A TERRIFIED victim of a brutal two-day rape and torture ordeal has hit out at the ‘shocking’ sentence handed down to her attacker — and told of her horror that he’s launched a bid for freedom.

Pauline Marshall — who was kept prisoner by vicious screwdriver pervert Eric Schrickel — trembled and wept as she declared herself ‘panic-stricken’ that he has lodged an appeal against his conviction and prison term.

The Port Glasgow mum-of-two — who has bravely waived her right to anonymity in order to speak out — told the Telegraph how she suffers nightmares and flashbacks about the sexual violence that warped Schrickel inflicted upon her.

Pauline, 42, said: “I’m not functioning — I got two hours sleep last night.

“The nightmares are horrendous and so real. My son told me that I was shouting out in my sleep, ‘Leave me alone, get away from me’.”

With tears running down her cheeks, Pauline added: “I cannae go outside — he’s ruined me.”

The Telegraph told in May how rapist Schrickel, 42, meted out a ‘prolonged and sustained’ life-threatening sex attack on Pauline within his flat on Greenock’s Gael Street in July last year.

He repeatedly tried to kiss her and when she rejected his unwanted advances he battered her on the head and body with a chopping board, knocked her to the floor and straddled her.

Schrickel restricted Pauline’s breathing by pressing the board against her neck and also compressed her throat with his hand, causing her to lose consciousness.

He then raped her.

A High Court jury found him guilty of raping Pauline to her severe injury and to the danger of her life after she was forced to relive the horror in the witness box.

Detective Inspector Louise Harvie, of a specialist rape investigation unit, said at the time: “I am in no doubt that Eric Schrickel is a dangerous man and our communities are safer now he has been jailed.”

But Schrickel could soon be back on the streets of Inverclyde if his appeal is successful, and Pauline told how she is living in dread of that prospect.

She said: “I’m feart he’s going to be out walking about again and do what he did to me to some other poor lassie.

“I’m panic-stricken to think that I might bump into him in the street myself and see him again.”

“I’ve got a rape alarm too and to think that I might need to press it terrifies me.

“I never go out the door. My friend, my daughter and my mam bring me stuff.”

Asked what she would say to Schrickel if she could, Pauline immediately responded: “I’d say to him, ‘Own it — own what you did to me!’

“They’ve got DNA on him, so I don’t know why he’s appealing it. I nearly fainted when I found that out.

“I’m raging about it, so angry that he’s doing this to me after what he put me through.”

As well as the everlasting mental scars of her ordeal, Pauline still suffers physically in the wake of Schrickel’s violence.

She said: “From when he hit me with the board, I’ve still got a lump under my left breast and I’m worried about it.

“That, and internal injuries, affect my posture to this day. I can sit up straight but it’s sore.”

Pauline had gone to stay with Schrickel — whom she says acted like a ‘gentleman’ for a week — because she didn’t want to go back to her own home after needing hospital treatment as a result of being assaulted by a neighbour. 
She said: “Schrickel tortured me for two days. He was battering me as he raped me.

“When I came to he was poking a screwdriver into the corner of my eye. I thought I was going to die in there.

“He told me as much and said, ‘I won’t get the jail for it because of my mental health’.

“I got out of that house by the skin of my teeth.

“It was only because he was on cocaine and if you take that for a couple of days your body shuts down and you sleep.

“I was deliberately making noises by banging things off the floor and the walls to make sure that he was in a deep sleep and then I made a run for it.

“I collapsed immediately outside. There were two gardeners working nearby and they phoned an ambulance and the police for me, and I’d just like to thank them for that.”

Pauline slammed the seven-year sentence imposed on Schrickel by judge Lord Armstrong.

She said: “He should have got a life sentence because he’s given me a life sentence, and my family too.

“I just can’t understand that judge. I’d like to meet him and ask, ‘Can you explain why you gave him only seven years?’”

Pauline — a former drug user who has been clean for six years — says she has now been on methadone for around 20 years and she wants help from the authorities to be free of that too.

She said: “I want rehab, I just want help.

“I feel that everything is a hurdle, like I’m getting passed about from doctor to psychologist to someone else and that nothing is done to actually help me.

“I want to have some sort of life again.

“I feel let down, like I’m on my own.”

The Scottish Court Service confirmed that Schrickel has begun an appeal against both his rape conviction and sentence. A hearing date is yet to be fixed.