I fought off a pal who tried to rape me
Lib Dem No2 Jo Swinson on university sex attack ordeal
LIB Dem deputy leader Jo Swinson has told how she fought off an attempted rape by a “nice young man” she considered a friend.
The Scot only stopped her attacker by shouting at him that he was about to commit rape.
Swinson said: “I was really under threat. I was physically pushing him away and saying, ‘I do not want to do it.’
“I could hardly believe that this guy, who was a nice guy with whom I got on well, was not responding to me saying, ‘No’ and trying to push him off.”
The horrifying incident happened in the late 1990s when Swinson was a 19-year-old student at the London School of Economics.
She did not name the attacker, who was a fellow student.
The MP for East Dunbartonshire, a former business minister, said: “He was about to do something horrendous and I managed to get him to stop. I told him, ‘If you make me, that’s rape.’
“I was a teenager and if I’d had a lot to drink, I might have said ‘No’ and pushed him off, but I might not have had the presence of mind to use the R-word.
“If I hadn’t had my wits about me and been more afraid or fearful, who knows what might have happened?
“There were plenty of women I knew in my year who were less assertive than I was.
“At the time, it was a desperate attempt to guarantee my safety. The words seemed to finally bring him to his senses and he stopped.
“My heart was beating very fast and I was angry.
“There is this view among many that this violence against women is something which is sort of the stranger leaping out of the dark alley, or a whole different series of horrible people that they wouldn’t have anything to do with.
“What I took from that experience was I could see how rape could happen and the rapist could be a nice young man who would not consider that would be something he could do.”
Swinson, 37, relived her ordeal in new book Equal Power, which examines issues such as the gender pay gap and everyday sexism.
She added: “One in four women at university has suffered unwanted physical sexual advances.
“Most people who are raped are [assaulted] by people they know.”
I said, if you make me, that’s rape. He came to his senses SWINSON