Anna Ardin tells her side of the story in a new book
Credit: Shutterstock
In the decade after her allegations against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, newspapers and television broadcasters have not named her, either in the UK or at home in Sweden. She was just "Miss A". She almost immediately ducked out of the public eye, fleeing to Barcelona, then found love, had children and became a deacon in the Uniting Church in Sweden.
So to see Anna Ardin, now 41, invited onto Swedish television’s top chat show, the subject of a two-part documentary, and interviewed in every major Swedish newspaper over the past few weeks has been like seeing the hidden antagonist in a long-running drama suddenly emerge from the shadows.
Five years after the deadline for bringing charges on the back of her allegations expired, Ms Ardin has decided to tell her story in a new book, ‘In the Shadow of Assange: My testimony.’
But not without controversy.
After Ms Ardin’s main TV appearance, Anne Ramberg, the former head of Sweden’s bar association, wrote on Twitter the interview with "the aggrieved lady who provided her home and bed to Assange", was "extremely worrying".
"Anyone who has not read the preliminary investigation should do so," she tweeted. "To now write a book and make a career of what is described as abuse seems extremely questionable."
"Regarding Assange," she continued in another tweet. "He has denied the allegations and should be considered innocent."
The book adds detail to the accusations that led prosecutors to arrest Julian Assange
Credit: Victoria Jones /PA
In her book, Ms Ardin argues that rather than giving a one-sided account, she is pushing back at the information campaign against her "that Julian has been active in and which I have over the past ten years done everything I could to avoid."
”We are never going to get to know whether Julian is a perpetrator in a juridical sense, but I can describe the events as I experienced them. Instead of standing witness in the trial which never happened, I now want to give my version."
The book adds detail to the accusations that led prosecutors to arrest Mr Assange in absentia on charges of unlawful coercion and sexual harassment: that Assange held her down roughly after they agreed to have consensual sex and then deliberately sabotaged a condom so he could ejaculate into her.
When she first meets him in her flat, Mr Assange greets her holding one of her bras. “I’ve been looking through your underwear drawer," he says. "I saw the size of this and thought ‘this is a woman I’d like to meet’".
In the days he stays there, he never showers, so by the last day, the flat "smells strongly of unwashed body, of dried-in sweat, and there are turds floating in the toilet".
Part of what makes Ms Ardin’s account interesting is that she includes new details that give ammunition to her doubters. She was already considering sleeping with Mr Assange even before he made a clumsy pass, she says, partly because of his celebrity and partly to irritate her ex.
"It might be pretty fun thing, and no big deal to ‘score with Julian Assange’," she remembers thinking.
Now that the preliminary investigation has been closed, Anna Ardin tells her side of the story
Credit: Shutterstock
She describes why, after the treatment police described as "unlawful coercion", she then willingly got up, fetched a condom and returned to join Mr Assange in bed, putting the decision down to "the coolness in his gaze, our common knowledge that he is stronger than me", and her wish not to make a scene. After she manages to relax, she goes on to have "one orgasm, perhaps even two".
She also explains why she then hosted a party for Assange the next evening, tweeted about what a good time she was having, and let him continue staying in her flat.
"Julian is in many ways a fantastic person," she explains. "The Julian who took part in the [party] is totally different from the one who humiliated and abused me the previous evening."
Mr Assange’s lawyers have declined to comment on the new allegations in the book.
Ramberg, meanwhile, faces the possible sack from her position as the chair of Uppsala University, after six professors and three student bodies called for her to go.
She has, however, refused to apologise for the language she used to describe Ms Ardin. Assange, still languishing in Belmarsh prison, has suffered more than either of his two alleged victims, she told the Telegraph.
"The women, I can’t regard them as these very tragic victims that they have tried to portray themselves as," she said. "I see him as the victim, actually. His life is destroyed."
Свежие комментарии