My 2017 Exposé Of Precisely What Happened Between Julian Assange And Two Swedish Women Published In "The Indicter"-- The True Unbelievable Story Has Elements Of Absurdity, Dystopia, and HIV Panic

But Why And How Did The World Come To Believe It Was A Story Of Rape?

—CF

Before we get to the (2017) article, here are some recent Tweets—two are from from Anna Ardin, one of Assange’s accusers, the other from the editor of The Indicter.

In the photo captions, I have explained what the Swedish ones say.

For clarity—yes, that’s right—one of Assange’s accusers, Anna Ardin, was behind the “Greta Is A Prophet Of Our Time” story of 2019. (!)

Anna Ardin, one if the two women who went to the police in Sweden, pictured with Greta Thunberg

Ardin, 10 hrs ago, “Since I take sh*^t every time bad things happen to Assange, maybe I can get credit now that he’s free? All joking aside, I have had zero power here, but I’m glad he is out and hope he will fight for transparency and human rights without assaulting women.” The second text reads: “Many have assumed I somehow was responsible for locking the guy up, I was not, and my case had zero impact on the US’s judicial process and extradition request.”

Author’s Note for The Indicter Magazine version:

The following article is an update for The Indicter Magazine of a previous publication in The New York Observer, drawing on additional materials.

The invasion of privacy contained in the text that follows in regrettable and unavoidable. It is strictly for the purpose of clarification about the events that took place in Stockholm in 2010, between Julian Assange and two women, and how the Swedish State came to bypass their wishes, as well as that of the original prosecutor, who dismissed the charges in the first days.

The international media has a perverse tradition of de-humanizing Mr. Assange, treating him as a symbolic object (at best.)

My intention is not to invade the sacred privacy of anybody, but rather, to dare go into the micro-details, so as to expose the absurdity and in some ways –with apologies to Sweden– the Swedishness of the tragic situation. I can cast light on this because my Swedish mother moved us to Sweden when I was a child, and I spent my formative years there.

To better reflect an awareness of the gravity of this situation, I have also eliminated some glib lines from the NY Observer original version.

—Celia Farber

.

New Analysis of Swedish Police Report Confirms Julian Assange’s Version in Sweden’s case

Published In The Indicter on January 3, 2017

“Based on Anna’s story, when she called me, she said “we had sex” and that’s what happened, and she made no reference to any kind of assault… She did not want to go to the police. My sense is that she [Ardin] did not experience this as serious, but got pissed off.” —Donald Bostrom, witness

“It is simply amazing how much work this case is generating. It sometimes seems like an industry. It is certainly non stop. Please do not think that the case is being dealt with as just another extradition request.” —Paul Close, Crown Prosecution Service

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I.

Two Swedish women—Anna Ardin and Sofia Wilen—had consensual sex with Julian Assange in Stockholm, in their respective apartments, in the month of August, 2010.

In an investigation conducted by Swedish prosecutor, Marianne Ny, he found himself suspected (but not charged) of discrete items of sexual molestation and one count of “non-serious” rape. Swedish prosecutors had initially dropped all allegations against him, when Ny suddenly took over as lead prosecutor and revived them, which is just one of many inexplicable twists and turns in the gluey saga.

Nobody outside of Sweden, certainly, is likely to ever understand this disorienting morass.

What did he do?

Was Assange’s alleged behavior inside consensual sexual relations a criminal act? If so, what is the crime, exactly? Swedes, certainly, defer to Assang’e guilt in conversation, when pressed, yet nobody knows what exactly happened. Or even remotely, what happened.

Some answers lie embedded in a 98-page report signed by Swedish authorities on August 26, 2010, the contents of which have been touched upon in various press reports—but never fully clarified. First, one must be familiar not only with the Swedish language, but also “Sweden,” which does not refer to the landmass east of Norway, and north of Denmark, so much as to a constructed society obsessed with the elimination of risk.

