Brock Turner and his father’s pathetic plea

Last week, social media seemed to explode with those eager to voice their opinions about the Stanford sexual assault case. For those unfamiliar with the story, Brock Turner, a former 20-year-old student at Stanford University, was found guilty last March for three counts of sexually assaulting a woman in January 2015.

Two weeks ago, Judge Aaron Persky sentenced Turner to six months in county jail with three yeas of probation, while he could’ve been sentenced to a maximum of 14 years in state prison. According to numerous sources, the judge feared that sending Turner to prison would have a “severe” impact on him.

Two letters were released to the public—one written by the survivor and the other by Turner’s father. The survivor wrote a powerful 12-page victim impact statement directed to her attacker, which touched on how the assault has affected her life in every way imaginable. When the letter was released to the public, many praised the survivor for coming out and speaking on behalf of other sexual assault victims.

Turner’s father wrote a measly worded letter to the judge, asking him to go easy on his son’s sentencing.

“His life will never be the one that he dreamed about and worked so hard to achieve,” Turner’s father wrote. “That is a steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action out of his 20 plus years of life.”

While this trial happened in the states, this story seems to be familiar to me. Even in our own communities, both in public and private spheres, we hear stories about sexual assault.

As an editorial from The East Carolina University campus newspaper explained, to believe that six months of jail time is a “steep price to pay,” shows how rape culture continues to have a visible presence in our society.

I’m not an expert on sexual assault cases, nor am I an expert in how to comfort survivors of sexual violence. However, after reporting on sexual violence for the past year, I do know this: it doesn’t matter how great of an athlete Turner was before he raped this woman. It doesn’t matter if he was drunk, high, or under any form of substances.

Rape is rape. There is no grey area. Those “excuses” are not permission slips to sexually violate anyone and his status as a successful athlete shouldn’t have granted him less time in jail than any other convict.

Over the past few years, Laurier started to take more action into educating students on what consent is. Many campus clubs and associations have hosted numerous events throughout the year to educate students on consent and who to contact for help and advice. I applaud the university administrators and the students for breaking the stigma against sexual assault. However, more needs to be done. We need to find a better way to teach individuals on how they should control their actions, especially under the influence of substances.

That should be the primary goal. I’m not saying we shouldn’t teach each other about protecting ourselves and how to give consent. Those lessons, however, shouldn’t be our primary response for stopping sexual assault on university campuses. Alcohol does not make you a rapist. If Turner had long felt the need to harm another woman, he should’ve gone to a professional for help.

Out of this dark story, there is some light. The survivor has given other survivors a platform to share stories and experiences. However, more focus needs to be put on stopping male assailants before they act on urges that are supposedly heightened by drugs and alcohol.

Where blame is to be placed needs some serious re-evaluation.

alcohol, Brock Turner, campus rape, sexual assault, social media, Stanford, university

One response to “Brock Turner and his father’s pathetic plea”

Ken Erickson

September 8, 2016

Something in the news caught my eye lately, the case of the Stanford student convicted of rape and sentenced to 6 months in prison.

Suppose a man and a woman each get drunk, they get into their separate cars and have a collision. They are both charged with drunken driving, and maybe a few other things. In the Stanford case. the man and the woman get drunk together. She is so drunk she may have passed out, and he is so drunk he seems to have lost any good sense he had while sober. He then acts in a way that gets him “convicted of assault with intent to commit rape of an intoxicated victim and two charges of digitally penetrating an unconscious and intoxicated victim.” I am not sure how his intentions could be determined, since he, too, was drunk. As for “two charges of digitally penetrating…”, did they charge him separately for each finger?
Anyhow, he gets 6 months in jail, plus registering for the rest of his life as a sex offender. That is 6 months more than he would have gotten if I had sat on the jury. They both did something drunken and stupid, and nothing at all should have come of it. The so-called victim wouldn’t have even remembered, except that 2 Swedish grad students decided to intervene and destroy Brock Turner’s life. The drunken woman, who was not even charged with public intoxication, and whose name is shielded from publication, had the guts to make “an emotional statement read in court… describing how the attack has left her emotionally scarred.” “Left her emotionally scarred” – a so-called attack that she was so drunk she does not even remember!
You would think that this unfortunate kid has been punished enough for something millions of us have done. If they imprisoned everybody who has had sex while drunk, they would have to round up millions of men and women. But, no, a whole lot of people are trying to get the judge fired for being too lenient.
Think about it: Have you ever had sex while drunk? I certainly have. And I don’t think I deserve to go to jail and be prohibited from living anywhere near a school, park, swimming pool, daycare, or library for the rest of my life.
Brock Turner plans to appeal his sentence. He might as well. A sex offender designation will destroy his life, so he can’t do any worse, and next time he might draw a juror like me and get acquitted!

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