On Friday 21 May, while walking her dog, Amanda, 27, from Umeå, in Sweden, was beaten by a group of “young men”. She justified wanting to speak out about the incident, suggesting that in these cases, victims should rather remain silent.
The badly injured woman said she hoped that the culprits – foreigners, according to her – would be arrested so that other people do not suffer the same fate. “It’s not just for me, but so that others don’t get hurt,” she told Swedish news outlet Samnytt.
Last Friday, around nine in the evening, Amanda went for a walk with one of her dogs, a small one. Normally she takes her two dogs for a walk, but on that evening she left her large dog, a German Shepherd, at home.
Near Mariehem’s water tower in Umeå, a gang of four dark-haired foreign men in their twenties suddenly confronted her. “What are you looking at?”
Amanda decided not to take any notice of the troublemakers. “I ignored them and did not answer. They lined up and blocked the way and did not move so I have to go into the woods to get around them. And the moment I pass them, one turns, I can hear him come towards me and kick me. Then I don’t remember much.”
The woman lost consciousness after the assault. She does not know how long she was unconscious, but when she awoke, the group of men was no longer there. She said she “hadn’t provoked them at all”.
The “foreigners” spoke Swedish, and they used slang expressions. “I saw that they looked foreign, but maybe they were born in Sweden,” Amanda said. She believes they were from the Middle East, but said she was not sure. She had never met any of the men before.
Samnytt contacted the Västerbotten area police, who confirmed that they had received a police report and that an investigator was working on the case. Over the weekend, Amanda was admitted to hospital. She said she now felt too afraid to go outside with her dogs.