Sweden has both the most expansive sexual-offenses legislation (which extend all the way to marital bed nagging), as well as the highest number of reported rapes in the world.

The 98-page report reveals a bleak, post PC world, with fumbling intimacies and attempts at romance—mostly by Assange actually—that fizzle like dud matches. It’s a clash of North/South as well as East/West, more than most casual readers may realize. The women are “strong” but mirthless, lacking erotic savor faire, descending into cruel mockery here and there, hysteria elsewhere, while the male witnesses in this play—the two Swedish journalists—are mostly motivated by terror of saying something that could be construed as anti-feminist.

Another strange feature of the report is the time and deference it accords the details of the emotional arc of the two accusers. Often it reads more like a dime-store novel than a crime report:

“Julian looked at Sofia with a bemused expression. She got the feeling he did not feel that she, in her bright pink cashmere sweater, belonged among all these journalists dressed in grey.”

“His telephone rang and he had an appointment with Aftonbladet..at 12….Then he bicycled with her on the back of his bike to the train station. She paid for his ticket to Stockholm. Before they parted, he told her to keep her phone on. She asked if he would call her and he said he would.”

[This took place after the tryst that lies at the heart of the matter–their only night together. In other words, the morning after, Wilen wanted reassurance that Assange would call her.]

Matters are confused by many factors, including altered statements given by the two women, as they were assigned new attorneys, and as the case was played out in the Swedish press, which accused Assange, inexplicably, of “rape” in advance of due process. The meaning of the various drafts and the officers being taken off and put onto the case is unclear, but far from reassuring. The original report is said to have been entered into a police computer by somebody later taken off the case, and missing from available documents.

In the case of Ms. Ardin, she kept Assange as a houseguest for six nights after the incident, and even threw a crayfish party for him. In the case of Ms. Wilen, she and Mr. Assange, after a night of sex, joked about a possible pregnancy, and about his promise that if she got pregnant he would move to Sweden, pay off her student loans, and they “could name the baby Afghanistan.”

The morning after their tryst, Wilen woke before him, ate breakfast, went grocery shopping, served him breakfast in bed, disrobed, and had sex with him again. It is during this morning that Wilen, in an amended testimony, said she was asleep, or “half asleep” (depending on the date stamp of the report) when Assange had intercourse with her. Having sex with a person who is asleep may count as rape in Sweden, so this point is critical. How did she fall asleep after starting her day in this fashion?

From a documentary on the allegations and the bungled investigation, on Swedish television network, SVT:

“The rape charges are about one of the women. It emerges from the police interview that they had voluntary intercourse during the night. She is careful that he always use a condom, she explains. In the morning she wakes from intercourse with him again. She is worried about HIV and asks if he has a condom. He answers that no, he doesn’t. She feels it is too late to stop him. According to the police report, the intercourse takes place against her will and the event came to be called rape.”

What Assange could not have anticipated was how strongly Ms. Wilen felt, not about the nature of the sex they had had, but the fact that the unprotected sex has caused her to be exposed to semen for the first time in her life, which in turn led to a profound anxiety attack, fearing “HIV,” and leading to a conflict about when, and how, exactly, Assange would agree to take an “HIV test.”

The report this article relies upon, contains several testimonies—Ms. Ardin, Ms. Wilen, two Swedish male journalists, Ms. Wilen’s ex boyfriend, brother, and several friends and colleagues of the two women. Finally, Mr. Assange himself. It closes with grainy photographs of a broken condom, as well as a condom tip—and the forensic analysis of experts from “Staten’s Kriminaltekniska Laboratorium” (The State’s Criminal Technological Laboratory)—offering forensic results about the exact conditions along the broken edge of the condom. (Ruled not to have been broken by an “instrument,” but to have failed by natural means.)

The forensic literature on the broke condom includes contradictory evidence that a condom was manually torn at the lab, as well as one condom, submitted by Anna Ardin, with no trace of genomic DNA, which could explain all the stalling past the statute of limitations. Ardin could otherwise have been prosecuted for falsifying evidence. In any case, nobody disputes: There was sex, it was consensual, and everything that “went wrong” revolves around the condoms at hand.

