Fullpage article in The Age Newspaper - Melbourne, Australia
June 25th, 2005

A couple held in Russia can truly empathise with Douglas Wood, reports Meaghan Shaw.
Thirteen years ago, another Melbourne man with the initials DW was kidnapped by rebels with links to al-Qaeda. Like Douglas Wood, he had a wife Yvonne, who, like the Woods, now lives in California. Their story also made front-page news around the world.
For Daniel Weinstock and Yvonne Bornstein, Mr Wood's kidnapping and last week's dramatic rescue in Iraq have brought back painful memories of their own hostage hell in Moscow in 1992.
The couple, who were doing business in Russia, were held for a $US1.6 million ransom for 11 days by their former business partner following a botched deal. They were tortured before being rescued in a military-style raid in the first open collaboration between the FBI, the former KGB and Australian Federal Police.
Seeing Mr Wood bruised, shaven and dishevelled in his hostage video took Ms Bornstein right back to the house in which she was raped, beaten with a stick embedded with nails and tormented with psychological games.
"I've been following the Douglas Wood thing day in and day out because my heart was bleeding for him because I know how the poor bugger feels," she said.
The trauma took its toll on the Weinstocks: they lost their house and business and ultimately their marriage.
Ms Bornstein, who has remarried and moved to the US, said she locked herself away for years, unable to talk to anyone, unable to deal with her children, suffering nightmares and relying on sleeping pills. "I'm still a bit scared even these days," she said.
But writing a book about her experiences last year finally allowed her to open up. She said her many speaking engagements had become "the best therapy".
"I found I was able to distance myself from the trauma by feeling like it wasn't me I was talking about any more," she said.
Ms Bornstein is looking for an Australian publisher for her book, Eleven Days of Hell, and she recommends that Mr Wood write about his experiences.
She has no problem with him making money from his story, which so far includes an estimated $400,000 for a television deal from the Ten Network and $100,000 from New Idea.
"He'll never go back to Baghdad," she said. "But that was his livelihood, that was his business. So if he's getting $400,000 for an interview, call it income for the next two or three years, money that he might have been able to make overseas but now can't. Good luck to him, I say."
The Weinstocks received about $20,000 for their story in 1992. They did exclusive deals with A Current Affair and the Herald Sun, and signed an option agreement with Village Roadshow for a feature film.
Ms Bornstein said the money paid some bills but she was not really capable of talking to anybody then. In fact, she sat for 48 hours on the windowsill of the Australian embassy apartment they were first taken to in Moscow, unable to sleep for fear of someone outside waiting to kill them.
Mr Weinstock, who still lives in Melbourne, said he wanted to put the whole thing behind him. "I don't really want to bring it all back, thanks," he said.
Mr Wood's rescue brought back the bad memories. "There are few people in the world who understand a lot about what he's gone through and I'd be one of them," he said. "It takes a long time to recover, physically and mentally, and he's only at the very beginning of that process, whether he's prepared to admit it or not."