Brit model Chloe Ayling poses heartbreaking 13-word question after kidnap ordeal

A British model kidnapped by a thug begged to know what made her story "so unbelievable" in a poignant documentary last night.

Staring directly into the camera, Chloe Ayling asked: "What is it about me and my story that makes this so unbelievable?" at the start of the BBC programme Chloe Ayling: My Unbelievable Kidnapping. She led with the question because the documentary later told the audience people still don't believe her - eight years on.

But that is despite the jail sentence of Lukasz Herba, a 30-year-old Polish computer programmer from Oldbury, West Midlands, who had drugged, kidnapped and driven Chloe 120 miles to a remote farmhouse near Turin, where she was held hostage for one week. The documentary comes after a man brutally killed a woman on their first date and left her body parts around a town.

The show highlighted how Chloe, then 20, was dismissed as a money-grabber who wanted only to be famous. She was encouraged by her agent to go to Milan for a modelling job, but this was actually fake and a lure by Herba to entrap Chloe.

READ MORE: British tourist who ignored warnings fined £12,000 after rescue in Italy

READ MORE: Man who 'sexually abused shackled girlfriend for two weeks' RELEASED from jail

Herba was primed to grab the glamour model from behind and bundle her into a suitcase. Injected with ketamine and chained to furniture, she was forced to sleep on the floor of a remote farmhouse.

Photographs of her lying unconscious in skimpy clothing were sent to her manager in London, along with a demand for €300,000 (£260,000). If the ransom wasn’t paid within a week, she would be auctioned off as a sex slave.

READ MORE: Urgent manhunt after murders of four family members and baby found in abandoned car

Although she was eventually released, Chloe faced another battle to rebuild her life because many didn't believe her graphic and appalling story. Recalling her childhood, Chloe, now 28, said in the documentary: "I had a lot of difficulties with communication... I’d react in the wrong way. If I was being told off I would smile. I just had the wrong reactions to things."

The model, from Croydon, south London, told how she has since been diagnosed with autism, something she believes explains so much – not just about her reactions during her kidnap ordeal, but about her life before and since.

In the TV show last night, the mum continued: "Autism plays a big part in the way that I reacted, and that was confusing to neurotypical people... People disassociate with events that have happened or have a delayed reaction, especially after trauma. So, it can’t all be put down to a diagnosis, and that shouldn’t affect the way people treated me."