Studying the case closely, you are never able to understand what exactly it is that is alleged about the condoms. There is no evidence of a broken condom in the one instance, and no evidence of unsafe sex that was not agreed to in the latter. Yet it is after, in one case well after, the sex takes place, that “the trouble” begins to brew, stirred wildly by bolts of what appear to be both jealousy, clashing social codes, and above all, one woman’s clinical phobia of seminal fluid.

At the end of it all, it clear that Assange did not like condoms, (who does?) but also clear he did agree to use them in both instances. I am pretty sure all that “happened” here was one ejaculation that escaped its latex guardian somehow or other. Nobody got pregnant, nobody got an STD, nobody died. But this ejaculate has cost Julian Assange as well as the international community something so immense, one wonders why Sweden never becomes abashed.

After the incidents for which he is wanted for questioning took place, in mid-August 2010, Mr. Assange remained in Sweden for five weeks, until September 27, during which time Swedish prosecutors once dropped the case altogether, only to re-open it days later. Prosecutor Marianne Ny was quoted in the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter as having said: “Even if I’m wrong, I won’t give up.”

Mr. Assange was originally under arrest in absentia (but not charged) for four counts of sexual offense: one of unlawful coercion, two of molestation and one of a “minor case of rape”. In August of 2015, all counts expired due to the statute of limitations, except for the “minor case of rape” charge, which would remain intact until 2020, unless the prosecutor decides to close the investigation, and in this case most probably using a standard Swedish legal formulation, “the allegations cannot be sustained” [“Brott kan ej styrkas”].

He’s been given political asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London since June 19, 2012, on the assessment of the Ecuadorian government regarding Assange’s risk of being extradited to the US. Swedish authorities have requested his extradition to Sweden, and have refused during the intervening years to question him in London; His appeal to the U.K. Supreme court to avoid extradition was rejected in June of 2012, resulting in his seeking asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy. Assange has stated that he fears Sweden will extradite him to the U.S. if he travels there, and Sweden has not promised not to do so. Finally, in 2016, the Swedish prosecutor decided to take Assange’s testimony at the Ecuador Embassy in London. [Editor’s Note: Julian Assange’s testimony is found here¹].

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II. The Report

August, 2010: Julian Assange arrives in Stockholm to give a talk. He doesn’t like hotels, because, as publisher of Wikileaks, he feels he is a target. (As is now known, many formidable threats have been leveled against him primarily in the U.S. ) Mr. Assange was actually on an extended visit to Stockholm, intending to secure residence and work permits to move there, and base his operations there.

It is decided that he will stay, for at least the first night or nights, at the small Stockholm apartment of Anna Ardin—the press secretary for the organization that invited him to speak, the Brotherhood of Social Democrats. After that the plan was for him to be moved to a “safe house” with two people from the Swedish Pirate Party. Ardin was asked repeatedly by Swedish colleagues if she preferred Assange to stay elsewhere, and said each time that it was not necessary.

Ms. Ardin is “abroad” (we don’t know where) yet arrives home one day earlier than expected because she had a lot to do in preparation for Mr. Assange’s talk, the title of which was “In War, Truth Is The First Casualty.”

It was Ms. Ardin who offered to have Mr. Assange stay in her apartment, to save the organization some money. The whole milieu has this kind of collegiate feel: mattresses on the floor, shifting plans, boozy nights, people coming and going—and of course, a crayfish party.

Mr. Assange’s first sexual encounter was with Anna Ardin—an ardent feminist, Social Democrat, Christian, animal rights activist, pro-lifer and scholar on Latin America. Ms. Ardin described herself online as somebody who, somewhat alarmingly, “burns for justice, solidarity and equality,” and she once wrote a paper on “The 7 Steps To Revenge,” against men who “dump you.”

