Model Chloe Ayling has told her lawyer she is saddened that many people do not believe she was kidnapped in Italy last summer, as a trial begins in Milan.
Lucasz Herba, 30, is accused of luring the 20-year-old from south London to Milan with the promise of a photoshoot, and then kidnapping her for a ransom.
Ms Ayling's lawyer, Francesco Pesce, told the BBC his client had been terrorised and threatened with death.
Mr Herba argues that Ms Ayling was a willing participant in her abduction.
On the first day of the trial on Wednesday, a police officer told the Milan court that Ms Ayling had been drugged, handcuffed and transported in a suitcase.
He said she had suffered mental and physical abuse during the six-day ordeal last July.
Speaking to the BBC, Mr Pesce said Ms Ayling would not give evidence in court because she did not want to see her alleged kidnapper's face again.
He said she had been interrogated for almost 13 hours last August and her request not to return to Italy for the trial had been granted.
"She's had enough," he said, adding that she was currently "putting herself back together" and had returned to modelling.
"She is saddened by the fact that many people don't believe her story. But she is strong and she will carry on," he said.
Asked about a video which emerged of Ms Ayling and Mr Herba holding hands, Mr Pesce said: "There is nothing to defend.
"She doesn't appear to be happy or smiley - she acts like a hostage.
"She was being terrorised by this man, who kidnapped her and took her to a place in the middle of nowhere. It was psychological terrorism."
Mr Pesce said Ms Ayling's alleged kidnapper threatened to kill her if she tried anything so she "played the friendship card".
"She wanted to stay on his good side - as the alternative was to die," he said.
"She thought this was her only hope... and it worked."
Mr Pesce said Mr Herba seemed to have a "change of heart" when he discovered Ms Ayling was a mother, and told her he would free her.
If convicted, Mr Herba, from Poland, faces up to 25 years in prison for abduction.
Chloe Ayling helped write her own ransom letter and promised to be her captor’s girlfriend, a court has heard.
Speaking for the first time at his trial in Milan, Lucasz Herba, 30 claimed Chloe agreed to the fake kidnap because she wanted money and fame.
The glamour model even took ketamine to fool police into thinking it was a real crime, the court heard.
Chloe, 20 claims she was drugged, stuffed in a bag and held in a mountain village for a week, after being lured to a fake photo shoot in Milan last July.
She claimed she was to be sold on the dark web by a gang called Black Death.
But doubts arose about her version of events after it emerged that she went shopping with her kidnapper and shared a bed with him.
Asked by prosecutor Paolo Storari who kidnapped Chloe, Herba told the court: "It’s complicated. I planned it but it wasn’t like she said".
Polish Herba, who has lived in the UK for 8 years, befriended Chloe in 2015 on Facebook.
The pair even went out for dinner and dancing near her home in Surrey, the court heard, later keeping in touch on social media.
Chloe had financial problems and was frustrated that her modelling career hadn’t taken off, Herba claimed.
Speaking through a translator he told the court that Chloe mentioned "a film where there was an organization that kidnapped and sold women, and that such an incident would be very useful so that people would know who she was".
She thought her money problems were resolved when she dated wealthy businessman Rory McCarthy, but when the relationship ended badly, "the idea of the kidnap was born", Herba told the court.
Herba admitted that he booked Chloe for a fake photoshoot in Milan last July, but claimed that once she arrived she agreed to the plan and was convinced it would make her famous.
Herba never threatened her "physically or psychologically" he told the court.
She voluntarily posed for pictures where she appeared drugged and unconscious to send with the ransom note and climbed into a large black bag "of her own accord in order to leave traces," he said.
The pair wrote the ransom notes together because Herba’s written English was not good, the court heard.
Asked if he remembered writing an email to Chloe’s agent Phil Green saying he was "a mid-high level hitman with Black Death" Herba said. "I remember it well. I wrote it together with the girl".
Chloe’s lawyer Francesco Pesce said that there was "absolutely no way" that Chloe helped write the ransom note.
Herba, dressed in a blue fleece, told the court that Chloe "said that we could divide the money and if it went well we could start a relationship."
Herba said that the pair went shopping and walking in the mountains during the alleged kidnapping. He told the court: "Often we went out because there was nothing to do in the house. We went to buy stuff for her, she didn’t even have a toothbrush".
When they went shopping she usually stayed in the car but sometimes they took walks together, "in the back of the village which was uninhabited."
On July 18 Herba took Chloe to the British consulate in Milan where he was held and questioned. He was unaware that police were on his trail and not expecting to be arrested, he told the court.
The pair thought that their publicity stunt had failed, the court heard, as no media had written about it.
The plan was that Chloe would blame other people for the kidnap, and withdraw from any criminal procedure, he said.
The prosecutor asked for a psychological examination of Herba.
Model Chloe Ayling says she feels "vindicated" after the man she accused of kidnapping her was convicted and jailed for almost 17 years.
Ms Ayling was lured to Italy from London on the promise of a photo shoot by Lucasz Herba, who drugged her and took her to a farmhouse in a holdall.
Herba, 30, held her there for six days in July 2017, and demanded a 300,000 Euro (£265,000) ransom.
The Polish national was jailed following a trial at a court in Milan.
The court heard he offered Ms Ayling for sale online, before handing her over to the British consulate.
Herba - described by prosecutors as a "narcissist and a fantasist who was obsessed with Miss Ayling" - was also found guilty of attempted extortion and carrying false documents.
He was jailed for 16 years and nine months.
Herba had claimed Ms Ayling went with him willingly, which she denied.
