CONTENT WARNING: This article discusses sexual assault. If you would like to talk to a counsellor about rape, sexual assault or domestic violence, give the people over at 1800 RESPECT a call on 1800 737 732.
The two Swedish students who stopped the sexual assault of a woman at Stanford University last year have broken their silence, describing the incident to Swedish newspaper Expressen.
Carl-Fredrik Arndt and Peter Jonsson, two PhD students at Stanford, were riding their bikes to a party when when they saw a man and a woman lying on the ground behind a dumpster. As they got closer, the scene began to look stranger and stranger. The woman wasn’t moving, said Arndt, while the man was moving a lot.
The pair decided to confront him. “Peter goes back and asks what he’s doing, and I follow,” said Arndt. “When he gets up, we see that she still is not moving in the slightest, so we go back and ask something like: ‘What the hell are you doing?’”
After a brief exchange, Turner bolted. Jonsson ran after him, while Arndt checked on the woman to make sure she was still alive. He says he was lying “perfectly still”. They managed to restrain the assailant until the police arrived and arrested him; he, of course, is Brock Allen Turner, the 20-year-old former Stanford student who last week was sentenced to six months prison and three years probation for three felony sex abuse charges.
Towards the end of her letter, she thanks them.
“Most importantly, thank you to the two men who saved me, who I have yet to meet. I sleep with two bicycles that I drew taped above my bed to remind myself there are heroes in this story. That we are looking out for one another. To have known all of these people, to have felt their protection and love, is something I will never forget.”
Jonsson – who has indicated he won’t be speaking to media at this point – shared the letter on Facebook urging everyone to read it, saying it “comes as close as you can possibly get to putting words on an experience that words cannot describe.”
The Santa Clara County Deputy District Attorney, Alaleh Kianerci, said that without Arndt and Jonsson – both of whom were key witnesses in the trial – Brock would never have been held accountable for his actions.
“I can’t understate how important those two heroes were in this case,” he told the Huffington Post.
If they hadn’t intervened, “we wouldn’t know who the perpetrator was. Those two heroes made this case a prosecutable one.”
Photo: Facebook / Carl-Fredrik Arndt; LinkedIn / Peter Jonsson.
