Friday, June 10, 2016

Enough About Rapists ... Let's Talk Heroes Carl-Fredrik Arndt and Peter Jonsson

I started off the week with the post about the Stanford rape victim, and her letter to Brock Allen Turner, convicted rapist, after he was sentenced to what might amount to a summer behind bars for assault with the intent to commit rape, sexual penetration with a foreign object of an intoxicated person and sexual penetration with a foreign object of an unconscious person.

I also posted about Brian Banks, who was wrongly convicted of rape and sentenced to years behind bars until his accuser recanted her story; he served over five years for a crime he didn’t commit. 

And I talked about Brock Allen Turner’s father, Dan Turner, who doesn’t think his son deserved a punishment for what amounted to just twenty minutes of “action;” in Dan Turner’s mind, rape is “action,” so is it any wonder his son is a convicted rapist today?

I wrote about the judge, Aaron Persky, who was also a Stanford grad, who helped rape the victim one more time with such an irresponsibly light sentence for convicted rapist, Brock Allen Turner.

But enough of these disgusting misogynists and rapists … let’s talk heroes …

Let’s talk about the two Stanford University grad students from Sweden — Carl-Fredrik Arndt, left, and Peter Jonsson, right — who intervened during the assault and chased down fleeing rapist Brock Allen Turner and held him until police arrived.

Arndt and Jonsson were riding bikes on that night in January, near the Kappa Alpha fraternity house, when they saw Brock Allen Turner lying on top of an unconscious woman being a campus dumpster:
“We can see that she isn’t moving at all but he is moving a lot. So we stop and think that there is something strange going on. Peter walks over and asks what he is doing and I am following him. When he stand up we see that she still isn’t moving, even the slightest, so we approach and ask something like: ‘What the hell are you doing?'” — Carl-Fredrik Arndt
And that’s when rapist Brock Allen Turner started to run and when Arndt and Jonsson raced after him. They caught up with Turner, pinned him down, and held him there until police arrived.

At the time, Carl-Fredrik Arndt was earning his Ph.D. in computational and mathematical engineering at Stanford University; Peter Jonsson, who was studying management science and engineering, took to Facebook this week, urging anyone and everyone to read the victim’s letter:
“Thanks to everyone, friends and strangers, for all the encouragement and support over the last days and months. At this point I will not publicly comment on the process or the outcome of the trial. However, I do ask all of you to spare a few minutes and read this letter written by the Victim. To me it is unique in its form and comes as close as you can possibly get to putting words on an experience that words cannot describe.”
The two men haven’t met the victim yet, but in her letter to the court she thanked the two strangers:
“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.”
I hope that the victim and Carl-Fredrik and Peter will meet; she needs to know that most men are like these two men and nothing like Brock Allen Turner.

Most men will stand up for women, and protect them when they need protecting, and save them when they need saving.

We need more men like Carl-Fredrik and Peter to protect all of us from men like Judge Aaron Persky, Dan Turner, and convicted rapist Brock Allen Turner.

We need more heroes.

6 comments:

  1. I knew that two men had intervened, but this is the first I have seen about who they were. Thanks for telling their story, too.

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  2. they should have beat the shit outta the rapist first! THEN turned him over to the cops!

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  3. Bless those guys and all others like them!!!

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  4. My faith in humanity is a little bit restored.

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  5. Good to know that not everyone in the world has had an empathy bypass

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  6. Thanks so much for spreading the word. I, too, had read repeatedly about two men on bicycles but they were never identified.

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