Journalist Johann Wahlstrom comments in the police report that Mr. Assange was a “total magnet” for women, saying they “just glued themselves to him.” He describes Mr. Assange as gentlemanly, distracted and consumed with his political thoughts and discussions.

“Women,” Mr. Wahlstrom said, “so many of them, they did everything they could to wind up in bed with him.” When asked by the police interrogator what kvinnosyn (view of women) Mr. Assange had, Mr. Wahlstrom says, “I didn’t notice anything noteworthy about that…on the other hand, there was a bizarre view of men in Anna Ardin’s circle.”

Asked to elaborate, he goes on to give a halting, nervous monologue about what he’s talking about:

“I got…well, once again, like I said, I got strange vibes. It happens now and then especially in academic circles, that you run into…actually I don’t know quite how to express this…but it happens that you run into young women who have taken like a…they’ve fulfilled a journey in the name of feminism, and become chauvinists, like the worst kind of chauvinism among men, but on the feminist spectrum. These young women speak of men as sexual tools, and they say they’re not necessary for intellectual discussions…and that it’s only women who need one another. Maybe it’s more a matter of my generation, maybe you have never run into this. But I’ve encountered it often in academic circles. And I got this feeling among Anna’s friends.”

Here’s the story of their tryst, as it takes final shape after a series of police interviews, [and an editing process] behind closed doors.:

Ms. Ardin came home one day early, on Friday August 13, 2010, and she and Mr. Assange went out to dinner, then returned to her apartment, where he spent that night, and the next six.

The following morning, August 14, Swedish journalist Johann Wahlstrom arrives at Ms. Ardin’s apartment to fetch Mr. Assange and take him to the venue. Ms. Ardin answers the door, and inside the apartment, Mr. Wahlstrom notices a “thin, thin, thin” mattress on the floor, and—surprised that Ms. Ardin was there—tells himself that Mr. Assange “must have” slept on the mattress.

He takes Mr. Assange to the venue, Ms. Ardin follows later.

Ms. Ardin’s portion of the police report relays the events of the previous night like this:

They were drinking tea. Mr. Assange stroked Ms. Ardin’s leg, and she “initially” welcomed his advances. He suddenly became a little too aggressive—removing her clothes and in the process, snapping off her necklace. The sex that followed is described by Ms. Ardin as “uncomfortable,” as it had all progressed “too fast.”

She was the one to reach for a condom, and closed her legs to indicate she was serious about it. He asked her why she was doing that, and she replied that she wanted him to wear a condom. He stopped, put a condom on—she checked with her hand to make sure it was on properly—and the sex continued. Ms. Ardin describes her feeling at this point as “just wanting to get it over with.”

Ardin checked again to make sure the condom was on right, and was reassured that it was. Here the matter becomes impossibly byzantine again, regarding the state of the condom, whether and how it broke, and whose fault that may have been. [Author’s Note: If you want to find fault with Mr. Assange for not being enthusiastic about that condom, you’ll have to find yourself another narrator.]

After this night, Ms. Ardin said that she declined having any more sex with Mr. Assange, who, she said, continued to make advances the next few nights. [Again: Ardin is repeatedly asked by male colleagues over the next week if she would like Mr. Assange to move to another dwelling and she repeatedly declines.]

Mr. Assange himself testifies that Ms. Ardin invited him to sleep in her bed, that she made the first overture, that they had sex “several” times, though they did not have full intercourse after August 13. They both reported that Ms. Ardin pointed to a wet spot on the sheets; that she said, “Is that you?” and that he replied, “No, it must be you.”

He remarked: “Maybe she was trying to point out how loving the sex had been.”

Mr. Assange stayed at Ms. Ardin’s apartment until the following Friday, and says, in the police report, that they continued to sleep in the same bed, had no further intercourse, but did have “sexual interactions.”

He is told, in the interrogation, that he stands accused of deliberately breaking the condom he and Ms. Ardin used, and he replies: “That’s not true.”

