This article is about Emily Doe, a brave yet still unnamed woman who went through the unthinkable and still found the courage to speak out against her abuser.
This article is about Carl-Fredrik Arndt and Peter Jonsson, the two Swedish students who stopped the assault.
These are three extraordinary people who are the very definitions of strength and courage.
Arndt was a P.H.D student in Mechanical and Computational Engineering at Stanford at the time of the assault. Jonsson was pursuing his Masters in Management Science and Engineering.
The two students were riding their bicycles on January 2015 when they came across Brock on top of an unconscious woman behind a dumpster. The immediately confronted him to make sure what was happening was consensual. When the rapist tried to run away, Jonsson chased him and sat on him until police arrived, while Arndt checked on the victim only identified as Emily Doe.
It’s horrifying to think of what might have happened if the two students hadn’t seen them or hadn’t stopped.Emily Doe was a 23 year old who decided to accompany her sister to a party. She was drinking, but at some point overestimated her tolerance for alcohol. She woke up confused, disorientated and alone, and was informed she had been assaulted before being subjected to intrusive examinations.
She had to explain the truth to her family, her guilt-ridden sister, and her boss and boyfriend. All she wanted from her rapist was an apology, for him to simply acknowledge what he had done and apologize. Instead, she got a privileged white man who hired lawyers to go after her and discredit her, so she would take the blame for what he now claimed was a completely consensual incident.
There is a stark difference between men like Arndt and Jonsson, and cowards like Brock Turner.
These two men recognized from an outside perspective what was happening was wrong, and immediately stopped it. Brock Turner has changed his story, and denies that anything that happened that night was non-consensual.
When Jonsson recounted his story to the police, he could barely speak from crying so hard because of what he had just seen. Turner also had a difficult time, but it seems to be because he had to be registered as a sex offender, and not because of the fact that he assaulted an innocent woman and then tried to blame her for it.
Brock Turner shows no guilt and no remorse about the fact that he raped an unconscious woman. He tried to run away when confronted, and then changed his story to take advantage of his privilege and paint himself as the victim.
Brock Turner has been registered as a sex offender, and will be for the rest of his life, but that is the least of what he deserves. New updates have said he will be released from jail on September 2nd. That is all the punishment he will get for raping an unconscious woman.
Emily Doe spoke out about a traumatic incident, and with knowing the climate of rape culture that surrounds us, didn’t pull any punches. Her letter is heartbreaking and graphic, but so brave and raw that it made the world furious at the injustice of her attackers lenient sentencing.
Carl-Fredrik Arndt and Peter Jonsson were two men who stopped to check on a complete stranger, and have vocally supported her but refused to speak further on the trial. Their strength and compassion is the embodiment of human decency.
Emily Doe, Carl-Fredrik Arndt and Peter Jonsson are true heroes in every sense of the word, and on a level people like Brock Tuner can never hope to reach.
