Marcus Martin: Australian man who repeatedly raped British backpacker in outback jailed for 10 years

‘He pretty much changed my mind to believe that if I ever was away from him he’d murder me’

Elisha Greer, now 24, was held hostage and forced to drive almost 1,000 miles through Australia (Channel 7)

An Australian man who repeatedly raped a British backpacker as he drove around with her for five weeks in the Australian outback has been jailed for 10 years.

Marcus Allyn Keith Martin, 24, kept Elisha Greer, from Liverpool, captive after kidnapping her, then forced her to travel around Queensland with him while he was high on drugs.

He threatened to kill her or hurt her family if she ever left, she said.

Ms Greer had gone to Australia in 2015, aged 22, and met Martin at a party in 2017, after which he stayed with her. They started travelling after being evicted.

When his personality suddenly changed, he revealed a gun and forced her to drive him so he could rob a drug dealer, she said.

“He pretty much changed my mind to believe that if I ever was away from him he’d murder me,” she said.

“It all became a little bit numb. So you sort of, not get used to it, but you don’t think about it any more so it just becomes normal.”

She said Martin, who was often high on crystal meth, had paranoid thoughts and believed she was from Interpol.

In her efforts to get away, Ms Greer said she once wrote “please help me” in a visitors’ book somewhere they visited.

Martin was eventually caught when she drove away from a petrol station without paying for fuel, in the hope police would arrest them. Officers pulled over their 4x4 and found Martin hiding in the back.

Ms Greer was bruised and battered when she was rescued.

Service station manager Beverley Page said at the time that Ms Greer was crying and shaking when she explained she could not pay for fuel because her ex-boyfriend had her wallet.

“He was crazy,” Ms Greer told Australian television earlier this month. “Completely and utterly crazy.”

Ms Greer, now 24, said 10 charges against Martin, eight of rape, one of serious cruelty to animals and one of torture, had been dropped – but he had pleaded guilty to three counts of rape and one count of deprivation of liberty.

She said: “I’m happy that it’s finally going to be over but I am a bit annoyed that he is not getting all of the sentencing done, because I don’t think that’s fair.”