BY CHARLOTTE METCALF ON 1/09/15 AT 3:22 AM EST

The woman who greets me at Addis Ababa airport is very different from the traumatised girl I last saw in 1998. When I hugged Aberash Bekele goodbye 16 years ago, I had just finished filming a BBC documentary about her called Schoolgirl Killer. At 14, Bekele was kidnapped by a gang of horsemen, raped and then put on trial for killing her abductor.

Her story forced Ethiopia to confront its brutal customs and change its laws. Today she's the mother of a 10-year-old son; she's plumper, her hair is hennaed and styled, her shoes sparkly, her nails varnished gold. Her story has now been made into a feature film called Difret. Executive produced by Angelina Jolie, Difret has already won awards at the Sundance, Berlin, Montreal and Amsterdam film festivals and Bekele is once again the talk of the nation.

Bekele is one of 11 children (now aged between 52 and 19) by the same mother and grew up outside Kersa, a small remote town in Arsii, southern Ethiopia, where her parents are subsistence farmers. She was on her way home from school when horsemen with whips and lassoos surrounded her, grabbed her, threw her over a saddle and took her to a hut where she was locked up and raped.

Her rapist then announced he was her husband-to-be. In Arsii it was the custom that if you wanted a wife you went out and kidnapped one and it's estimated that, in 1998, 30% of marriages were initiated this way, with varying levels of violence.

Bekele escaped, stealing the guard's gun. When her abductor and his men gave chase, she threatened to fire but they ignored her. So she pulled the trigger.

Bekele was nearly murdered by the furious mob that gathered but was rescued by family friends, then arrested and put on trial. She became the first cause célèbre for the Ethiopian Women Lawyers' Association and was finally released on the grounds of her youth and acting in self-defence.

Despite her release, Bekele was exiled by the Kersa elders who didn't recognise the courts. Unable to return to her family, and in danger from revenge threats by her dead abductor's family, she fled to Addis.

When Schoolgirl Killer aired on the BBC in 1999, it struck a chord with the British public, who sent in enough money to send Bekele to a safe boarding school to finish her education. I lost touch with her until last year when an Ethiopian cameraman alerted me to Difret.

I went to see it at the London Film Festival. Centre stage, as the main character, rather than Bekele, was Meaza Ashenafi, the then head of the Women Lawyers' Association, whom I had interviewed for Schoolgirl Killer. The producers had changed Bekele's name, but some scenes in the film were almost identical to Schoolgirl Killer. I found Bekele and flew to Addis.

Bekele now works there for Harmee, an NGO that aims to eliminate violence against women in Arsii. Dr Daniel Keftassa, who founded Harmee in 2006, picked me up from the airport with Bekele and we made the five-hour drive to Kersa, where Harmee has its headquarters, and where

Bekele's family still lives. On the way, she told me about the film. She was never consulted during its making, and when she found out about it and confronted Ashenafi and the producers, they told her the film was not about her.

Rounds of legal negotiation followed but no-one agreed to put Bekele's name on the film. So, on the night of the film's première, she obtained a last minute court injunction to stop it being screened.

The producers had just screened Jolie's televised address, in which she said that Difret was based on the "untold story of Aberash Bekele," when she arrived with the necessary papers. Bekele ultimately signed an agreement, which means she feels unable to complain or take further action.

Meanwhile, the film was temporarily released in Ethiopia but blocked again by the children of Bekele's defence barrister. The film's producers did not respond to a request for comment nor did Jolie's personal assistant acknowledge receipt of emails.

Bekele, Keftassa and I arrived in Kersa. Apart from a new mosque, it's the same shambles of mud and corrugated iron shacks strung along a few dirt roads. We went immediately to see Bekele's family, who live a walk away from a new dirt road in a thatched hut on their farm.

After eating, we sat around a fire under the stars. The grandchildren began dancing as one of the daughters beat out a rhythm on a plastic jerrycan and the family sung traditional Oromo songs. Bekele looked happy as she sat in her father's embrace, a small nephew on her knee.

Her brother told me about the day she was abducted. He was in the same class at school and went home early. As he cradled his infant son, it clearly still haunted him that he was unable to protect his sister.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3it3fMR-To