Two Swedish grad students stopped the Stanford rapist - now they're speaking out
When ex-Stanford student Brock Turner sexually assaulted an unconscious woman outside a fraternity party in 2015, two heroic bystanders stepped in to halt the attack.
Swedish graduate students Carl-Fredrik Arndt and Peter Jonsson described the night's events in an article published today on Swedish news site Expressen, Buzzfeed News reports.
On the night of the assault, Arndt and Jonsson were riding their bikes to a party. On their way there, they noticed Turner behind a dumpster, on top of the victim, who did not appear to be moving. They decided to confront Turner.
"When he got up we saw that she still wasn't moving at all, so we walked up and asked something like, 'What are you doing?'" Arndt told Expressen.
Turner then tried to run away, but the men managed to catch and restrain him while they called the police.
The victim thanked Arndt and Jonsson in a statement made in the courtroom, which was later released by the district attorney.
"Thank you to the two men who saved me, who I have yet to meet," she said. "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."
The two men were witnesses in the case, which concluded last week when Turner was sentenced to just six months behind bars. Their intervention on the night of the assault was a crucial factor in Turner's conviction, given that a scant 20% of campus sexual assaults are reported to police.
A post on Jonsson's Facebook page says that he will no longer comment publicly about the case. But he did urge others to read the victim's statement in its entirety.