Stanford all-American swimmer, Brock Turner, was found guilty of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman after a frat party in 2015. The case, which took a year of processing and trial, concluded with Brock receiving a 6-month sentence and probation, a very minimal amount of time compared to the crime’s 14-year maximum sentence.
In a statement by Brock, which was recently released, it is evident that he does not take the blame for the rape he has committed. Instead, he pushes the cause of the event onto college hookup culture and the normalcy of heavy drinking. He vowed to make it his life mission to change the perception of binge drinking and being sexually promiscuous in college.
“I want to demolish the assumption that drinking and partying are what make up a college lifestyle,” he wrote in his statement. “I made a mistake, I drank too much, and my decisions hurt someone… I want to show that people’s lives can be destroyed by drinking and making poor decisions while doing so.”
As Brock constantly assesses the “college experience,” he neglects to mention the wrongfulness of rape and sexual assault. He says he was mistaken for excessively drinking, but does not say it was for raping an unconscious woman.
In the victim’s letter to Brock, she mentions this drinking argument. She points out his negligence of the situation and cites that she too was drunk, but “did not take off your pants and underwear, touch you inappropriately and run away.” There were a lot of people binge drinking that night, the difference was that Brock was the only one to sexually assault an unconscious woman behind a dumpster.
“At this point in my life, I never want to have a drop of alcohol again. I never want to attend a social gathering that involves alcohol or any situation where people make decisions based on the substances they have consumed,” Brock says. Yet again, he points to the alcohol making his decisions for him, an inaccurate statement.
Brock’s sister, Caroline Turner, also pointed to alcohol being to blame for the situation. In a letter she wrote, “a series of alcohol-fueled decisions that he made within an hour timespan will define him for the rest of his life.” In her statements, she seems to downplay the horrible act of rape and defends her brother as if all he did wrong was drink alcohol.
Brock’s lenient sentence was met with an overwhelming amount of criticism by the public and the judge who made the decision has since been heavily threatened. Brock and his family pleaded strongly with the judge prior to his final decision. Turner’s father has been aggressively attacked by the public for saying prison time for Brock was “a steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action.”
The victim’s letter pointed to the fact that not everyone takes rape as a serious offense. In the letter, she wrote in detail about the detrimental effects on her physical and mental health following the event and spoke out about the atrocities of rape. After this case, it is likely that campus sexual assault will be an even more heated topic and the legal system may have to re look at its guidelines for assessing it.