He is asked if he checked the condom before sex and replies: “I am not in the habit of checking before I put them on.” When asked who removed the condom he says he does not remember, but that it is “unusual for the woman to do so.”

“Kajsa said the impression she got was that Anna felt it was unpleasant but not frightening or threatening.”

“Based on Anna’s story, when she called me, she said “we had sex” and that’s what happened, and she made no reference to any kind of assault… She did not want to go to the police. My sense is that she [Ardin] did not experience this as serious, but got pissed off.”

—Donald Bostrom

“She [Ardin] was joking about Julian, saying he’s a strange guy. Suddenly in the middle of the night he’s gone, and he’s sitting in the bathroom with his laptop. Um..she was joking very hard and rough, but in a funny way….and at the crayfish party [Ardin turned to Assange and said], “I woke up in the middle of the night and you were gone, I felt dumped.” That word made me jump a little. Um…why did she feel dumped if…you see in my mind they had no relations, but she said she felt dumped.”

—Donald Bostrom

“It’s…a baffling storm of women around him. I mean it happens in seconds. It’s remarkable.”

“I can say that the overwhelming majority of women who come near him have just fallen headlong. They just fall.”

—Donald Bostrom

“He strikes me as a person who is very knowledgeable and brilliant. And he has a hard time finding his way if he is walking around town, because he is so deep in conversation….and he is very…I mean, simply put, he is kind.”

“A heartfelt friendship….She wanted to take care of Julian.”

—Johann Wahlstrom

Q: Did she ever express a desire for him to move out of her apartment?

A: I asked her every day, actually…she said no of course he can continue to stay with me.

—Johann Wahlstrom

Friday August 13, Mr. Assange has sex with Ms. Ardin, and the next day gives his talk. Ms. Ardin tweets twice after the incident later characterized as an assault.

First on August 14, she tweets: “Julian wants to go to a crayfish party? Does anybody have a free spot tonight or tomorrow?”

At 2 a.m. on August 15, she tweets that she is sitting outside, hanging out with “some of the smartest people on the planet.”

When the police report is filed, the tweets disappear, but bloggers retain them.

***

A few weeks before Mr. Assange was scheduled to give this particular lecture in Stockholm, a 20-something Swedish woman named Sofia Wilen was watching a TV interview with him. She found him, “interesting, brave, and commendable.” For two weeks she followed news reports of Mr. Assange carefully, and read many articles and interviews. One evening as she “sat home Googling” his name, she discovered he was coming to Sweden to speak on the invitation of Socialdemokratiska Broderskapsrorelsen (The Brotherhood of Social Democrats).

She emailed their press secretary, Anna Ardin, offering to assist with tasks pertaining to the event, in exchange for a seat in the audience. On the day of the event—August 14—Ms. Wilen arrived, and met both Ms. Ardin and Mr. Assange himself outside the building.

From the report:

“Julian looked at Sofia with a bemused expression. She got the feeling he did not feel that she, in her bright pink cashmere sweater, belonged among all these journalists dressed in grey.”

Ms. Wilen is immediately asked, by Ms. Ardin, to buy a cable for Mr. Assange. (The most famous hacker in the world did not bring a cable for his computer, to this particular talk. Later, we learn, he also did not bring a charger.)

Off she went. She taxied around Stockholm until she found a computer store that was open and had the right cable. She returned. Mr. Assange did not thank her for her effort. She noted this.

After the lecture, Mr. Assange was surrounded by swarms of journalists, and Ms. Wilen went out and “sat in the shade, waiting” for the interviews to be over. This took hours. She eventually overheard that Mr. Assange and his hosts were going to a restaurant. She then asked if she could come too, “since she had helped buy the cable.” Later, it comes to light that all those officially involved in Mr. Assange’s visit and presentation were confused as to who the “girl in the pink sweater” was, and where she came from. They all said she was “odd,” and they had a curious feeling about her.

A friend of Ms. Wilen’s told the police she got a text from her on the day of the lecture that read: “He looked at me.”

