‘His eyes bore into my skull’: A former Irish expat singles out Madeleine McCann’s suspect Christian Brueckner as her rapist as she tells court he was wearing women’s tights and underwear in the horror attack

A FORMER expat who claims she was raped by Madeleine McCann’s rape suspect Christian Brueckner has insisted she will never forget his “piercing” blue eyes.

This comes after Hazel Behan, 40, was accused of making up the rape allegations against the German sex offender.

When she confronted her attacker on her second day of testimony in a German court, the mother-of-three said his eyes were “boring into my skull.”

It was those “very intense blue eyes” that made her come forward when Brueckner, 47, became the prime suspect in the McCann case in June 2020.

READ MORE: Day 1 of testimony from Irish alleged Brueckner victim

In particular, she had recognized his eyes from a photo she had seen of him on Google.

“I felt physically sick when I saw her,” she told the Braunschweig court as Brückner sat and stared at her from just four meters away.

Towards the end of the grueling six-hour session, she added: “I think this man is the attacker,” looking directly at him.

She then recalled more details of the harrowing attack when she was 20 while working at a holiday resort in Portimao, Portugal, in 2004.

For a second day, she was asked to recall being woken up by her attacker carrying a knife and wearing a mask that showed only his eyes.

“When you’re in that situation and you can’t see anything other than their eyes, that’s the only thing you remember,” she said.

“They are burned into my skull and I will never forget them. They were so blue, everything was so dark, but they shone so bright, I will never forget them.”

When Brückner’s lawyer Friedrich Fulscher asked how many times she looked into his eyes during the attack, she replied: “I couldn’t count how many times and for how long.” But he was the only person in the room with me and the only person that I could see.

“They left a big mark on me. They were just very, very blue.”

The former vacation representative, who now works in administration, was then asked if she remembered anything “unusual” about her attacker, who filmed the attack by carefully placing a camera next to the knife on her television.

She again pointed out the distinct “print” or “dark spot” on his right thigh and that he had been acting very strangely, was wearing women’s tights or a leotard and smelled of shampoo.

She had previously suspected it was a cross-like mark, a tattoo or a “pull” in the 60-denier pantyhose Brueckner was wearing. He denies having such a mark.

“His behavior was really not normal. I found him very aggressive, even hateful,” she said. “I felt like he thought: I’m the man, I’m in control.”

She continued: “He smelled like shampoo, a shampoo that my mother had bought me and that I had in the bathroom.” She couldn’t explain why.

“He didn’t wear shoes and his tights were 60 denier, definitely tights. Over that he wore what looked like women’s underwear, some kind of flexible material, like bikini bottoms,” she recalls.

The day before, she told the court she smelled the fruit-flavored condoms he had taken to the attack, which came in a purple package.

The court continued to hear allegations that she may have fabricated the rape, although she continued to suffer pain and panic attacks to this day.

Behan, from County Westmeath, told Judge Ute Engelmann she “couldn’t understand” why her ex-partner claimed she had “lied” about the incident.

When the judge announced that British expat Jason Coates had sent an email claiming she had fabricated the rape, Behan hit back, suggesting he was bitter.

She said they hadn’t spoken for 15 years, despite having a son together, and he practically “threw her bags on the street” outside her home in Portugal and told her to leave in February 2007.

The debate centered on the relevance of the fact that police in Portugal found his DNA in her underwear at the time of the attack.

The judge asked if she was having sex with Coates at the time of the incident. She said she thought so, but couldn’t remember exactly when.

But she said Coates “didn’t want a baby” and said she was just another “statistic.”

She told the court: “He said he didn’t like the way I looked pregnant and when he put my bags on the street he said he didn’t care what happened to me and that I was dirty.”

She continued, “Jason told me he would spend the rest of his life talking badly about me so people would hate me.”

Behan said she was raped after being followed home from an Irish pub in Portimao where she argued with Coates, whom German police are trying to locate in Spain and France.

She reiterated that she felt like she was being watched from a “wasteland” overlooking her apartment and that someone had broken into her home “about two weeks before.”

Money had disappeared from the apartment, around 70 euros, which her boss kindly replaced.

She also said the lock on her first floor balcony door was broken and despite complaints to repair it or move her to a higher floor, management at Clube Praia da Rocha ignored her.

Shamefully, there were “a series of steps” up to a fire hydrant cover just below the balcony, making access even easier.

Brueckner – who was described as a prolific burglar and “master climber” – was living in the area at the time and was a member of the local Casino da Praia da Rocha, the Olive Press can reveal.

He also regularly camped on nearby beaches in his distinctive blue and white VW van.

He is currently serving a seven-year prison sentence for the sadistic rape of an American woman, Diana Menkes, 72, in nearby Praia da Luz in 2005.

The then three-year-old British toddler Madeleine was snatched from her holiday bed at the resort two years later, on May 3, 2007.

In the current trial, Brückner is facing four other sex crimes, all of which were committed in the Algarve between 2000 and 2017 and included two rapes and two attacks on children.

Behan waived her right to anonymity and agreed to testify in a public trial rather than a private hearing she was offered to “encourage” other women to come forward to rape centers around the world.

“I wanted other women to feel like there was a safe place to go,” she told the court. “I had nowhere to go when it happened to me, that was the reason.”