Brock Turner (1995- ) is the “All-American swimmer” who has been all over US news lately for having sexually assaulted an unconscious woman behind a dumpster at Stanford University.
On January 17th 2015, Turner was just about to rape the woman when two Swedish students on bicycles drove by. They caught him and called the police. They were in tears having seen what he had done. Turner was not in tears till they called the police.
Stanford University rape statistics:
- 26 reported rapes a year from 2012 to 2014. Since most rapes are not reported, that comes to at least one a week on average.
- 43% of its female students have been sexually assaulted.
- 1 student has been kicked out for sexual assault from 1891 to 2015.
That Turner was tried and found guilty is the exception, not the rule. Thanks to the Swedes, it was not a he-said-she-said case.
But the courts still bent over backwards to protect Turner. Judge Aaron Persky gave him six months at the county jail instead of the recommended minimum of two years at state prison, saying:
“A prison sentence would have a severe impact on him. … I think he will not be a danger to others.”
He saw Turner as a person of good character who had had too much to drink.
It was not just the judge who went easy on him. The police did not make his mugshot public for 18 months, a courtesy not extended to Black suspects. The Washington Post called Turner an “All-American swimmer”, “baby-faced” and his crime “a stunning fall from grace”.
Fortunately, in this case we have an amazing 12-page letter the woman read in court. She said in part:
“It is enough to be suffering. It is another thing to have someone ruthlessly working to diminish the gravity of validity of this suffering.”
“I showed up an hour late to work every morning, excused myself to cry in the stairwells, I can tell you all the best places in that building to cry where no one can hear you.”
“You bought me a ticket to a planet where I lived by myself.”
“What has he done to demonstrate that he deserves a break? He has only apologized for drinking and has yet to define what he did to me as sexual assault, he has revictimized me continually, relentlessly.”
“… thank you to the two men who saved me, who I have yet to meet. I sleep with two bicycles that I drew taped above my bed to remind myself there are heroes in this story. That we are looking out for one another.”
“And finally, to girls everywhere, I am with you. On nights when you feel alone, I am with you. When people doubt you or dismiss you, I am with you. I fought everyday for you. So never stop fighting, I believe you. As the author Anne Lamott once wrote, ‘Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.'”
– Abagond, 2016.
Sources: mainly Democracy Now!, Vox, BuzzFeed, The Guardian.
See also:
- External links:
- BuzzFeed: read the letter
- recallaaronpersky.com – help to recall the judge, even if you do not live in California.
- compare and contrast:
- white privilege
- The danger signs of a rapist
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White Privilege. I had a professor who once explained to the class that sentencing during criminal trials was based on the “value to society” that the judge saw in the defendant. So, basically white privilege.
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White men protecting each other. The judge’s non-sentence was mirrored by dismissive statements made by the the rapist’s father.
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Thanks for stating the facts of this case. I saw the headlines but didn’t feel like reading the story. Now, for a 180 degrees take on the subject from a “socialist” perspective:
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/06/11/stan-j11.html
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Sexual assault of any woman is not permitted on any college campus. Young men, if a young woman does not want a relationship with you, then accept that. Young men, do not be aggressive after any young woman on campus. Remember No means No!
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Madness!!! Simply Madness!!
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@ericrhetoricamubu
Are you being facetious?
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@gro jo
I found that article, The Right-wing Campaign Over The Stanford University Sexual Assault Case, disturbing, unfocused and infuriating.
Even though the author made a few interesting connections and points, it seemed as though he was also advocating leniency for Brock Turner.
This paragraph stuck out like a palm tree in Antartica:
My first thought was of the Central Park Five who were not accorded that level of sympathy by anyone. One of the five men talked on Democracy Now! a few years back about how some people in their own neighborhoods shunned them because of media accounts. They suffered for years and I doubt if left wing or right wing Whites cared anything about their humanity or presumption of innocence.
http://www.democracynow.org/2014/6/20/nycs_40m_central_park_5_settlement
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As it relates to white men’s collective conduct, or their proclivity to engage in the most profane acts, violating other people in the most inhumane manner in the process is of no surprise to me. This is their nature. This is a mere glimpse of their embedded behavior. In Hebrews 12:16: “Lest there be any fornicator, or profane person, as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright.” Today’s white folks are descendants of Esau!