At the restaurant, Ms. Wilen wound up next to Mr. Assange. The police report notes: “He looked at her, now and then, throughout dinner.”

At one point, he was eating a traditional sandwich of knackebrod—Swedish hard bread—with cheese, and, having said not one word throughout the dinner, she asked him if he liked it. He reached over and “fed her.”

Then Mr. Assange started having cable problems again—he said he needed a charger. Ms. Wilen said she could get it for him, as she had gotten him the earlier cable. “Yes, you got my cable!” he said, holding her across her back.

“Sofia found this flattering, as it was apparent that he was flirting with her.”

After dinner, Mr. Assange, Ms. Wilen, and a third man (Johannes Wahlstrom) all went to buy a charger for Mr. Assange’s computer. Mr. Wahlstrom asked Mr. Assange, inexplicably if he wanted to “go with him to help move furniture at his parent’s house,” while Ms. Wilen invited him to the place where she worked—the Museum of Natural History. You could say Mr. Assange’s fate was sealed when he declined to move furniture, and instead went with Ms. Wilen. They went to the metro station where Ms. Wilen bought him a ticket, (107 Swedish kronor) as Mr. Assange said he had no cash and did not want to use a credit card in case he was being followed.

They went to the museum, and waited for a scheduled film to begin. Inside the movie theater, they made out “heavily.” Then they went outside where Mr. Assange fell asleep on the grass for 20 minutes. Ms. Wilen asked Mr. Assange if they would meet again, and he said yes, after the kraftskiva (crayfish party) he was to attend at the home of Ms. Ardin.

August 14 was a Saturday night. Mr. Assange said goodbye to Ms. Wilen, and went off to the crayfish party.

There is a scene from the party that is socio-politically revealing:

It is described by journalist Johann Wahlstrom, who tried, repeatedly, to warn Mr. Assange about his engagements with women, reminding him of how many politically vulnerable men have been done in by “honey traps” throughout history. He says Mr. Assange listened and agreed, and promised he was being cautious.

Describing the crayfish party, Mr. Wahlstrom says it was a warm and friendly evening, nothing “hostile,” except one moment that stood out in his memory. “There was a friend of Anna Ardin who sat rather far from me, and who made it clear she was a lesbian, and that she had rather major aggression against men in general. She said something along the lines of…well, she screamed across the table to Anna ‘next time let’s have a crayfish party without any men…’ I remembered the phrase.” Mr. Wahlstrom brought it up with Ms. Ardin, and rather than dismiss it, she said, ‘Yes, yes, it is good when women can come together by themselves and…be strong together…something like that.’ ”

According to a blog about Swedish sexual politics and rape law, Swedish men are culturally conditioned to be the more passive party in sexual and romantic exchanges. A Swedish man may ask a Swedish woman, after a date, “Why didn’t you ask for my number?”

***

On the night of August 14, Mr. Assange said goodbye to Ms. Wilen after their afternoon rendezvous and went to Ms. Ardin’s crayfish party. He and Ms. Wilen were in touch via phone messages over the next few days with Ms. Wilen becoming increasingly frustrated that Mr. Assange is hard to reach or make firm plans with. Monday, August 16, the pair finally meet. They start making out again, in a park, and decide to go to her apartment. They have to take a commuter train, the dreaded pendeltåg from central Stockholm to her suburb of Enköping. And, once again, she has to pay for his train ticket (107 Swedish kronor).

By the time the slow commuter train delivered the pair to their destination, the bloom was off. “They took off their shoes and things between them didn’t feel warm anymore,” according to Ms. Wilen’s testimony.

“They made out in the bedroom but she wanted to brush her teeth. It was midnight, dark outside, and they stood brushing their teeth together which felt domestic and boring.”

They get naked and get into bed. For the next “several hours” Mr. Assange has a hard time getting an erection, rubs his penis against Ms. Wilen repeatedly and finally says he wants to go to sleep.

The report describes Ms. Wilen’s emotions in detail.

