AN Aussie mum who was raped and beaten in a savage robbery in Rome says her attackers were “beasts” who left her “in pieces”.

Italian police said they were shocked by the savagery of the assault on Sunday, in which the 49-year-old Melbourne mother suffered concussion, a broken nose and such severe bruising she is expected to spend a month in hospital.

The woman’s daughter told News Corp her mother was “not doing well”.

“She has bruises all over her face and a broken nose,” the daughter said, after speaking to her over the phone in the days after the assault.

The recently divorced Sandringham woman was towards the end of a study tour in Rome when she stopped to ask directions from a man near a bar at the Termini railway station where she had been drinking.

She said he offered to walk with her to show her the way and was soon joined by another man, who forced her to “a sort of a cabin” at the Colle Oppio park, near the Colosseum.

“I’m feeling so bad,” the woman told a local reporter from her hospital bed.

“They beat me brutally, non stop. The face, the nose, the left eye. I’m in pieces.

“And then what they did to me after, I can’t even think about it.”

The woman said her only wish was to see her daughter.

“I hope they get who did this to me, but now I just would like to speak to my daughter,” she said.

“She is on the other side of the world and she is the only person I would like next to me now.”

The woman told police she couldn’t remember the sexual assault but recounted how she was punched in the face and had her purse stolen.

She was found unconscious, with her hands tied behind her back, by a passer-by who took her to the nearby San Giovanni hospital.

Police yesterday charged a homeless man over the attack after he was found carrying Australian currency, and said they had returned the victim’s belongings to her.

They said they were still investigating the attack and searching for a second man. They charged the 40 year old Romanian man with sexual assault, robbery and bodily harm after they identified him from CCTV footage taken at the Termini bar.

It was the second serious assault in a fortnight on a foreign woman in the Italian capital, with a 49 year old Brazilian woman kidnapped, raped and beaten by two men and a woman near the Tuscolana train station on September 25.