Thanks to miscreant Brock Turner for proving the Bible as being right on target once again! However, my heart goes out to the victim’s family for the shameful act of this beast draped in cloistered Palo Alto, California’s privilege.
I live 15 minutes away from Palo Alto and I’ve never heard about this case on the local news, which took place more than a year ago, … COVER-UP (smh).
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Brock Turner is the person who has catastrophically altered his life, through his own criminal actions. He is solely responsible for all that has befallen him.
This is a classic case of white male privilege. We wouldn’t be seeing the same leniency and concern for this felon if he wasn’t white. We certainly aren’t seeing any true justice for his victim.
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Brock Turner is vile and disgusting and so is his r*pe apologist father is also disgusting talking about how his poor baby boy is affected by this twenty minutes of his sons boys will be boys sick mindset. Brock Turner needs to be under the jail for a long time for his savage attack on that young woman. It doesn’t matter if she was drunk out of her skull or how she was dressed this doesn’t give any man the right to r*pe a woman. I read the comment section of one article about this case and it was disgusting how everyone blamed the victim. I read her long lengthy letter describing her ordeal of what happened to her during this horrendous night of that party when she went to the hospital and how her body was violated by Turner. The swine judge needs to be ousted and brought to task as well. R*pe culture is real and the misogyny towards women is sickening.
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It was amazing how on another blog site I frequent the topic was Brock Turner and white privilege and how on that blog site is a black identified space all the white trolls always know how to get in formation and conflate how this is not white privilege but it’s a class thing but I beg to differ because there have been case where black males have been sentenced for the same crime and received longer sentences and whites like Brock Turner with the complexion for the protection get slapped on the wrist. I saw a post on the timeline of one of the social media sites I subscribe to and it was a photo of tee shirts with Brock Turner’s face plastered on it with the word R*pist captured underneath. Brock Turner’s pasty swine face needs to be on fliers all over the United States. With that being said I hate r*pist no matter what color their skin or socio economic level they are.
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@Afrofem: I concur especially the part about the Central Park Five.
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@Solitare: I agree with you as well this is white male privilege.
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There needs to be a preparation to oust the judge who gave Turner the slap on the wrist.
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Well, I am not being facetious about date rape. Okay, suppose you had a girlfriend you know on college campus crying in your college dormitory room about some guy you know attempting to perform date rape, how would feel? You a type that brownosed professors in class?
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@ericrhetoricamubu
I asked that question because I wasn’t sure if you were just spouting slogans or if you really cared about the issue.
No offense intended.
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Well, if you date any female on any college campus, usually, it’s not about general slogans, when you date a girl, who you like and maybe struggling with date rape behind closed. Guys, generally on campus know who and what the date rape issue is about.
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Afrofem,
It’s part of their program to emphasize “class” over “race, gender, etc.” because all these things are “distractions” from the fight for “socialism”. Meanwhile, Thomas Jefferson and the “founding fathers” should be praised to high heaven because they were part of the “Enlightenment”! Their slaving and land theft should be seen as “progress”. If you don’t buy any of this it’s because you’re a pseudo leftist or a reactionary.
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@gro jo
Yes, in their own dishonest way, they are promoting the same old White privilege that their right wing brethren promote everyday.
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Daps to the two Swedish dudes who caught this dog in his savagery.
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Disturbing.
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`Baby face’? He looks creepy to me.
It’s absolutely a case of white privilege. I read his father also acts like the worst outcome here is his son’s athletic career instead of the victim’s rape and trauma that may last the rest of her life. Because white men’s success and ease of passage through life is more valuable than anything else.
If I were to be walking alone at night in my home country, I would be far more terrified of encountering a white man than anyone else because I know they stand the greatest chance of getting away with it.
