Man who chased woman off cliff and sexually assaulted her as she lay with broken back gets 5-year sentence

Hannah Gavios, from New York, and her family are trying to raise £165,000 to pay for treatment to help her walk again

Hannah Gavios, pictured here in Cambodia (Hannah Gavios/Facebook )

The family of a woman who was sexually assaulted after she fell 150ft down a cliff has slammed the sentence given to her attacker.

Hannah Gavios, a 23-year-old from New York, lay trapped on rocks with a broken back in Thailand while Apai Ruangwong, 28, sexually assaulted her.

Ruangwong was sentenced to 10 years in prison but this was cut in half because he pleaded guilty.

Gwen Gavios, Hannah’s mother, criticised the sentence and said her daughter would suffer the consequences of the attack for the rest of her life.

“I am dismayed that it is automatically cut down to five years because of a guilty plea,” she told the New York Times.

Ms Gavios, who was teaching English in Vietnam, had been in Thailand for one day when she became lost. She entered a local tourist shop and Ruangwong offered to help.

He led her up a rocky trail and then pinned her down in an attempt to sexually assault her. She fought him off, biting off part of his ear but as she was fleeing, she fell over the side of a cliff.

Ms Gavios said she hit her head multiple times on the fall and thought she was going to die.

“I felt like a total vegetable. I felt completely vulnerable. I couldn't move anything,” the Daily Mail reported Ms Gavios as saying.

“I was stuck with this crazy person. I was in the woods in the bushes with wild snakes crawling on me while he was still continuing to harass me. He got on top of me. He didn't rape me but he did everything else,” she added.

Ms Gavios still has no feeling in her feet, ankles and backside and is learning to walk again. Her parents have been raising money for her treatment and now need up to $200,000 (about £165,000) to help her walk again, according to the Mail.

A GoFundMe page has been set up in an attempt to raise the money for Ms Gavios’s recovery.