This year money has been a little short, so instead of an expencive vacation my good female friend and I descided to bike around south sweden, just going however far we felt every day and then setup camp and sleep in our little tent.
Not only would we save money, but we also expected to have a real great time enjoying nature and sleeping under the open sky.
We spend the last few weeks preparing for the trip, getting the bikes ready and making sure we had all we would need with us and we finally left for Sweden thuesday the 15th. Taking the train here from Denmark we arrived in Malmø, Sweden and set out to find our way out of the city and out to the coast
that we had descided to follow. It was quite a hot day and when we spotted a really nice looking beach with camp places near we set up the tent, unpacked our stuff, made a bit of dinner and went down to the beach, looked at the kids playing in the wather before heading back to our tent. Soon we where in our sleeping bags enjoing the starlight night.
Some time later we heard some mopeds approach the site where we camping at, they parked just a few meters from our tent and we heard the guys on them discuss if it was 2 girls in the tent. I asked them if we could help them with something and when they heard me talk they just wished us a good time and left again.
About 10 minutes later we heard the mopeds again, this time they stopped on the trail just behind the tent and I got out to see what they wanted. I saw atleast 3 guys one of whom shined a flashlight in my head and asked me if I where swedish, I told him no and he asked if I where danish then, which I
confirmed. I then turned on my own flashlight and pointed it at his face, only to recieve a kick in the side from someone who I hadn’t seen. I went tumbling onto the tent and screamed something like WHAT ARE YOU DOING?? even though I had a pretty good idea by that time. I got a few hits to the head by another one swinging a motorcycle helmet and soon I where on the ground, being held
down with a foot on my neck. Meanwhile they where screaming at my friend to give her our money and phones which she did as quickly as she could. At that time I began worrying about them possibly raping her and one of them apparently got the same idea as he dragged her out of the tent by the hair and banged her head into the stones that where lying around the fireplace about 3 meters
away. At this point there where 1 or 2 guy with her, atleast 3 with me kicking me and yelling for more money and valuables. apparently she where struggeling a lot as one of the guys with her yelled for others to come help hold her and one of the attackers left me to go do that. I tried to get to her but where
held back by one person with a screwdriver that he threatened to stab me with. I where getting pretty desperate and called out for her and she screamed my name back, I where now wondering how I could help her without getting killed by the screwdriver but suddently they began to leave, one of them threw one of the large stones from the fireplace, missed and ran to his moped too.
I where suddently alone on the campsite but heard my friend yell at me from out in the water. She later told me that while one of them held her in the hair she managed to get her feet out over the edge leading down to the water and the attacker holding her let go and she where able to flee.
I quickly ran down the edge and out in the water to her and asked if she where ok, if they managed to hurt her and she answered yes… without going into details, I’ll just say that the swedish police classifies it as rape though neither penis or vagina where involved.
Damn scared that they might come back we worked our way up to dry land and quickly gathered some dry clothes and proceeded very silently and walking through the bushes and trees to the nearby town where we found a house with a very very kind swedish couple who let us in and alarmed the police.
We spend the night at two different hospitals and out at the site with the police before being driven back to the couple who let us sleep at their place for a few hours before they drowe us back to Denmark.
Now, just a little over a week later, the police has arrested 8 persons for the attack, all young males between 15 and 17 years of age. We think we can identify atleast 1 of them, possibly 3 - my friend who is quite a good artist who usually draw portraits actually did one of the guy who tried to rape her in
the days after that we hope helped the police catch him, another one tried to use her Visa card on a gas station and one where stopped on his tuned moped the same night.
Psysically we’re getting over it - my side got a bit bruised as you can see on this picture taken a week after, she still has some scratches but is pretty much ok.
Mentally it’s it’s going a bit more slowly, I’m feeling pretty guilty that I couldn’t help her when she needed me and I’m feeling damn stupid that we went in the first place, but it never crossed my mind that we would be attacked in Sweden of all places, I’ve slept outside many times without a problem ever
before. My friend tells me that she is feeling quite bad that she escaped without me, but that was actually what saved us - with her gone they apparently lost interest.
Some swedish newspaper got hold of our names, everyone where asking us for
names and adresses and it’s possible that they heard us tell the police (journalists where already present when we went out to the site the same night with the police) or perhaps we just gave the info if they asked us - everything was really confused afterwards and I can’t remember. Anyway this resulted in my mother hearing about what happened to us in the radio before I got a chance to call her, in newspapers finding my friends web site and taking fotos of us from it and publishing them, even though they actually mailed us and asked first and where denied right to use anything from the site and a
whole lot of emails from both very kind people and a lot who just want to know if the attackers had brown skin or not.
We have not been asked to look at pictures or to identify anyone yet, I’m hoping that’ll happen soon if they expect us to be able to remember any of them, but from what my lawyer tells me we’ll be asked to go and reconstruct the whole thing in about two weeks.
// blinx