In January of 2015, a 20-year-old Stanford student named Brock Turner took an intoxicated young woman behind a dumpster and sexually assaulted her. He “penetrated her with a foreign object” against her will. He treated her as a means to an end. He raped her.
I contemplated whether or not I should even write this piece because scrolling through social media, the reaction to his sentencing seemed so unanimous. It was absurd. Six months with the chance of parole in three, which he got having been released on Monday, Aug. 22.
The judge in charge of the case, Aaron Persky, said that he feared that a sentence spanning any longer would have a “severe impact” on Turner and a severe impact was too much for a man who marred and distorted the life of a woman forever.
Let me take a moment to run down some of the effects of rape for those of you who might not know.
She will have nightmares. She will wake up crying and still feel the tips of his fingers pressing into her skin.
She will be afraid to go on a walk by herself and when she does she will constantly look over her shoulder. She will feel defenseless.
Her relationships with her family and with her friends will be altered. They will never understand exactly how she is feeling and she will never be able to tell them.
She will feel weak, alone and misunderstood. The word “victim” is no longer a word to her, but a part of who she is—a pillar in the center of her being that he put there without asking.
My mom always told me growing up that when someone tells you that you hurt them it is not up to you to say that you didn’t. When I read her letter back in June, one of the quotes kept resonating in my head. For days I heard her, “Your damage was concrete; stripped of titles, degrees, enrollment. My damage was internal, unseen, I carry it with me. You took away my worth, my privacy, my energy, my time, my safety, my intimacy, my confidence, my own voice…”
He was in and out of jail during our summer break, home with plenty of time to register as a sex offender before his family’s Labor Day barbecue.
Also, and not to in any way dwarf this particular case, the worst part of all of this is that he spent more time behind bars than most rapists ever will.
Touching someone without their consent is never okay. Having sex with someone while they are unconscious is never okay. Raping someone is never okay.
I, like many people, sit here and wait for the day that three months in jail for sexual assault becomes a thing of the past and whether or not a woman had a drink that night is no longer a factor.