Girl aged 13 stabbed 'rapist' with his own knife to flee from sex attack

Igor Danilov, 34, confessed to intending to rape the schoolgirl as Maria walked home from a bus station in Barnaul. He grabbed her hair and waving a knife in her face, threatened to kill her if she refused to have sex in a nearby forest, according to Olga Chesnokova, the senior assistant to the head of Altai Regional Investigative Committee. 

He also seized her phone and cancelled calls from her worried mother Irina who was trying to checking that the girl safe as she walked home. In the forest, the attacker threw Maria on the ground and ordered her to undress. Frightened for her life, she started to unbutton her coat, but then Danilov put down his life on the ground as he fumbled to undo the belt on his trousers. 

Maria immediately grabbed the knife, and stabbed him twice in the chest. He fought to grab the knife back, and she was cut several times in the struggle, but managed to get free. Maria and her mother have gone public on the case as a warning to other girls and women on the threat from sex attackers, despite the trauma of reliving a moment when hew could have killed her. 

'He grabbed her hair, pulling her backwards and grabbed her neck with his other hand, she screamed,' said Irina. 'Then he put a knife to her neck and made her turn and go backwards. He was talking to her on the way, asking her name and how old she was. Maria says she kept chatting to him. She asked him if he was going to rape her, and he said no. She begged to let her go and promised not to tell anybody, so he said threateningly: 'You will never tell anything to anybody'.

As he prepared to rape her, she suddenly saw he had let the knife go as his belt became stuck. 'Maria turned and saw the knife, she grabbed it quickly with her left hand and stabbed the rapist into the right side of his body. 

'He tried to get back the knife and they began to fight. She beat him with his hand, and tried to kick him with her legs, she understood that he would kill her if she lets the knife go. 

'Somehow at one moment she managed to grab the knife with her right hand too and stabbed him again. He shrieked with pain, promised not to kill her if she stopped but then he grabbed the knife right on the blade - and Maria stabbed him again.'

Wounded, he could not prevent Maria grabbing her bag and fleeing. At a safe distance she called her mother: 'Mama, he wanted to rape and kill me. Be quick!' Her parents drove to find her. 'She was all in blood, her face, hands, coat, shirt. I was crying and she was tried to calm me down, saying it was not her blood.'

Maria told her mother: 'At that moment I wanted to get home so much. I realised that if he killed me, you wouldn't be able to live without me. I love you so much, mama.'

Bleeding heavily, the attacker managed to walk from the scene and caught a bus to a medical centre to receive first aid. Maria's parents alerted police and Danilov was arrested soon afterwards.

He confessed to police and will be charged with 'violent sexual actions against a child under 14', according to Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper. 

The attack came six months after he had been released from jail for beating and robbing a six year old boy. Earlier he had been jailed for a stabbing to death a mother and six year old boy, a crime that he committed when he was underage, so he did not received a life sentence. The attack was in September, but details were only now released. Maria is now back at school and recovering surprisingly well from her ordeal, say psychologists who have treated her.