In another world, Aicha Otemane might be hailed as a heroine. Here, she is among the banished.

More than 15 months after escaping from Islamic insurgents who kidnapped her, raped her and kept her as a slave, she still lives in a nightmare. Her honor is tarnished, her home life shattered, her future uncertain.

Kidnapping women during attacks is a common practice of the Islamic radicals whose seven-year insurgency has led to at least 75,000 deaths.

The captives amount to war booty, used for sexual pleasure and chores like cooking and washing, experts say. The women usually are disposed of with a bullet or a knife once they have served their purpose, become pregnant or otherwise prove too burdensome.

Those who do escape, often during attacks by security forces, return to a new hell in a culture that prizes sexual purity. Few dare seek help and most shroud themselves in silent shame.

Salima Tlemcani, a reporter for the newspaper El Watan who has studied this plight, said more than 3,300 women were kidnapped between 1992 and July 1998.

"These kidnappings have affected the whole north of Algeria,'' said Cherifa Bouada, a psychologist who works with victims of the violence, including escapees. "These are invisible things. The girl hides it. The family hides it. The state hides it.''

Aicha, a 44-year-old mother of eight, is among the rare survivors who have spoken publicly about their ordeals.

Kidnapped in December 1997, she escaped after about three weeks and did not become pregnant from the nights of rape she endured. Still, she is shunned for carrying the stigma of rape, and for identifying former villagers who had joined the insurgency and were among her captors.

Speaking in Arabic through a translator, Aicha recounted a twisted drama that hints at the complex links between insurgents and their victims and illustrates the plight of isolated and unprotected peasants.

Her husband already was in prison for giving vegetables normally sold at market to insurgents. She claimed he did so to buy protection for his family.

Aicha, from Hamam Righa in the Chlef region, between the capital Algiers and the western city of Oran, was grazing sheep when captured by a gang of 11 men armed with sabers, AK-47s and hunting rifles. At their encampment, Aicha quickly realized her captors included men from her village.

She slept in one of about a dozen small tents with various captors whoraped her, sometimes up to three in one night.

During the day, she prepared the traditional wheat staple semolina, cleaned chickens and washed clothes -- including, she said, police uniforms used by the insurgents to set up fake roadblocks. The tactic is used to rob and kill travelers.

She saw no other women, but saw women's clothes. "They said to me: 'Here are Fetiha's clothes. Her throat was slit a week ago.' ''

One day Aicha resolved to escape. Two men were in her tent that night. One man slept deeply, the other lightly and Aicha not at all. After waiting to hear the second man snore, she slipped out.

The moon shone. All was quiet. She ran. When her bare feet hurt too much, she crawled. Finally, she came upon a farmhouse, covered her bare head with her long dress and approached. She was delivered to security forces, who questioned her for days.

For Aicha, the first nightmare ended. She lives another today. New threats came after she returned home from villagers angry she identified neighbors as "terrorists.''

With her husband still in jail, she and five of her children left for Algiers, staying at a center run by SOS-Women in Distress. The three oldest children were sent to relatives. A month ago, Aicha had to move to a state shelter in Birkadem, outside Algiers, which has a three-month limit on her stay.

The kidnapped woman "pays with her honor and her body, and now.. . she is ignored by the entire society,'' said Cherifa Kheddar, president of Our Algeria, a victims' help group.

The former director of the SOS-Women in Distress center, Nadia Siamer, recounted the story of a young woman kidnapped near the coastal town of Tipaza and freed by security forces. She gave birth to a baby conceived in captivity, put the infant in an orphanage and "is now in the street,'' she said. "That woman didn't want to return to her parents. They told me, 'Our daughter is dead.' It is the shame of the village.''

Aicha strives for normalcy, taking her 12-year-old son to school in Algiers each day by bus and roaming the streets until school ends.

She longs for "the peaceful life . . . with my children, my sheep, my goats, my little house,'' she says. But she knows it is not to be. "Had I known (my fate), I never would have denounced anyone,'' Aicha said. "I would have done like the others'' -- kept silent.