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They remind me of Jack London, the “socialist” who wrote The Iron Heel and coined the term “the great white hope” who would dethrone the black champion Jack Johnson.
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@Iris
Yes, the apple didn’t fall far from this toxic tree.
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@Iris
Far more disturbing than that was that the judge and the probation board bought into that mindset too.
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“Far more disturbing than that was that the judge and the probation board bought into that mindset too.”
.
It’s not like we haven’t seen or lived this sort of unequal justice/sentencing/judicial bias before. Haven’t they been exercising their whiteness like this for hundreds of years??
First on people who weren’t considered fully human. Now it’s with anyone within their grasp.
Watch where you step, or you might find yourself walking in their privilege!
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Correction: He was not “just about to rape” when passersby stopped him. He had in fact penetrated the woman with his fingers.
The privilege part stinks even worse when considered in light of some facts:
Turner lied about drinking/drugs in his sentencing. Turner said he was inexperienced with drinking and was trying to keep up with peers. In fact, his social media shows a long history with drinking a drugs.
Turner also tried to suggest that he himself was so intoxicated he didn’t comprehend what he was doing. Yet there are social media traces suggesting he sent photos of the victim’s breasts to friends, and he was lucid enough to run away when confronted by the passersby.
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I’m think his victim was probably a woman of color. Most likely that of Asian descent possibly.
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White privilege is powerful. Mainstream whites in America seemed to be threatened just because 2 or 3 people out of 10 in their vicinity is not white. They think that is a diverse setting and everybody hates them. I was at a free outside screening just the other day and I actually heard related comments to what I just pointed out. Amazing how entitlement can really obscure a person’s view.
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It’s being reported that the victim’s younger sister testified in court that earlier the same night at the party Brock Turner grabbed her and began kissing her until she managed to break away from him.
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@ Blanc2
California state law does not include digital penetration under the legal definition of rape. It gets confusing because all of the states have different legal definitions, as does the federal government. If I understand correctly, under federal law it would be considered rape, but Turner was charged under California law.
I don’t disagree with your statement or opinion, just saying why he wasn’t charged with or found guilty of rape in the state of California.
Regardless of how anyone defines it, he most certainly did sexually assault her and violate her.
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@Fan …
I agree. I have to admit reading this story made me laugh. I laughed because they are finding it harder and harder to hide the white privilege.
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@Blanc2
I find the idea of being drunk and not knowing what you are doing a bit of a cop out. As you presented, he seemed to know full well what he was doing. On top of that I find that drinking really only brings out the true you. Either that or he was not darn drunk.
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A quick summary of the American justice system: If you’re white, male, well-to-do in some way or is highly talented, you are of more value than anyone else in this society. And whatever crime you’ve committed will not be of any serious consequence. You still matter to us. However, if you don’t possess the “appropriate” skin color, the “right” economic class or the “correct” gender, you could be locked up or killed even if you haven’t done anything. Your only crimes are being born the wrong color, born into a poor class or not having a penis. And if you are a victim of a crime by a civilian or police, your life still won’t matter to us.
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@Brothawolf
Quick, Dirty and True!
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@Brothawolf: Yes to all of that.
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@Brothawolf
Didn’t you know? White men are our country’s most precious resource.
Explains quite a lot, actually.
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Privilege exists certainly. The father is nauseating. The father’s comment about 20 minutes of a crime shows how clueless he is about the PTSD rape victims suffer, often for the rest of their lives. I still struggle with sleep close to twenty years after I was raped. I was raped in South Korea working as an English teacher. I wrote about my response to this case in my blog. https://triciabarkernde.com/2016/06/11/recovery-from-rape-a-spiritual-in-response-to-the-sentence-for-brock-turner/
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@Solitaire: He was found guilty of 3 felonies including digital rape. She had been penetrated by foreign objects, too, as the rape kit revealed pine needles (!?!) inside her.