“She felt rebuffed and shocked. It came so suddenly. Such long foreplay and then…nothing. She asked what was wrong, she didn’t understand. He pulled the covers over himself, turned over and fell asleep. …She lay awake for a long time wondering what had happened, and texted her friends. He lay next to her snoring. She must have fallen asleep, as she later woke up and they were having sex.”

She had gotten a condom set earlier and put it near the bed. He agreed reluctantly to use a condom but muttered that he preferred her to latex. He no longer had problems with his erection. They fell asleep and when they woke up, they had sex again. Then he asked her for orange juice and water. She had to go to the store, and buy breakfast food. When she returned they had sex again. She noticed that the condom was not on properly, and they fell asleep again. When she woke, he was inside her. She asked: “Are you wearing anything?” He replied: “You.”

Wilen had supposedly never had sex without a condom in her whole life, and told Mr. Assange she was afraid of getting pregnant. He joked that if she had his baby he would pay off her student loans and that they could name the baby “Afghanistan.”

She brought up HIV, and he said he had been tested three months earlier. “She said sarcastic things to him in a joking tone.”

He had a meeting—she took him to the train station, and once again paid for his ticket.

Ms. Wilen experiences dread after Assange has left. She washes her sheets and calls in sick to work. “She wants to clean up and wash everything away. There was semen on the sheets, and she thought it was disgusting.”

“When she talked to her friends afterwards she understood she had been the victim of a crime. She went to Danderyd hospital, and from there to Sodersjukhuset (another hospital.) There she was examined and tested with a rape kit.”

There’s more to this: Wilen wanted to be reassured she would not become HIV positive. The second hospital offered PEP, or post exposure prophylaxis treatment with potent antiviral drugs, green-lighted faster in the event of a “rape.” The first hospital, Danderyd, did not offer this service. Wilen’s medical odyssey is inconsistent with rape, but consistent with fear of HIV.

On August 17, Mr. Wahlstrom texted Ms. Ardin asking where Mr. Assange was. She texted back: “He’s not here. He’s been planning to sleep with the cashmere girl every night but didn’t. Maybe he pulled it off last night.”

She later added, “cashmere, breasts, and idol-worship tipped the scales,” and that Ms. Wilen was “not mentally fast enough,” according to “J.”

Bloggers have pointed out that if Ms. Ardin felt Mr. Assange was a sexual criminal, and especially if she was such a feminist, why didn’t she warn poor Ms. Wilen?

***

“Touching the genitals of a woman that you are holding or who is asleep with your genitals can give up to four years in prison. Having sex with a woman that you are holding or who is asleep when you start can give two to six years in prison.”

—From “The Swedish Rape Law” Erling Hellenas Blog

Sweden is said by some critics to be a bastion of feminist extremism, with ever expanding “rape” laws, which have caused Sweden’s reported rape rates to increase by 170 percent since 2004 when the laws were expanded. Sweden reports more rapes than any country in Europe.

The present laws state that sex with a person who “due to unconsciousness, sleep, inebriation, or other drug-affected states, sickness, bodily injury or psychological disturbance…finds themselves in a helpless state.”

“Seth said that the matter of diseases was central for Sofia, and before they had sex for the first time, they both got tested for (sexually transmitted) diseases and exchanged test results. During the two and a half years they were together, they did not have sex without a condom on any occasion. It was, for Sofia, unthinkable. Seth said this was their agreement. He said it was his understanding that Sofia had never had sex with anybody without using a condom.”

—Witness: Seth Benson, ex-boyfriend of Sofia Wilen.

“So I got a phone call and Donald said, “Are you sitting down?” He said Julian has been accused of rape…by the young girl Sofia….and Anna was livid over what Sofia told her…and for various reasons she believed what Sofia said…and they were going to meet.

—Johan Wahlstrom

“I told him Anna said that Sofia had protested loud and clear and he got upset. ‘She did not,’ he said. And then he said that is a pure, pure, pure, pure lie.”

