In the United States, there are more than 320,000 victims of sexual assault each year — but what is even more devastating is that only 5 out of 1,000 perpetrators of assault will end up in prison.
So when four strangers jumped in to help one victim get justice against her attacker — it sheds a bit of hope in a seemingly overwhelming issue.
Four Canadian teens are being called heroes after they stepped in to rescue a young girl.
Arnaud Nimenya, James Hielema, Starlyn Rivas-Perez, and Carsyn Wright were skateboarding in a local mall’s parking garage one night when they saw something odd.
The boys noticed a 15-year-old girl being forcibly dragged by a man who claimed to be the girl’s father.
The young girl appeared intoxicated to the boys.
“She was screaming and yelling. She just wanted to be out of there. She was all scuffed up and dirty,” Wright said.
The boys – sensing trouble – approached the man for more information, as the situation seemed suspicious.
The man then urgently insisted how he was the girl’s father and the young girl did not say anything — so the boys left the garage, going on with their night.
But the group of boys did not feel right about the situation.
“You don’t want to really think of the worst in somebody like that. You don’t want that situation to be real, so you just brush it off and hope for the best,” Wright said.
The four teens then returned back to the garage to talk with the man and when they arrived — they found him assaulting the girl.
“He had her in a stairwell, bent over, and just, it was disgusting,” Wright said.
“You walk in, and you see something like that, and you freeze. You don’t know what to do,” Nimenya said.
As soon as the man saw the boys come back — he attempted to run away.
“He was trying to walk out and walk away from us,” said Nimenya. “He pushed me aggressively out of the way, kinda like just gives me the smile, like, ‘I can do this. You can’t do anything about it.’”
But the boys were not about to let the predator out of their sight again.
Whille of the boys stayed with the young girl, the remaining three chased the man down.
The man attempted to grab one of the teens’ skateboards and use it as a weapon but thankfully, the teens were able to subdue the man — keeping him occupied until the authorities arrived at the scene.
The local police honored the four boys for their brave and noble actions at the Chief’s Awards Gala.
When Wright was asked why they decided to turn back, they said:
“You can’t just leave a girl and she was a young girl. She was 15 years old and she needed help and we needed to be there for her. I hope anybody else who’s in that situation would come to her help because it’s just the humane thing to do.”
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