Again, the full Victim Impact Statement, which she read in court (and which was subsequently read in full on one of the cable news channels–CNN, perhaps?):
https://www.buzzfeed.com/katiejmbaker/heres-the-powerful-letter-the-stanford-victim-read-to-her-ra?utm_term=.vtX2xpPEY#.purNgJmqY
@Mary Burrell: There is a petition to have the judge AARON PERSKY removed from the bench for his extreme leniency and disregard for the severity of the crime. Last I saw a few days ago, almost 100,000 signatures were on it. The judge, an elected official, is running unopposed for reelection. In order to remove him, however, there must be 70,000 in-person signatures collected and that effort is underway, headed up by Stanford Law Professor Michelle Landis Dauber. You can learn more and find out how to assist (up to and including writing and delivering your own letter of complaint, if you are so inclined) here:
http://www.recallaaronpersky.com/
USA Swimming banned Turner for life, so his “Olympic Dreams” are dashed. Kudos to USA Swimming, who, in a statement, said that Turner’s membership had lapsed in 2014 but he was permanently ineligible to renew due to his sexual assault conviction, which violates their internal code of conduct. At least ONE sports organization takes rape seriously.
Stories like this are just so nauseating. And to read his parents’ statements, too, it is clear how this pig came to believe himself entitled to sex on any terms at any time: his dad referenced Brock Turner’s crime as “20 minutes of action,” and his mother bemoaned being so distressed by her son’s arrest and trial that she couldn’t bear to decorate the home they had moved into the day before his arrest…no mentions of the victim, but sweet baby j*s~s she can’t hang curtains because he boy is being *persecuted*!!
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@triciabarkernde Thank you for being so brave about your own horrific experience. Peace to you.
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@ Melanie
I was not trying to downplay the severity of what happened to her. I would call it rape, but California state law does not. One felony was for intent to rape, the other two for sexual assault.
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@Melanie: Thanks for the link
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@Solitaire: I didn’t think you were downplaying what happened, but the articles I read all referenced “digital rape” and/or “sexual assault with a foreign object.” It’s one of the frustrating things about each state being able to establish different definitions, ages of consent, etc., and it contributes to the difficulty in prosecuting felonies, since some crimes are felonies in one place while misdemeanors in another and some are not even considered a violation in certain states. The issue of marital rape comes to mind here, too. Some places don’t think it exists, due to an outmoded definition of marital “rights.” But thanks for the clarification. I didn’t realize that California doesn’t count digital rape or rape with a foreign object as “rape,” per se. Ugh. So much more work to do to get equality.
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@ Melanie
I’ve been following discussions of California law as related to this case elsewhere on the internet, which is the only reason I knew this fact. In CA, the legal definition of rape is worded so that there must be insertion of a penis into an orifice, although unlike some jurisdictions, rape in CA does include oral and anal assault.
One interesting thing I’ve seen pointed out is that CA’s definition of rape automatically means that a woman can never be charged with or convicted of raping, whether her victim is male or female, no matter what type of foreign object may be used or how violent the assault may be. Now, I don’t believe that women commit rape anywhere as often as men, but it does happen — and a victim of such crime, whether male or female, deserves to be taken seriously and to have the law treat the offense seriously.
Some people in these discussions suggested that rape may be such a freighted word (especially since in everyday layperson’s terms, most people still think of it to mean P-V contact only) that perhaps the term “rape” should simply be eliminated from legal language in favor of “sexual assault” (that is, what now is called rape under CA law should instead be described as one of the several possible types of sexual assault).
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Basically, Turner got off easy because the judge and his father went to the same college, that’s why. And,yeah, black men or other men of color who are arrested for the same type of crime are NEVER given that level of sympathy in any court. It’s sickening—tat’s definitely white privilege in action right there. I will say that it was probably very difficult for the victim to tell her side of the story, and I’m glad she did, and that she refused to stay silent about what happened to her being dismissed/blown off as just “20 minutes of action.) And big props to the two Swedish students who busted that punk Turner
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