The two Swedish graduate students who witnessed former Stanford University student Brock Turner sexually assaulting an unconscious girl spoke out about what exactly happened that night.
Carl-Fredrik Arndt and Peter Jonsson told the Swedish paper Expressen Tuesday that they were riding their bikes through campus in January of last year when they saw Turner “aggressively thrusting his hips” on top of a woman behind a dumpster.
The two students realized that something was wrong as they observed the woman motionless, and decided to confront the man.
“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?’” said Arndt. Then, he described Turner taking off to escape. Jonsson gave chase, catching up to Turner and pinning him to the ground until authorities arrived at the scene. Turner claimed the victim gave consent.
Arndt also told CBS News, “She was unconscious, the entire time. I checked her and she didn’t move at all.”
Turner was sentenced to six months in county jail for sexual assaulting the woman after a fraternity party, although he faced a maximum penalty of 14 years in state prison. In court, the victim read an emotional letter to the perpetrator, calling the sentence “a soft time-out, a mockery of the seriousness of the assaults.”
On Tuesday, Jonsson also took to Facebook to thank everyone “for all the encouragement and support over the last days and months,” adding that he would not publicly comment on the trial. However, he asked supporters to read the 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,” he wrote.