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When the rapist strangles Maja, everything changes.
She stops resisting – she fears she will die then.
– It’s the worst thing I’ve been through in my entire life, not being able to breathe, she says.
ⓘ The summary is made with the support of AI tools from OpenAI and quality assured by Aftonbladet. Read our AI policy here.
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It is the summer of 2023 and Maja is 25 years old.
Earlier in the same year, she separated from her child’s father and is not looking for a new relationship, the breakup is too recent.
But she would like to meet a guy to hang out with, without it having to lead to anything serious.
She starts chatting with a 35-year-old man on Tinder who seems to want the same thing.
– We then switched to talking on Snapchat. He seemed nice, there were no oddities. We talked there for two weeks before we decided to meet, says Maja.
“Hit me in the face”
Maja and the man will meet at his house, they decide. One morning on a normal weekday, Maja goes to his apartment.
They sit down on his couch. Both Maja and the man have children from previous relationships and they talk about what it’s like to be parents. The man seems ordinary. Normal.
– He starts touching me, on the shoulder. But we had talked about what would happen, that we would have sex with each other, so there was nothing strange about it, says Maja.
He lives in a one-room apartment, so the bed is just a few steps away. He asks if they should have sex and Maja wants to, she lies down.
Then the man sits on Maja with his knees over her arms. It hurts, Maja says no and asks him to stop.
– Then he hits me in the face. I realize that this will not turn out as I had imagined, says Maja.
Takes his things and runs
The man tears off her clothes. He attacks her and hits her across the face and body. Maja resists and asks him again and again to stop.
Then he strangles her. It’s hard, she can barely breathe, her body fills with panic.
– When he takes that stranglehold, I stop resisting. I understand that he might as well kill me. I am completely defenseless at that moment, says Maja.
The violence and rape continue, the man pushes Maja’s face into the mattress. She gasps for oxygen.
– I didn’t think I would get out of there alive, she says.
Finally he is done and as if nothing special has happened he goes into his bathroom to wash off. Maja sees her chance. She gathers her things and leaves as soon as she can.
Gets in the car and just drives
It hasn’t been much more than two hours since Maja arrived at the apartment, but for her, her whole life has been put on hold during that time.
It therefore feels unreal that everything out on the street seems exactly as usual. The sun beats down on vacationers on their way to swim, while Maja tries to hide her tears.
She is in complete shock and terrified that the man will come after her. It takes a long time before she remembers where she parked the car.
She gets behind the wheel and just drives.
– Something in me said I should go to the hospital. I had pain everywhere, she says.
Said that Maja wanted strangulation sex
She tells the staff at the emergency room what happened. They leave their seats behind the hatch and come out to comfort her.
Maja is taken further to the women’s clinic and her injuries are documented. She has bruises on her face, arms and bottom, cracks in her abdomen. The staff asks if she wants to report to the police and she says yes.
The man was arrested just hours later. He himself claims that the intercourse was voluntary and that Maja had requested strangulation and violent sex.
Aftonbladet has gone through 33 judgments from the last 12 months where strangulation is mentioned. In several of the judgments, you can see how the accused boy or man claims that the strangulation sex was voluntary, that the girl or woman requested it.
Something the victims themselves deny.
– In my case, that is not true at all. He asked on Snapchat if I liked spanking but I said no. I managed to get out some of our conversations which I handed over to the police which showed what had actually been said between us.
“Thought I was going to die”
Last autumn, the man was sentenced to four years in prison for the rape of Maja, the case will soon be taken up in the Court of Appeal.
What she was exposed to that morning last year has changed Maja in many ways. She is safer today, when any man gets too close to her, her body freezes to ice.
– I no longer go home to someone I don’t know, and if I go home to someone, I always give my best friend’s name and address so that someone knows where I am, says Maja.
Her jaws still hurt from the blows she received. The violence that the man exerted on her ass made it difficult for her to sit for a long time.
But of all the things the perpetrator put her through that day, what she remembers with the greatest horror is the stranglehold around her neck.
– It’s the worst thing I’ve been through in my entire life, not being able to breathe. I thought I would die.
Why do you think he did this to you, strangled?
– I don’t know what drove him, if it gave him excitement or something. But I think it was mainly the violence that drove him, to have control over me, says Maja.
Footnote: Maja is actually called something else.