Early last year, Brock Turner, a form Stanford student, raped an unconscious women behind a dumpster. Turner was convicted of multiple felonies and prosecutors asked for a six-year sentence. However, Turner was sentenced to only six months. The reasoning for the lenient sentence? White male privilege. Judge Aaron Persky thought a longer sentence would have a “severe impact” on Turner.
A rape case is ugly and disturbing, and the outcomes of these cases are why the majority of rapes and sexual assaults are not reported. Survivors of rape face a long, terrifying process that makes the survivor relive the encounter multiple times.
We need to rethink rape law and the legal profession that goes along with it. There needs to be ethical obligations in sexual violence cases. In law, it is the job of the prosecutor to prove beyond reasonable doubt that a criminal defendant is guilty. It is the job of the defense attorney to defend his or her client against the prosecutor’s claims. Vigorously defending a client is an attorney’s job, and these defenses are a vivacious dynamic of our criminal justice system.
Rape survivors often feel victimized during a trial. It is easy to blame a defense lawyer for victim blaming but it is their job. What Turner’s attorney did in this case was his job, the obligation of his profession. Brock Turner is not a poor, underprivileged defendant. He's a wealthy, white man, a former student athlete at one of the most elite universities in the world. Turner made a choice to commit a crime, and even though it was “only 20 minutes of action”, he chose to make that decision. Fortunately for Turner, his family was able to pay for a top defense lawyer. That lawyer was unable to convince a jury that there was reasonable doubt of Turner's guilt; however, he was able to convince the judge that Turner should not go away for very long. Turner had family and friends write the judge letters to prove his character. No one is a criminal until they commit a crime. There was a combination of racial, economic, and educational influences, and Turner's attorney played on them to get this result. There are no kudos for only committing one crime in your life. There are no kudos for only raping one person in your lifetime. Once you commit a crime, you are a criminal. Once you commit rape, you are a rapist.
A major problem in our criminal justice system is the need for better sexual violence laws. Our criminal justice system is just that: a system. It is what we make it. If it is not serving its purpose, we can change it, and it can be changed as many times as we need it to be. Only recently have women had any real say in the implementation of our legal system.
It’s simple; we need better sexual assault laws that truthfully reflect the realities of both sexual violence and consensual sexual activity. Our laws have been written by men, revised mostly by men, and based on a foundation created by men. Rape laws were created in a time where everything was built on a man’s belief, experience, and perception. Laws pertaining to rape were initially created when women were property of men. It was legally impossible for a man to rape his wife because it was the law that men had sexual rights to their wives.
Things have changed, but not enough. Socially, it is our understanding that women should fight off rape. Defense attorneys are able to point to women's behavior or supposed consent in defending rapists. But what about a woman who has been mugged? Defenses attorneys do not claim that the woman agreed to give the theft her wallet or willingly gave the theft money before. So why do attorneys’ keep getting away with this nonsense when it deals with rape and sex?
We need to understand that sex is something two people enter into for mutual desire, as opposed to one person getting something from the other. We need to understand that the burden should not be on women to fight men off but on men AND women to understand consent. We need to understand that men are also sexually assaulted and consent needs to be mutual. If we understand these ideals of sex, then affirmative consent should be the standard we use in determining whether a sexual act was criminal. Our justice system should change to reflect that standard.
We need to understand affirmative consent and improve American rape laws.