—Donald Bostrom

***

Ms. Wilen had become increasingly upset, and fearful she might have contracted HIV* from Mr. Assange. She repeatedly called him and said she wanted him to go get an HIV test. He said he would do so but not under these circumstances—under pressure. She then called Ms. Ardin, and told her what had happened between herself and Mr. Assange. Ms. Ardin became enraged, and took on a protective role toward Ms. Wilen. Ms. Ardin accompanied Ms. Wilen to the police station on August 20, playing a supporting role. Neither of them intended to press any criminal charges against Mr. Assange. They wanted to compel him to take an HIV test. Once they were at the police station and told their stories, the female police commissioner informed them that this all fell within “rape” law, and soon thereafter—that Mr. Assange was going to be arrested. Ms. Ardin and Ms. Wilen were upset when they heard this.

Swedish doctors had already given Ms. Wilen anti-HIV drugs to ward off a potential infection, which made her ill. On the Friday, Julian Assange called her and agreed to take an HIV test the next day. She may have wanted him to get it done sooner so she could be spared the extreme toxicity of the drug regimen.

The reason Ms. Wilen was upset was not that Mr. Assange forced the sex—it was that he managed to get her to have sex without an intact condom. A careful analysis by Swedish judicial writer Marten Schultz, writing in a magazine called NEO, clarified that as draconian as Swedish rape laws are, it is not rape, even in Sweden, to remove a condom, or even to break a condom during the act.

Only in the shadow of the 1980s HIV/AIDS mushroom cloud, could a broken condom be met with such hysteria, and morph into a criminal drama, involving several governments and millions of dollars.

If Mr. Assange, on the other hand, was HIV-positive, and did not disclose it, he could have spent many years in prison—the HIV criminalization laws being most harsh in Sweden, Switzerland and Austria.

Both women make it clear in the report that their negative feelings after their sexual adventures with Mr. Assange were entirely due to the broken condom item in one case, added the fear they shared about the HIV issue.

“Assange and rape, that has several million hits on the web. So it’s a gigantic smear campaign. But no, I don’t think he thinks the CIA is involved.”

—Donald Bostrom

***

There had been a murder case, Mr. Bostrom pointed out, in the press—a girl named Nancy, who was killed with a broken bottle. The murderer was caught and sent to prison. His face in the papers was always pixelated.

“But Julian who’s only under suspicion, not charged with a crime, his face is not pixilated.”

Lastly: Ms. Ardin lied, for the better part of that week, to Mr. Bostrom and Mr. Wahlstrom—insisting she had not had sex with Mr. Assange, and that he had not managed to get her into bed.

“Anna called me and said, ‘It’s not true what I said before, we have had sex, Julian and I.’ …and then she said that the other woman, Sofia, had called her and said Julian was there and had sex with her. Both of these encounters had been consensual.”

“…and she added, I was so proud, to get the coolest man in the world into bed, and to stay in my apartment.”

—Donald Bostrom

Footnote: A study completed in 1997, published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, titled Heterosexual Transmission of HIV in Northern California: Results from a Ten Year Study followed 175 “discordant couples”—that means one of them was HIV antibody positive, the other negative. They had sex both protected and unprotected, every which way, for 10 years. The result was explosive in its contrast to media misinformation: Not one transmission: “We observed no sero-conversions after entry into the study.”

—Celia Farber

Runmaro, Sweden, Jan 2017

The Author:

Celia Farber is a journalist, an author, and an editor based in New York City; she grew up in Sweden and New York City. Farber has written on a variety of subjects for Harper’s, New York Observer, Rolling Stone Esquire, Salon, New York Press, and many more. She is the author of: Serious Adverse Events: An Uncensored History Of AIDS (MHP/Random House) [republished by Chelsea Green (2023)] and the recipient of the 2008 Semmelweis International Society Clean Hands Award for Investigative Journalism. She is the editor of a journalistic and literary website called The Truth Barrier.

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