ‘I’m probably never going to get out’.’

Before officers confiscated her phone, she made one call: to her mother, who until this point had known nothing of her daughter’s distress.

Caroline sprang into action, calling the police and the Irish embassy in Dubai, and scrambled together enough money to get on the next flight.

It is her mum’s swift actions, Tori believes, which led to her release: at 11am she was told she could go. Caroline arrived shortly afterwards and, after an altercation with Tori’s husband, who, somehow, was allowed back to the couple’s house, the two escaped to an Airbnb.

But the now dropped charges against her remained — in fact, Tori was told that they had already been processed, with a hearing scheduled for July 18.

It was then that they contacted Detained in Dubai.

According to the organisation’s founder, lawyer Radha Stirling, countless foreigners have found themselves on the wrong side of Dubai’s draconian laws.

Both Tori and Radha are calling for travel warnings for foreigners visiting the country.

‘I would warn people to do their research before they go,’ says Tori. ‘I’d warn them to be careful getting married over there: domestic abuse is not taken seriously.’

As she talks, she twirls a dainty diamond ring — her wedding band — around her finger. When she left Dubai, she switched it from her left hand to her right, a sign of taking back control after months of torment.

‘I should take it off, but it’s a reminder that I will, eventually, have to do something about that,’ she says, sighing. ‘I also want to look into getting a protection order, because I worry that, one day, he might come and look for me.’

At home, surrounded by cards from well-wishers and fending off constant cups of tea from her mum, who’s never more than a few feet from her daughter’s side, Tori is still trying to process what she’s been through.

There have been lots of tears, long walks with the family dog, Caspar, and reunions with friends. Little by little, she’s learning to smile again.

‘I feel like I’m getting the old Tori back,’ she admits.

As for the future, she hasn’t given it much thought.

‘It’s so nice being back in Ireland. Even the weather,’ Tori laughs. ‘I used to have this dream of living in the sun, but never again. Now that I’m home, I don’t ever want to leave.’